What could be better than exploring outdoors with knowledgeable people?
I spent a recent weekend doing that in the Quabbin woods.
We were on the west side, in Pelham and Shutesbury, with Herm Eck, Quabbin's Chief Forester, Herm Eck, and Thom Kyker-Snowman, who does environmental resource planning there. The next day, Randy Stone, another of the Quabbin foresters, showed us the ferns on the eastern side, in Hardwick.
We saw the stone walls from an old mill and a lovely hemlock forest along the brook. We also saw an area where Quabbin has cut many trees as part of an experiment urged by the United States Forest Service to see if the remaining hemlocks, which will then have more resources per tree, can then off the invading hemlock woolly adelgids. I am not optimistic.
Thom said that while a winter with at least 10 consecutive days of temperatures that never rise above 10 degrees Fahrenheit kills huge numbers of the adelgids, because each adelgid can produce up to 300 offspring twice a year, occasional cold winters cannot stop them from rapidly reproducing.
On another subject, Thom asked us if we knew what percentage of the total wood consumption in the world goes to China? The answer: 50 percent. But much of it only initially goes to China; a lot of the wood is made into furniture and other goods that are then sold ... to us!
We also saw many signs of that other, large, plant-eater: the moose. I'm very glad we have moose in our area now. It is exciting to see their hoof prints in the mud, and the large droppings. But it does make me sad to see hemlocks bitten off into little stubs of trunks with clusters of twigs and needles. Knowing how much damage deer did to the Quabbin woods for decades, I'm really worried about what too many moose will do.
The second day was even more fabulous because I learned so much and the forest is so beautiful. Randy is energetic and incredibly enthusiastic; he is also very knowledgeable about almost everything that grows in the woods and wetlands, and his wife, Janice, knew the plants he didn't.
The participants were all willing to go anywhere, came prepared for difficult going and kept asking questions. We waded through tall Cinnamon Ferns and got our boots all muddy on the way to the Crescent Ferns. Randy had not only explored the area to find as many types of ferns as possible, and marked the locations of the ones he was not sure
He could easily find again, he made up booklets for each of us with information about the common ferns of this part of Massachusetts. In all we saw 24 different species. I don't expect to remember all of them, but with the help of the handouts and my photos I should be able to retain some new ones.