OUR
COMMENTS - October, 2001
Fall Returns - A Different World
This is our first "Our Comments" page since the tragic events of September 11. Our world has changed a lot since that day when a morning TV news show was briefly interrupted to show a fire at the World Trade Center. We sat there stunned in the little TV room at our First Mountain House as a second airliner crashed into the remaining tower while we watched the first one burn. First Mountain and the tiny village of Shelburne are far removed from most of the troubles of the world, but that day we felt closer to New York City than to our quiet mountain retreat.
We were further shocked the following day when we learned that the ring leader of that day's attack had spent his last night only miles from our Maine home and flew out of our own Portland airport the morning of the attacks. We felt as if a beautiful and peaceful place had been defiled by the presence of evil. Now we face anthrax attacks and possibly more isolated evil acts of terrorists in the coming days. Still, life goes on and I have faith that our nation shall persevere and life will be good again, yet probably changed forever.
Life
does go on and I can report that the First Mountain House is nearly complete.
Some interior trim and carpentry work remain to be completed this fall
and winter season, but for all practical purposes it is ready to call home.
The fall colors were brilliant again this fall, as can be seen in the photo
at left, which shows the finished cottage. The summer was very dry and our
stream quit flowing for nearly the whole summer, which is extremely unusual.
We were able to walk through the three acres of wetlands without getting
our boots wet. I hope that we receive normal rainfall this fall so
that the wetland can recharge and continue to provide its services to wildlife
on the mountain.
We enjoyed a number of wildlife sightings and a flock of turkeys joined the ruffed grouse in the use of our woods this summer. I believe that I have found a bear den high up on the face of First Mountain and will examine it in late fall to see if it will be occupied this winter. I had previously searched the jumbled rock slabs at the base of the mountain's cliffs, looking into the small caves there for signs of a bear making its den. The potential den I found is located much higher on the mountain, under a mass of roots below a clump of three red oak trees. That is actually a drier and more preferred site for a bear's winter retreat. At a smaller scale, we have seen flying squirrels and a snowshoe hare in his late summer gray-brown coat. A number of visitors joined us for hikes in our forest and made the climb to Joe's Ledges.
We have been hearing coyotes howling from late summer into the current fall. A large pack has been moving up and down our valley and we have heard them at dinner time down below at the river's edge, and more often on our mountain behind us and up in the wetlands perched above the cottage. A freight train often passes through Shelburne around 6:00 PM each evening, and when the engineer sounds his whistle to alert traffic at an unguarded crossing, the coyotes begin to bay in response. Their calls last only a minute and always fade as I try to climb up the mountain to find their location. We also quite often hear them around 2:00 AM in the morning, a time when another train usually passes through town, but I don't know whether it is the train's whistle or the coyote's usual night time activities which bring on the longer lasting serenade of long howling cries.
As I write these notes, the forest has begun to lose all of its brilliant reds from both the branches in the canopy and the carpet of leaves upon the forest floor. We will have a few more days of the subdued golden yellows that infuse the entire forest as light filters through the more opened canopy. Eventually the forest will be dominated by the gray branches of the bare trees, contrasted against the continued green of the softwood forest. We had our first snowfall more than two weeks ago, but won't begin to see a world of white upon the mountain until December. Every year I enjoy this same progression. If you live in the North Country you experience this constancy of life moving along its annual track.
Larry
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