On Saturday, March 28th my sister, best friend and I decided we needed to all do something after all being quarantined in our houses for nearly two weeks. “I have to go to the rock today” I sent in a group text. I shortly received responses saying, “I haven’t been there in years!” and “Can we all go back?!”. Soon, the three of us found ourselves in the woods behind my house, at a specific place the three of us haven’t all found ourselves at the same time in about eight years.
One summer in the midst of middle school, a short walk in the woods led the three of us to a huge boulder. We couldn’t believe what we had found. It was flat on the top, about 20 long, 10 ft wide, and tall enough that we went back for a wood pallet to climb it, substituting for a ladder. We spent a lot of that summer at “the rock” listening to music and picnicking while surrounded by a wide mix of deciduous and coniferous trees.
A few years later as a sophomore in high school I found myself in a semester program called the Mountain Campus. It was a satellite campus of my high school (Burr and Burton Academy), located in the woods in the middle of Peru, Vermont, about 10 miles from my house. We spent that spring semester learning about the environment, climate change, sense of place, and more while also going on backpacking trips to learn more. I had heard somewhere that the program was, in part, based on UVM’s Rubenstein classes NR001 and NR002. Part of the curriculum included keeping a phenology blog as homework. I decided it was time to re-visit the rock.
I didn’t particularly enjoy having to trudge through the snow once a week to take pictures and record observations after coming home from “school”, but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t interesting. Though I can’t find the blog from my time at the Mountain Campus, I had become familiar with the area and still remembered it well.
When my sister, friend, and I went back to the rock yesterday, my first time in 3 years, theirs in nearly double that, I was surprised to feel like not much had changed. I’m sure if I had been documenting changes over the past few months I would have noticed a lot more, but it was just fun to be back. The small stream down the hill trickled, some trees had grown, and the wood pallet was still leaned against the side of the rock. The rock wall that our rock was built into for a portion was still standing, as it probably has been since the 1800’s when it likely contained sheep. There was enough snow in some areas that we would fall through on our way.
While I was there, I did notice a few things that raised questions. For example, had I found more snow fleas? They weren’t jumping around, potentially because they had eaten their fill as I had learned, but I have difficulties identifying them without their constant jumping (Fig. 3). It had recently been warm out, so it would’ve been possible to see them. Additionally, I wondered how the snow could be so deep in one place, yet gone only a foot away? Was this due to shade? Finally, while standing on the rock, I looked down at the snow on it and noticed that it seemed to be melting in layers (as seen in Fig. 5). I wondered why this was the way it is.
Though quarantine and everything having to do with COVID-19 have been generally terrible, it was nice how it brought the three of us back to a spot we hadn’t all been to together in a long time. I’m not sure when the next time we all went back would’ve been if we didn’t go because I had to write a phenology blog at home. Even though we made sure to usually have some distance between the three of us, it was fun to all be together again after the obstacle of online classes, stress of when a house would be built, and the disappointment of a potentially canceled high school graduation. We all have things going on in our lives as a result of this pandemic, but we are very fortunate to live in Vermont with the ability to go to the woods and forget about all of it for an hour.
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