I’ll be doing this part of the assignment in reverse. Since I started my blog at home, I’m going to compare it to the place in Vermont I had originally chosen. Both of my places are centered around running water. It’s soothing to me, plus there’s usually so much life to be found around a stream.
My place in Vermont is part of the LaPlatte River Nature Park, a pocket of forested land bordering the river in Shelburne. I only saw the LaPlatte River once in autumn, and I only visited the Pennsylvania stream in winter, so it will be difficult to compare the phenology of the two places. I’ll do my best.
The LaPlatte is wider than the stream in Nolde, meaning more sunlight reaches the water, so I saw more plants among the rocks and on the riverbed there. Nolde may have had more aquatic plants in the fall, but I didn’t see any dead ones. In Pennsylvania, the stream flows at the bottom of a narrow, steep valley, so there isn’t much floodplain to speak of. The LaPlatte is bordered by a steep slope on one side, but on the other is a wide low-lying forest carpeted with ferns. One short exploration of the LaPlatte turned up plenty of evidence of wildlife use, including a chewed-open acorn and bear scat. Over several visits to Nolde, I’ve only seen a few birds and a small river bug. This might be related to the heavily trafficked trail right next to the creek. The forest around the LaPlatte centers around oaks and black birches, while the forest shading the stream in Nolde is made up of beeches and yellow birches.
While I’m fond of both my places, I’m excited to return to Vermont’s natural landscape at the end of the month. This project will be behind me, but I’m going to revisit the LaPlatte River. I had big plans to make walking there and sitting on the rock a morning ritual, and this semester I just might make that happen.