The "Green" Winter Woods

The Cape is fairly famous for it’s “gray” winters. Gray weather-beaten shingles on the houses, gray-looking marshes once all the fall color is drained away, and gray weather often dominates the winter months. People who don’t get out much see it as the Gray days of winter. Ah, but if you actually go out into those “gray” woods, you might be surprised to find out how “green” they really are.

Before I left the Cape, I brought my camera along with me as I walked the woods behind the bog, with the express purpose of capturing the green. And this is what I found, for starters, electric green moss, made even greener by the dull brown of leaves it shines out from. There is a velvety-green kind of moss that looks like felt that I was never able to get the scientific name of, and then the bushier one commonly called “Goldilocks Moss”. I love watching moss through the year, how it slowly develops its spore capsules, how the dying circles on the moss sometimes give you a clue to where certain animals have “left their mark”. Even just noting all the different kinds is entertaining, even if you don’t know what “kind” they are. I will miss moss in Texas.

There are also all manner of plants in the “wintergreen” family, meaning just that, that they stay green in winter. One that smells like teaberry when you crumble it, called “dah” “teaberry” but also “checkerberry” and simply “wintergreen”. It has a bright red berry that is edible and works as a breath freshener, very wintergreen-like in its taste. But before you go gobbling berries be sure you have the right one.

Another related wintergreen, sometimes called Spotted Wintergreen but also the much cooler sounding, Pipsissewa, stays green throughout our winter. When you see it, the fact that it is clearly striped versus spotted makes you wonder about the eyesight of those original botanists. But I found out that the “spotted” part of the name really means, “to break up” and comes from the fact that Indians used this to “break up” kidney stones. Either way, it’s a lovely plant found in the herb layer and as green in February as it is in June.

All along one trail I take is the pale green, always looking like it needs water, Sheep Laurel, or “lambs kill” for this is a plant one shouldn’t nibble on, at least, not if you are a lamb. Its drooping leaves help it to retain water but tends to make me want to drag out the watering can whenever I see it.

On the Cape thanks to our good air quality, the trees are all coated in green lichens. Lichens of every sort, crusty round patches of sage green, lots of “fuzzy ones” called “Old Mans Beard” or “Bushy Beard” that grow on the bark but do the tree no harm.

Like the epiphytes of the rain forest they get their moisture from the air. In a clever blending of two plants into one, algae and fungus, they can both hang on and make food without taping into the host plant itself. The popular pneumonic to remember this, is “ Freddy Fungus and Alice Algae took a Lichen to each other”. Well, on the Cape they took a lichen to each other in a big way and are a large part of why a gray wood, looks more like a sage green wood in winter.

Add to that the wonderful Reindeer Lichen that often covers the ground near the trail and again you have everything but a gray wood. Reindeer lichen is way cool, first because you can imagine you are on the tundra and real reindeer are right over the ridge, plus, they are such barometers of moisture in the air, that on a dry day they will feel all crunchy whereas on a humid day they are soft as can be.

Of course there are pines to add to the green, and holly. Pitch pines, and white pines dominate our woods, and the holly makes it only about 20 miles further north than the Cape and then says “uncle” to the cold. But the Cape is warm enough for it, and the robins and other birds love the berries, which get a good fertilized start on life when they pass through their digestive system, so hollies crop up everywhere. Oh the “Holly and the Ivy”, a great song to hum to yourself while you leave the mad commercial dash of Christmas and revive yourself in the “green” winter woods.

So, if this winter looks to disappoint in the way of “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas” why not take up a new tune, “I’m dreaming of a green forest” just like the one I used to know. Oh, that might be too close to home for me, for I am presently in Baltimore, about to head to TN for Christmas and then on to Texas, where I will dream of the “green forest I used to know”.

A Christmas Gift of Otters

I am aware that I have written about otters before, my overwhelming desire to actually see a live otter on the Cape, not just their scats, their tracks, their den holes etc. I also have shared with all of you that I am a Yea God sort of person, who looks for God’s glory every day and always seem to find it. It’s goes without saying then, that I am also a “Yippee Christmas” sort of person who revels in the whole season, not just the day. The delight of every ritual that goes with it, the baking, the overly long Christmas letter I burden the world with, the mass production of peanut butter balls. I love it all.

But I also love that each year I can point to a pre-Christmas day that I feel I received a very personal, hand-tailored-by-God-for-me, sort of present. Last year it was coming upon a tree just loaded with Cedar Waxwings on a snowy day. Gorgeous, and so abundant I immediately recognized my Christmas gift and thanked God. And this year, it was the amazing gift of otters. I had been thrilled, and a little spooked that in August I had come upon that wonderful noisy otter in the containment pond at the bog. The spooked part was that I had begged to see an otter before I left the Cape, and on that very day we would get the call that would set our exit in motion. So, in my mind, the sighting on that day was a gift, a wonderful gift of answered prayer.

But as you all know, I got to drag my exit out, these three, almost four, months that have seemed like the best gift of all, have just come to an end. But before I left the Cape for the final time, I was given two incredible days of abundant otter sightings right out my window. A pair of otters had taken up residence, at least for the while, just three houses down from where I am on the lake. Remember, this cottage has a wall of windows, so the rising sun, the waking world, the sleeping swans, etc have all been mine to delight in from the moment I get up in the morning, which usually is before dawn.

What a treat, what a thrill, to look out one morning, and catch that distinctive V wake in the water, with a small head and a fast moving tail propelling the animal forward. An OTTER! And then another right behind it! They swam out together to a spot that was a few hundred yards from shore, dove down and then, after I assume, catching a fish, headed back to shore. The trick was they would always be out of sight by the time they made it to land, so I didn’t know if they were taking whatever they had caught to eat it under the dock, or if they had a den or what. But within minutes one or the other would be heading back out to the same place in the water to do that all over again. Swim around under water then beeline it back to shore. They really are such strong and fast swimmers. Amazingly this went on in the morning for over an hour. And as the light increased I could see their heads more clearly, but could never make out whether they had a fish in their mouth or not.

So many questions came out of this, unanswered as always, but fascinating all the same. Were they carrying the food back to shore to eat it there, which makes sense, but I was just amazed I could never see it, even though I had a decent look at their heads. Was it clutched in their front paws? Surely it didn’t seem to slow their progress for they were zipping. And how was it that each time, and I amazingly got to see this happen each morning three days running and once, on a rainy day, also at lunch time, how was it that they always went to approximately the same place to hunt? Surely a school of fish moves about, you would have thought there was an underwater Long John Silver’s under there providing a steady source of food. Oh, to have an underwater camera set up! And to have had the nerve to go trespassing and see where they were heading. But it is private property, so even under the cover of darkness, I didn’t think I should go lurking about in their yards. It shall just have to remain a mystery. But clearly this is my Christmas gift from above, such an abundance of otter sightings on the very last few days I was there. Thank you God!

Again this is one of those more personal essays than one loaded with enriching facts, but I did learn something new about otters as I read up on their feeding habits. Their scats are very loose and runny and full of fish scales or crab shells or whatever they ate, we have shared that before, but what I didn’t know is, that they have such a fast digestive system that the whole meal passes through them in an hour. Like the fast digesting Gink of Shel Silverstein lore…

Quick Trip

“We’ve been caught by the quick-digesting Gink,
And now we are dodgin’ his teeth…
And now we are restin’ in his intestine,
And now we’re back out on the street.”

I also know that otters cover a large home range. To assuage their hearty appetite they must cover a lot of ground going from pond to bog to marsh etc in search of food. Unless it is spring and they are having their pups they don’t remain in one spot for that long. So my being treated to days of sightings was such a stupendous gift, with such perfect timing that it is clear to me who the Sender was. Again thank you God!

Although it is true I have left the Cape, serious boo-hoo here, I still have a few Cape blogs bantering around in my brain which I shall try to find time to write, and then, together, we will learn the delights of completely changing habitats and a chance to discover a whole new set of wonders, at least when Internet access and time allow. Meanwhile, Merry Christmas everyone and may some Glory of God presents come your way too, free for the asking. Even with an economy in the tank, God’s gifting ability is never curtailed!

Eastward Bound

Living on the Cape, it is pretty hard to be Eastward bound, 40 miles tops and you would be in Provincetown and end of journey. Unless, of course, you are an Alewife, a stout member of the Herring family. The annual spring migration of these herring from the cold waters of the Atlantic through small streams that lead to the freshwater pond of its birth is a true rite of spring on the Cape.

It’s an anadromous fish, which means it spends most of its life in salt water, but returns to fresh water to spawn. One of those dazzling tricks of nature where no one knows exactly how they manage to find their way from the wide Atlantic to the one tiny stream that will lead to the pond they were born in. The fact that it takes them 3-4 years to mature to spawning age means this encoded info, this smell that smells like home, has to stay with them all that time. It is thought to be an olfactory trick, for every stream, brook, river has its own chemistry. Clearly they have a better memory for such things than I do. No GPS, no AAA maps, yet year after year they find their way.

But it isn’t the spring migration that I mean to write about in December. Rather it is the rather astonishing fact that while walking along the stream that leads from this bog pond, through a salt marsh and out to sea, I saw schools of small pale fish in the shallows. They were definitely heading downstream and there were so many of them that it seemed to me, they could only be herring, but this late in the year? It just shows how many mysteries remain for me. I had always looked for them in the spring and remember seeing schools of fish in the ponds in early fall that I was sure were the herring, but again, December! Late bloomers? Eggs that for some reason didn’t hatch in the usual one week it takes, or is there some other fish I don’t know about that also spawns in the pond and heads back to sea? Sorry that this is one of those essays where I will just share my questions with you without having the answers.

I do know that the female lays about 100,000 eggs, the majority of which will be a tasty part of someone’s food chain. For that matter, at the end of this herring run, in the phragmites that line the marsh, I found an otter hole. As usual, that premier naturalist, my dog, led me to it. A wonderful multi-hole system and a trail littered with otter scat, the silvery shiny scales of fish. What better place to hang out then the exit ramp for herring. Little bite-size, fish nibblets right out the door.

As far as the human food chain, I believe it is only the Wampanoag that are allowed to catch them now, for like so many other species, their numbers have been declining steadily. I have a faint memory of coming to the Cape as a child and catching the herring with our hands and tossing them in buckets. And the pilgrims claimed you could walk on their backs to cross the streams. Not so now. For that matter, when we first came here and found out there were “Herring Wardens” my kids thought that was a riot. Certainly a profession they hadn’t thought of adopting until they arrived. Wearing a “Herring Warden” badge would be the ultimate in macho authority!

Well, it is December, and clearly there are things I should be doing other than blogging. Nine days to my Westward bound journey and so much to do, so many places to see one more time plus Christmas cards to write, presents to buy. However, should I find an answer to my questions about the identity of these herring look-a-likes, you shall be the first to know.