Category: Nature

With the arrival of spring, plants start emerging as the snow melts back and the weather warms. Would-be foragers begin searching for some of their favorite spring goodies such as ramps, dandelion greens, fiddlehead ferns and lambs quarters. Many of these early greens are surprisingly nutritious and tasty so it’s easy to see why they are so eagerly sought out. They are sufficiently popular to begin showing up on groceries shelves. But for many going out and gathering them directly from the wild is a traditional rite for welcoming in spring. This having been said, there are some important things to remember about foraging safely.

While a number of wild plants are edible, some are more edible than others. From time to time I hear or read about skunk cabbage being listed as an edible plant. Skunk cabbage is a member of the Araceae or Arum family with the scientific name of Symplocarpus foetidus. It is a distant relative of the corpse flower which occasionally appears in the news when a greenhouse hosting the flowering plant is deluged with curious visitors determined to see if it actually smells as bad as its name (according to reports, it does). Likewise skunk cabbage, while not quite as odorous, will release the characteristic aroma the plant derives its name from when the leaves are crushed. While the dried leaves can be used in soups and stews, it is not recommended that you eat it raw as it contains oxalate, a chemical the body uses to make kidney stones and can cause burning of the mouth and throat. It is reputed to have some medicinal properties but is not something you would want to consume on a regular basis. Among Native Americans, it is used as a famine food (one of those things you eat when all the good stuff is gone and you don’t want to start in on the family pets and kids just yet…)

Skunk cabbage is also a good example of a plant many people are vaguely aware of and think they know what it looks like but really don’t. Many think the first large green woodland plant they see growing in the spring is skunk cabbage but it almost certainly is not. The weird arum flowers appear first with the greens only poking out afterwards.

Being able to positively identify any plant you find growing in the wild is absolutely essential before you should even think about harvesting anything. One mistake can very quickly put you in intensive care or worse. My late mother who worked as a nurse in the local hospital years ago, used to tell the cautionary tale of an out-of-state couple who had gone camping in Franconia Notch State Park. It was early spring and the husband spotted some large showy green plants which he was convinced was skunk cabbage. As he had heard it was edible, he was determined to give it a try. I’m not certain what sort of cooking he did (if any) to prepare this plant however when he offered some to his wife, she was quickly put off by its extremely bitter taste and refused to eat it. Her husband, on the other hand, ignored the bad taste and proceeded to eat some of it (no doubt to show his spouse what a wuss she was).

My mother said when they brought him unconscious into the hospital, he had no blood pressure. They were able to save his life, but the doctor on the floor remarked that if the husband had eaten closer to the stem, he would not have survived. The plant he had carelessly consumed was in fact false hellebore, a highly toxic plant not related to the skunk cabbage. The alkaloids in the plant were what nearly killed him. They have a bitter flavor but the husband was apparently oblivious to the warnings his taste buds tried to send him. Fortunately he lived and hopefully learned an important lesson.

This, more than anything else, should make clear why it’s so important to familiarize yourself with your local environment. Attending classes given by plant experts, or just simply buying a copy of a guide book of edible wild plants can get you started on learning to clearly distinguish between what is edible and what should be left alone.

Also it isn’t enough to just learn what the plant looks like, it’s necessary to learn what habitat it prefers as that can sometimes help you separate a wild edible from its toxic look-alike. Since guide books often only show the plant when it is fully grown, make a point to observe its life cycle through the season so you can see its growth pattern. What does it look like when it first emerges, when it matures, what do the flowers (if any) look like and what kind of seeds does it produce? If this sounds like a lot of work, perhaps it is but it’s what needs to be done before you can safely make use of any plant for food or medicine. This is something you don’t want to cut corners on.

Once you do learn what grows in your area, there is another thing to consider. Thanks to pollution and loss of habitat, many wild plants are having a difficult time of it. But overharvesting is one of the biggest problems struggling native flora has to deal with. While the encroachment of civilization has been going on for several centuries here in New Hampshire, the issue has been getting worse in recent years. Too many people are pursuing their favorite plants in wild areas that are dwindling in size and diversity.

Whether it’s for food or medicines, many plants once abundant are vanishing from our fields, wetlands and forests. More people want to engage in wild foraging as a way of reconnecting with nature which is understandable. But rather than harvesting these plants, it would be far better not only to leave them alone but help create more habitats for them so they can spread and restore themselves. Good stewardship is one of our responsibilities, especially if we want to leave anything for our descendants.

“If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food either.” – Joseph Wood Krutch

Most of us are familiar with the old weather proverb saying ‘March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb’. It’s one of those adages of uncertain lineage we like to trot out more as a way to comment about the weather rather than from any real belief in its accuracy. Certainly this March has started out living up to the saying. The past few days have yo-yoed from a balmy fifty degrees down into the single digits with a ferocious wind adding to the chill. Since technically it’s still winter, this shouldn’t be all that surprising but after being teased by pseudo-spring like conditions, it does come as a shock.

Still, the days are getting noticeably longer. The snow pack in the back yard which shortly after Valentine’s Day was over two feet deep has now shriveled down to a meager few inches. Bird activity has picked up with crows calling incessantly back and forth and tufted titmice whistling as they begin preparing to establish nesting territories. Chickadees along with nuthatches can be heard twittering as they climb up and down tree branches searching for hibernating insects. There is also that activity most often associated with New England, maple sugaring.

Maple syrup has a long history in New England, with the heaviest production coming from Vermont. Native Americans originally tapped the maple as it provided a source of energy and trace minerals in the late winter when other sources of food were in short supply. The sweet flavor helped add to the appeal of harvesting it. Traditional stories suggest that they were just as vulnerable to the temptation of overdoing it as we are today, as one of the Abenaki legends of Gluskabe relates.

Early European settlers quickly adopted the practice of tapping maple trees, gradually refining the technique of boiling down the tree sap to produce syrup. Cane sugar replaced maple sugar as the main sweetener around the time of the Civil War, but that didn’t stop efforts to boost maple syrup production and improve marketing. The technology has remained basically the same since then with minor tweaks and improvements. A farmer of the late 1800’s would have no difficulty recognizing many of the tapping techniques still in use today.

The production of maple syrup, however, has gotten dicier in recent years due to global warming. Maple trees need a combination of mild days in the upper thirties and low forties followed by cold nights below freezing to promote a good flow of sap for producers to tap. Too warm and the sap shoots to the top of the tree instead of rising slowly and dripping gradually into the sap buckets. This leads to poor quality maple syrup. Producers are struggling to adapt to the new normal, which given the current wild gyrations of the climate, is nearly impossible to determine. Given the recent struggles of maple sugarers, it’s fair to ask if there are other trees that could be tapped in a similar fashion. Well, it turns out there are.

The birch tree is often mentioned as an alternative to sugar maples. The flavor (which I haven’t tried) is different from maple syrup. Birch syrup contains only 1 to 2 percent sugar as compared to 8 percent for maple. It has been described as spicy-sweet by some and other as caramel-like with a fruity undertone. Because of its lower sugar content, it takes more birch sap to boil down to syrup, usually about a hundred gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup as opposed to 40 gallons of maple sap to make a gallon of syrup. So don’t expect to see mass quantities of this on the grocery shelf anytime soon. You can purchase birch syrup online, though it can be a bit pricey.

Another tree to look at is the sycamore. It can be tapped much the same way as the birch and maple. The flavor is described as honey like early in the season and developing a butterscotch flavor later on. I haven’t found any online sources to purchase this product if you are curious about it. Unfortunately New Hampshire (the southern part of it) is just at the edge of the northern range for sycamores, so I don’t anticipate this becoming a replacement for our beloved sugar maples any time soon.

Other trees that have potential for tapping are walnuts, ironwood, box elder (actually a member of the maple family) and hickory. If you have any of these types of trees on your property, feel free to experiment. Just be aware that each will likely have its own unique flavor which may or may not appeal to you. Also, and this is extremely important, be certain you are correctly identifying the tree in question. While I am not aware of any tree sap that is out and out poisonous, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one and it’s best to avoid unwelcome surprises. So educate yourself on what type of trees you have in your area. Once you’ve accomplished that, there are plenty of books and online sources detailing the process of tapping which can be quite laborious but ultimately rewarding.

Happy sugaring!

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A little postscript:
I am pleased to announce that I have sold one of my short stories, A Change In The Wind, to Into The Ruins, a quarterly magazine published by Joel Caris. Thank you, Mr Caris!

Up in the small patch of woods in back of my house is a large granite boulder that has been there for as long as I can recall.

It’s roughly a little under five feet tall by five to seven feet in width depending on where you measure it. As children, my siblings and I dubbed it ‘Big Rock’ and needless to say it was quite the kid magnet. We routinely played around and on top of it without anybody scolding us about how ‘dangerous’ it was. I don’t recall that any of us or the neighborhood kids who joined in, ever suffered any serious injury, unless you count the occasional skinned knee.

Noting other smaller rocks in the vicinity, we proceeded to name them Little Rock, Baby Rock, etc, but none of them had the charisma of Big Rock itself. Unfortunately I never asked my parents who built their house on the property if Big Rock was there to begin with or if it was dug up during construction. Given its size, resembling a beached whale, I suspect it was there all along while the forest grew up around it.

New England is filled with an abundance of rocks, stones and boulders of varying size and heft, causing annoyance to any one attempting to clear the land, creating challenges for hikers and food for thought to geologists. Large boulders like Big Rock are often referred to as glacial erratics , stones moved from their point of origin by glaciers. Depending on how the ice flowed, they may have traveled a great distance or only a short jaunt from the ledge they were torn off. Madison Boulder, one of the largest erratics located here in New Hampshire, is thought to have originated from the Whitten or White ledges located 12 and 4 miles respectively to the northwest. At 83 by 23 feet in size, it is thought to weigh in at 5000 tons so it gives an idea of the power of the ice sheets that came grinding down across our state during the Laurentide.

Countless other erratics can be found throughout the state, some with odd ball histories such as Boise Rock. This large boulder earned its name during the 1800’s after Thomas Boise, a teamster, was trying to make his way through Franconia Notch when he was caught in a fierce blizzard. According to local folklore, in order to avoid freezing to death he unsentimentally killed and skinned the horse he had been riding and used its hide to protect himself while hiding under the rock now bearing his name. His ploy paid off and searchers found him alive when hunting for him the next day.

Glaciers have left their mark everywhere here in New Hampshire. Crawford Notch shows the classic U-shape characteristic of valleys ground down by ice rather than eroded by a river. Glacial striations are visible in many places where ledge was exposed to the relentless scrapping of the Laurentide Ice sheet.

Other features such as moraines, kettles, potholes and cirques can be found scattered throughout the White Mountains. A good example of a natural pothole is the Basin, located in Franconia Notch. Rushing mountains waters that originate from Profile Lake and form the beginnings of the Pemigewasset River, wash out pebbles and sand which over the millennia have scoured an area of the local granite forming a beautiful natural basin 30 feet in diameter and 15 feet deep. Its polished appearance looks like the product of some sculptor but in reality it is Mother Nature’s work. Mount Washington’s Tuckerman Ravine, a popular magnet for adventurous skiers is a classic example of an old glacier cirque. Its classic bowl shape is the result of a local alpine glacier which formed during The Pleistocene age.

But above all else it is the glacial erratics strewn everywhere that are the main characteristic of New Hampshire and other New England states, adding expense to construction projects when they have to be moved, or aggravating farmers trying to plow their fields. But while we may curse their ubiquity, that hasn’t stopped us from making use of them, either as objects of interest for tourists or just as building materials to make a familiar sight in our state.

While weather reports are focused on the latest hurricane churning around off the US coast and where it may be headed next, it’s worth taking a look at an earlier storm that hit New England back in September of 1938. Back in those days, hurricanes were not named but the intensity of the storm and its devastating effect on an area not accustomed to hurricanes earned it such nick-names as The Great New England Hurricane or the Long Island Express.

The storm formed as most hurricanes do off the coast of Africa and made its way across the Atlantic, tracked by ships since at this time there were no weather satellites or radar to monitor it. It strengthened to a category five though by the time it reached the Virginia coast it had weakened to a category 3. Most forecasters predicted it would curve out to sea though a lone researcher forecasted it would stay on a northerly course.

Regrettably he was overruled by more senior meteorologists and as a result no warning went out to the East Coast. Squeezed between two weather systems, the storm shot like a bullet northwards, reaching nearly 70 miles per hour on its forward motion, the highest forward velocity ever recorded in the annals of hurricanes. Since this kept it from losing its strength when it passed over the cooler waters around New England, it hit as a category 3 when it made landfall on Long Island.

With no warning and no time to prepare, locals were caught by surprise and the effects were devastating. Photos can only capture a fraction of the destruction that occurred and left such a long lasting impression on New Englanders.

One of these New Englanders was my mother. She was living in Concord New Hampshire with her family at the time and had just turned eighteen the month before. To her, the high winds were what frightened her the most. Afterwards she described visiting the park and seeing the huge pine trees there with their tops snapped off and scattered on the ground. She told me that she and one of her brothers made their way from one side of the park to the other by walking on top of the fallen trunks, jumping about from one tree to the next, not daring to get down on the ground as the trees had been so big that she didn’t think they would be able to climb back up onto them. Since my mother was about five feet tall, that gives you an idea of how big the trees had been before they were toppled. She found it heartbreaking to see so many beautiful old trees destroyed.

The fear caused by the storm stayed with her for many years afterward. I can recall as a child seeing her anxiety whenever weather reports indicated a hurricane might be coming up the coast. She got a map from the National Hurricane Center which allowed her to closely track the course of any storm that formed in the Atlantic. She bought hurricane lamps and candles as a precaution against long power outages and fretted about the trees growing up around our house.

One of her cousins lived with her retired husband George in Sarasota Florida. George had been a weatherman and whenever a storm drew near to the coast of the eastern US, my mother would call them up wanting to speak with George. Apparently she considered him a far better authority on what to expect than the weatherman on TV. George would reassure her about the storm’s track and occasionally take the opportunity to complain about the new-fangled custom of giving names to tropical storms as well as hurricanes, which he thought was a waste of names.

With the sophisticated weather satellites and Doppler radar to track weather movements, we are far better off than in my mother’s youth in detecting the approach of threatening weather, though when it actually strikes, we are still just as helpless. At least we can flee or take shelter, or stock up on goods in case of shortages, knowing what’s on the way.

What’s more open to question is whether any of this hi-tech can be maintained as resources in the future become more constrained due to economic contraction and equipment harder to replace as a result. A significant Carrington Event would fry satellites and knock out power systems here on earth, leaving us blind to developing weather systems which could threaten us. Replacing all this expensive gear is apt to be difficult. We may have to get used to relying more on the reports from ships for sea storms and ham radio operators for information about approaching storms and their severity than on the high maintenance high tech we have become so accustomed to over the past few decades. This is certainly going to be a tough pill to swallow for many who are enamored of the concept of eternal progress. But it’s just simply doesn’t make sense to pour money into extravagant systems that break down if you look at them cross-eyed, when less complex, more maintainable methods will do.

As the post-oil world bears down on us, it’s worth our time to sit down and decide what’s sustainable and what isn’t. When we finally learn to make do with less, we may be surprised to find that it is not the same as doing without.

Many years ago, I witnessed an unusual incident while in my front yard. It was during the summer and I happened to hear a raven croaking. Looking up, I saw two ravens flying directly to one of the tall white pine trees surrounding the house. They were being pursued by several crows, who were vocalizing anxiously. The ravens flew into the treetop with the crows right behind. The branches hid what was going on but I could hear a terrible struggle break out with the sound of wings flapping, the ravens croaking and the crows beginning to shriek at the top of their voices. I thought possibly a nest was under attack. The screaming of the crows attracted every crow within hearing distance and it wasn’t long before I had fifty or more crows circling around all cawing hysterically. Finally the ravens departed, flying back the way they had come. The crows continued circling and screaming for nearly three quarters of an hour afterwards before they finally began settling down.

I inspected the base of the tree to see if anything had fallen but there was nothing to indicate if nestlings had been killed or even if there was a nest at all. All in all, the incident was quite mystifying. The most likely explanation was that the ravens were destroying a crow’s nest. But the motivation behind it was unknown. It’s not a good idea to attribute human purposes to something that isn’t human as this can cause us to misinterpret what we are seeing. Still, it was hard not suspecting some sort of pay-back was involved.

Crows and ravens are noted for their exceptional intelligence, problem solving abilities, and surprisingly complex social behavior. So the question arises, are they capable of vengeance as we understand it?

Revenge, at least in human terms, is usually defined as a form of primitive justice, an effort to right a perceived wrong by the person taking revenge. This usually occurs when ordinary justice is seen as having failed the injured party and they take it upon themselves to get satisfaction. It requires a sense of self (seeing oneself has having been offended) as well as the ability to plan and carry out the act of revenge (restoring a sense of balance).

Can animals plan ahead? Studies of chimpanzees seem to suggest that the capability to visualize a future event and make plans based on that visualization is shared with our closest relative. But what about birds? Studies of scrub jays as well as other birds seem to indicate that they are capable of planning as well. Tests involved determining the bird’s ability to abstract a general rule when solving a certain task and then transfer that learned rule to new tasks. When faced with a novel situation, the birds could adapt previous experience to apply to the new problem. Corvids seem especially good at this as opposed to such birds as pigeons who tend to be rote learners.

But do crows and ravens have a sense of justice as humans do? To perceive injustice and attempt to right it is something we humans are hardwired for as the desire to take revenge appears universal among humans no matter what culture or time they belong to. Even small children will complain when they experience what they regard as injustice (“It’s not fair!). I can still recall an incident that occurred when I was perhaps four or five years old. I was following my mother through a field and we stepped over a large rock. She crossed over without incident, but when I stepped over the rock, an irate wasp appeared and stung me on the knee. My main reaction was not anguish over the pain of the sting but bewilderment over the perceived injustice of having been stung while my mother had crossed the rock unscathed. Why couldn’t I have crossed the rock without incident? Though it’s been well over half a century since that happened, my outrage over the unfairness of it is still very vivid to me.

We humans are complex creatures with equally complex societies. Our sense of justice is likely an outgrowth of our social structures, a way to ensure that interpersonal conflicts do not escalate out of control and disrupt the group. Without a way to ‘balance the scales’, what often occurs is a chaotic endless cycle of revenge and pay-back (much like we see in the Middle East). Crows and ravens have much simpler social lives, crows living in extended family groups while ravens are less gregarious, living as pairs raising their young. But the need to maintain order between and within groups is still there though likely in a more rudimentary form.

So was what I saw all those years ago an example of corvid revenge? Or something else entirely? Our inability to answer this question reveals how much we still need to overcome our arrogant assumption that only we humans are capable of thinking and planning and all the other wonderful things we blithely believe only we can do. That we are not particularly special in that regard can be humbling but it can also open our eyes to what we have in common with our fellow earthlings.

“People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... It appears to me, besides, that such people can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel.”

Voltaire