New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

The summer heat is on

Friday 09/05/2008

Here we are going into the last couple of weeks of summer and the summer heat has finally turned on. This has been a summer bracketed by heat waves. Do you remember how the first week of June the temperatures ran in the 90s for 5 days straight. That was the first real heat wave in several years. The heat was broken by lots of cool temps and rain from mid June right into August. Everything is still pretty green and I have yet to see a lawn look as brown and burned as I did that first week of June.

I did get my hike up to the top of Fort Mountain here in Epsom a couple weeks ago now. It was a perfect day for hiking the hour-long climb to the top with pretty coll and perfectly clear skies. From the very peak by the TV tower I could look east to see the tornado swath just below the mountain then actually trace it probably a good twenty miles north all the way to Alton. I then hiked a little south to another bald paek, this one was covered with blueberries, then I could look right down to where I believe the tornado first touched down. There was a whole line of houses along Griffin Road in Deerfield that somehow survived despite the trees all around them being twisted off like grass. My dog Kokjo had herf irst bout with a porcupine while I was glassing the tornado path. She gave a yelp and I quickly called her to me. Sure enough her nose was sprouting some new whiskers. It looked like a young porcupine as the quills were pretty short. She had a couple dozen in her nose and lips and a couple in her mouth. Luckily I was able to pull them out with my fingers. What a grand view of Bear Brook Sate Park from the top of the mountain. I had a wonderful treat on the way down by spotting a red bellied snake as it was crossing the trail.

I hike into Bear Brook from my house a couple times or so a week for an hour or more. I always am amazed at the amount of trash I find each time, usually on a trail I had hiked a few days before. I always come home with pocket fulls of trash. Some is old and it just seems to pop into view over time. But some of it is new within a couple days. I just find it so hard to believe that anyone would leave their trash in such a beautiful place. I need to get back to the old RR bed near Bear Brook itself where someone has broken numbers of bottles on a small patch of asphalt placed there long ago. It is right next to a small sandy area that some years, like last had 6 or 8 turtle nests dug up by a skunk. No sign of turtles there this summer. They should be hatching any day now around here. Based on past nests I have kept track of it takes about 120 days from egg laying to hatching.

Oh the crickets own the nights now. I was down with Rick out in his back yard with a little camp fire going and listen to the crickets surrounding us last evening. It was such a pleasant summers night.