{"id":56,"date":"2020-03-29T17:15:51","date_gmt":"2020-03-29T21:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/ljsolomo\/?p=56"},"modified":"2020-03-29T17:17:50","modified_gmt":"2020-03-29T21:17:50","slug":"autumn-hill-reserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/ljsolomo\/2020\/03\/29\/autumn-hill-reserve\/","title":{"rendered":"Autumn Hill Reserve (March 21st\/March 29th)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Autumn Hill Reserve is right behind my townhouse community, a quick 90 second walk from my house. This allows me to have easy access to a piece of nature with limited human impact and was the place that really made me fall in love with the natural world, and ultimately was a large contributor in me being a Environmental Studies major. The reserve was once a farm, as there are stone walls and a rusted car further back, eventually it had to be abandoned and tree\u2019s grew. By my estimation, half of these trees still stand today alive, while the other half cover the forest floor, dead and rotted. Many of the biggest trees I\u2019ve ever noticed that have fallen, occurred during Hurricane Sandy which completely changed the look of the reserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Stone Wall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It is interesting as there are some new wide trails, meaning trail creation projects have occured since I left for college. This is interesting, as since I started going to this reserve my Sophomore year of high school, there had been no signs of effort to fix any of the various accessibility issues on the reserve and I had always thought it more as abandoned. These trail creation projects are done because many of the typical paths are pooled with water and muddy, making it difficult to get from place to place without being covered in mud from the knees down. These projects are actually bad as they ignore the real issue being the lack of sufficient soil, as there isn\u2019t adequate ecology to root the soil. <\/p>\n\n\n\n