What up, TREE VISIT #3!!!!!!!!! 🙂
Despite the blatant excitement that my blog title conveys, this site visit was a little bit underwhelming. I was excited to see if my tree had started to bud yet, but much to my dismay, it has yet to show signs of bud break. Today was much warmer than any other day I have visited my tree. The temperatures were around 60 degrees Fahrenheit and the snow cover at my site was diminished essentially to zero. The only signs of winter left around my site were the occasional chunk of ice flowing down the river and the crunchy puddle of frozen mud every now and again. The landscape seems almost indistinguishable from what it looked like back in November. The biggest difference from then till now is the slight tinge of red that the canopy has taken on since the buds have fully formed on most trees. Especially prevalent were the swelling buds of a silver maple that I saw, its buds were so large they looked like little flowers read to burst.
The highlight of my visit was the rushing water. The water levels were especially high today, surpassing that of any other occasion I have visited Salmon Hole. The high temperatures from the last few days have created a rush of water coming down from the mountains. As the snowpack starts to recede up the mountains the cold water flows down the headwaters into rivers like the Winooski or the Lamoille and into Champlain. I liked listening to the water crashing over the lip of the damn. The pounding noise of water echoed off of the steep rock faces and out towards the final stretch of the Winooski that flows down towards the lake. Im not sure what time of year Salmon swim up river but they would have had a hard time getting anywhere today.
