New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Near gale force winds are stripping even the oaks today.

Wednesday 11/03/2004

The winds of November will soon turn New Hampshire's landscape into a foggy gray view. Today's high winds are stripping even the oaks of many of their leaves. Maples, bitches and cherry trees have already surrendered their summer coats of lush green to the storms of fall.

The ground everywhere has turned brown with a coating of cast-off white pine needles and the colored leaves which have now all turned brown. The view of fields and meadow out my window this morning has had a complete metamorphous the last few weeks. It now awaits a coating of snow to slip into its cocoon of winter. But like a butterfly in its cocoon a wonderful transformation will take place in spring.

A half dozen mallards have slowly worked their way upriver as I have typed and are now gone from view. Even the drakes looked dull on the dark fall waters this morning. The most colorful spectacle in view is a simple sun dappled white birch trunk at rivers edge casting a lighthouse-like beam of white on to the waters surface right at me. One other white birch, dangling over the river some distance up the river, offers the only other highlight to the drab frost-painted scene.