I’ve always been amazed at how still and clean the world becomes in a snowfall. At least this is what happens in DC. Here in Burlington it seems that people are so accustomed to snow, very little activities come to a halt. To find the sense of stillness that I associate with snow, I headed out after my chemistry lecture down to Lone Rock Point. The walk down was gorgeous and it took more time than usual as I felt the need to fully appreciate the beauty of the first winter snowfall.

I love perfectly undisturbed snow. It is vastly entertaining to walk on snow with the intention of creating perfectly clean footsteps, leaving a visible track of your journey for future visitors. On the walk back I followed my footsteps down the trial and across North Beach.

For the first time, I also noticed the tracks of nonhuman visitors in the snow. What I assumed to be squirrel tracks (mainly because they all seemed to end at trees) were everywhere. Little paws interlaced with my footsteps left a clear visual of who had explored my site that morning. Myself and the squirrels were the only walking visitors on Lone Rock Point. There is something almost eerie in knowing the exact creatures that have traipsed around a site before your visit.

From a phonological perspective, the site was obviously tremendously different from my last visit in late October. Practically all of the leaves had fallen, with just a few stray stragglers hanging on and the remaining green of the buckthorn leaves.

The leaves that had previously covered the forest floor in bright yellow and orange-brown colors were now covered in a sheet of snow and the visual changes between the colors of my last few visits are very obvious.

October 24th

October 31st

December 5th

I was fascinated on this visit to notice the ways in which snow falls on trees and manages to stick to just one side of a trunk or dangle suspended on a small leaf. In one case, the snow speckled an old snag, reshaping its visible textures. Somewhere else the snow clung to the backside of of cedar leaflets

As I observed this phenomena, I began to notice specific aspects of the place that had previously gone unseen. For instance, the underbrush of the forest was redefined, uncovered from the fall colors that had previously hidden it. For the first time, I noticed a larger oak tree at the entrance to the trailhead, a tree appears much older than anything else in its surroundings. Further in, another beautiful tree was bent in a graceful fashion and the intricacy of tree roots around the rocks was further illuminated.

Overall, the trip was an extraordinary experience and opportunity to see the world of Lone Rock Point in a new light as well as a new season. I hope to be able to visit again this winter and see what else the snow can reveal!

(Original Photographs Copyright Colby Bosley-Smith, 2016)

Annoyed at myself for spending too much time indoors the past week, I grabbed a friend (fellow NR1 student Liz Palmer) and together we went for a hike in Centennial Woods. As the hike began, we lamented not coming more often. We discussed our journey down to these woods in the very beginning of the school year to complete the Centennial Woods Lab and our later trip down to identify trees for the upcoming tree quiz. We remarked on how much each of these trips had opened our eyes to a new understanding of natural environments that revolved around not just hiking in the woods but really examining our surroundings. In just a few short months we had learned to look at the forest in a whole new way, so much had changed.

For much of this hike, we walked in silence, each appreciating the break from the constant city noises and chatter from the swarms of people who live around us. Often we would stop and stand still for a second, each attuned to an unusual bird noise that broke free from the silence. At one point in the hike, we each stoped suddenly at the sound of a small woodpecker picking away at an old pine snag. We slowly creeped forward until we were within range of the little bird, later identified to be a downy woodpecker. I lost track of the time we spent watching the woodpecker in complete silence. The creature moved up and down the snag making small holes in the wood, tapping away at the wood and occasionally slurping down a bug. A little farther away, another woodpecker flew by, a flash of white against the brown forest.

What struck me the most about this experience was how seemingly oblivious the bird was to its surroundings. Planes were flying overhead incessantly and the light drone of a nearby road was exceedingly present. After a while, Liz and I began to talk to each other and the bird kept tapping away. The downy woodpecker appeared almost accustomed to the noises of the human world, unaffected by our presence.

With so much discussion lately on the topic of a human’s place in a natural landscape, my thoughts instantly jumped to reflection on the interactions between the human and natural world that had made this moment special. I was struck by how we had come to Centennial Woods to escape the noise of the human world yet this did not happen. Rather than entering a setting free of human interference, we instead noticed a new aspect of our world. In an odd sort of juxtaposition, the woodpecker fit in perfectly to the human noises in its surroundings, adding a new rhythmic sound of its own.  The little bird was a small piece of the surrounding environment just as the planes, nearby road and Liz and I were. Somehow we were all managing to coexist and add our own sounds to the euphonic vibrations of the forest.

(Original Photographs Copyright Colby Bosley-Smith, 2016)

To supplement my own hypotheses of how Lone Rock Point may have existed prior to my visits, I did some research on the Burlington Geographic Website.

The exposed dusty, yellow bedrock that I noticed lining the lake on my site is calcium and magnesium rich limestone that is called Dunham Dolostone. This rock was formed from the calcium carbonate shells of aquatic animals that lived at the bottom of the Iapetus Ocean 500 million years ago. It makes sense that Dolostone is the bedrock on Lone Rock Point as it is dominated by Northern White Cedars, a tree that does best in mineral rich soils.  

The Champlain Thrust Fault that I visited once on Lone Rock Point, a site fairly close to my spot, evidently attracts visitors from all over the world. It showcases the unusual phenomena of the older Dunham Dolostone rock on top of the younger Iberville Shale rock. This inversion happened during the Taconic Orogeny.  This is not an uncommon occurrence but the Champlain Thrust Fault is one of the only faults of this type in which the fault lies exposed.

In more recent history, the land on Lone Rock Point is suspected to have been commonly visited by the Abenaki people before European settlement of Vermont. In the mid-1880s the south side of Lone Rock Point was cleared by loggers but the north side was still mostly forested, dominated by hemlocks. Episcopal Bishop John Henry Hopkins purchased the land and built a home on its high point in 1841. His family practiced subsistence agriculture and some of the point was cleared for pasture land. This explains why the forests on the land seem to be younger growth, aligning with the trend among other forested land in Vermont. In 1860, the Trustees of the Vermont Episcopal Institute built a seminary for boys on the land. Today, the land is still privately owned by the Episcopal Church of Vermont yet is commonly visited by the broader Burlington community.

(Original Photographs Copyright Colby Bosley-Smith, 2016)