The most important thing about endings, in my opinion, is that they force us to look back on our journeys. Though it’s nice to have my first year at UVM coming to a close, to know that in just a week I will have the worry of schoolwork off of my shoulder, and will be eating home-cooked meals while my dogs beg me for scraps, I feel a bit sad that this saga of my freshman year is almost over.

My phenology spot, the small section of beach, separated from North Beach by a section of rocks, has been with me this entire year. When I arrived here, I was homesick for the ocean, in which I swim almost every day. I biked down to the water sometime during my first week and found this small beach, and wading out into the lake, found that it wasn’t too different from the great Atlantic, besides the salt. I soon joined the UVM Triathlon Club, and embarked on a journey to teach myself how to properly swim freestyle. I sputtered and coughed up lake water, shivered myself warm, and baked out in the sun here. I remember the last day I swam there – some day in mid-October. I went down intent on doing an epic swim workout, only to find that the water was freezing! I think that the mixing of the thermocline had occurred. Since then I’ve been swimming in the pool.

Still, I’ve been visiting my spot, and I feel very connected to it. Once on a cold night, a group of friends and I had a bonfire down at the beach. I’ve seen ducks, snakes, squirrels, and even what I believed to be rabbit tracks. Nature and culture are closely intertwined at my small beach, and I feel lucky that I was allowed to find it, and make something of a home of it. Before I leave, if there’s a nice day next week, I’ll put on my wetsuit and go for a swim at the beach. After months and months of swimming in the pool, I’m sure it will be much different, and I’m excited to see how profound this change is. Next fall, I will return to this place, and continue to treat it as my home – picking up trash and keeping tabs on phenological changes. But for now, I’ll go back to the ocean.

On a beautiful, sunny Tuesday I cruised my bike down to the waterfront to visit my phenology site. I hadn’t been down to the water in a while, and I couldn’t believe how high the lake was! There was barely any beach left to walk on, as opposed to this fall when there was at least 10 yards between the rock wall and the water. I suppose it makes sense, as all of the snow from the mountains is melting, and being carried through the Winooski River watershed, among many others, into Lake Champlain. Still, I was amazed to see the water that high, and saddened when I saw a lot of trash floating around the shoreline. I picked most of it up, but I know that if there was a lot there, there’s probably a lot everywhere. Cleaning up beaches has to be a community effort – if every person picked up one piece of trash every day, that would be 8 billion pieces of trash per day. I bet our world would get cleaner very quickly.

The Eastern Cottonwoods and the Silver Maple (who was partly underwater) had begun to bud. I saw a few chickadees, heard a goldfinch, saw a cormorant, some gulls (of course), and even had a staring contest with a garter snake for about 10 minutes. This snake was incredibly tame, I sat about a foot away from her, taking pictures, inching my way closer, and she simply didn’t mind my presence. I bet with all of the people who walk by, most of the wildlife are used to human’s presence, and know that people aren’t going to harm them.

I spent half of my March vacation at my family’s ski condo at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine. It’s safe to say that I spent more than an hour immersing myself in the environment. I was out skiing every day (until I got hurt and had to sit in the condo).

I always see animal tracks when I’m riding on the chairlift, and when I’m skiing in the glades. This year, thanks to NR2, I was able to identify multiple sets of deer tracks, and also those from snowshoe hares. The forest structure at Sugarloaf is mostly spruce-fir, though at lower elevations there are some birch, aspen, maple, and other northern hardwoods. I frequently saw black-capped chickadees, though this is certainly not a new bird species for me. I certainly heard a bird calls as I was skiing through the glades, but I was too hyped on adrenaline to stop and figure out what they were.

Sugarloaf’s land-use history is tied up with logging, which I find very interesting. The trails were cut using logging methods, and the trees that were cut down were sold for profit. Now, of course, the only profit at Sugarloaf is made by selling lift tickets, food, and merchandise around the mountain. I find that this history is somewhat similar to the Burlington waterfront, which was used as an industrial port for many years, before it became what it is now; a recreational haven. However, the waterfront is not an enterprise as Sugarloaf is, it doesn’t strive to make money. Ultimately, Sugarloaf and my little beach on lake Champlain are very different places. One is on a lake, the other is on a mountain. However, the two places are somewhat similar in their land-use histories, going from industrial to recreational.

It’s official, I can now walk on the lake at my phenology site. I think it’s been this way for quite a while now, but I haven’t been down to try it out; I’ve been spending so much time up in the mountains, skiing. Since the first time I came to my site, the change has really been massive. The most obvious difference is that the Lake is frozen. The first time I came to this place the water was warm, and I saw fish as I swam. Now, the ice is a thick, impenetrable sheet. There is no more vegetation here, except for the lone cedar which still holds its waxy needles. There is also a bit of snow on the beach, which is a big difference from the soft, warm sands that I laid on in September.

It’s pretty difficult to define my phenology site as a natural community, as it was man-made, through fill, as I discussed in an earlier blog post. However, the beach that is my phenology site could most closely be described as a “lake sand beach”, as it is a sandy beach by the lake. However, I’m not sure where the sand came from, and can’t seem to find anything online that says where. However, I believe that “lake sand beach” is an accurate way to classify the natural community of my phenology site.

I pulled my bike out of the melting snow that had collected around the wheels, it had been over a week since I’d ridden her, and I missed the feeling of flying down the damn streets. Though it certainly made things faster, the bike ride was a bit treacherous, especially when I got down to the waterfront. Most of the bike path was covered in snow and ice, and I had to dismount out of fear of crashing a number of times.

This afternoon was the first time that I’d seen my phenology site properly covered in snow. It looked like a snow plow had pushed up snow at the water’s edge, creating a pretty big bank. Of course, this was just accumulation from the lapping, freezing, lapping, freezing pattern of the water on the beach.

I saw two sets of animal tracks while I was there, one of which seemed to belong to a domestic dog. These tracks were accompanied by a smattering of urine, and sort of just meandered around the beach without any clear purpose, before heading back up towards the bike path. 

I did see what I thought were snowshoe hare tracks, and these were much more interesting than the dog tracks. The hair tracks had a galloper pattern, with much bigger hind feet. I followed the tracks, which abruptly ended when they came to a bank. Upon inspection, I found two holes in that bank, one or both of which I can only imagine were the hare’s burrow. I though about sticking my hand in, but thought better of it.

Finally, I tried to identify some of the trees at my site using the twig identification guide. I felt like I was cheating a bit since I already knew what they were from last semester, but I did my best to identify them using the tree guide, and not from memory. I identified staghorn sumac and willow, and I knew from last semester that there is also silver maple and dogwood.

On Tuesday afternoon I walked down to the waterfront to check out my phenology site. I usually ride my bike down, and I was surprised when the walk took almost an hour. However, it did give me lots of time to reflect on what this place has been for me. It’s hard to believe that my first semester here is almost over, and I’m a bit nostalgic to think about how fast these few months have flown by. One of the hardest things about coming to a new place for me is connecting with people. There were a few times early this fall when I felt pretty lonely, especially early weekend mornings when no one else was awake. On these occasions, I often got on my bike, went down to the water and swam. This beach was my first real friend, the first one to give me a hug, at least. It was an escape and a release from all of the stresses of being alone in a new place.

The waterfront and the small slice of beach that is my phenology site has a rich history of human land use. Prior to 1700, the area that is now “my” beach was underwater, and a large bluff a few hundred feet inland was the shoreline. Abenaki people used the less steep parts of the bluff to fish and access other resources at the water’s edge, and they paddled the water in dug-out canoes. The first settlement arrived in 1772, but the first buildings didn’t pop up until 1792. Goods such as molasses and sugar were shipped in from Whitehall, New York, and the lumber shipping industry was established. By 1800, the village of Burlington bay had innkeepers, retail merchants, a silversmith, blacksmith, and some other workshops. The Vermonters sent cattle, cheese, butter, fish, flax, furs, grain, maple sugar, potash, pearl ash, sheep, and tobacco to Canada in return for gin, rum, salt, and luxury items from Europe like chocolate, coffee, tea, and textiles. In the 1850s, the waterfront became more industrialized, with lumber yards, train companies, power generating plants and water pumping facilities built upon created land – sand that was dumped in, called “fill”. In the 1900s the lumber profits began to wane, so the petroleum industry took over. Oil tanks and bollards became common sights on the waterfront. In 1991, the area was purchased by the city of Burlington, and in 1994 the last oil drum was removed. In 1997 a 12 year plan to revitalize the area was enacted. This plan emphasized open space, conservation, and public access. In 2012 voters passed a bill designating $6 million to waterfront revitalization. Today, it is a beautiful, safe, and accessible place to enjoy the outdoors.

(PBLAwaterfront. (2012, April 25). Retrieved December 05, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=154&v=takWcU_R90M)

(Berrizbeitia, I. (n.d.). Focal Places in Burlington. Retrieved from https://www.uvm.edu/place/burlingtongeographic/focalplaces/wf-ecology.php)

Both of my parents went to UVM, and they always marvel at how nice the waterfront is now when they come to visit. They were graduates in the late 80’s, before the waterfront revitalization and at the end of the petroleum industry’s use of the waterfront. My mom has said that the area that is now the waterfront bike path was pretty sketchy – not the type of place a college-age girl really wanted to be. I can still see remnants of this past “sketchiness” when I go down to my phenology site – the decrepit brick “City of Burlington” building, and the large pieces of scrap metal lying near the path. I wish I could go back and see what the waterfront looked like before it was filled. I imagine that the bluffs were absolutely gorgeous, and teeming with wildlife.

On my way down to the water on Tuesday I passed a tree full of European Starlings, black and round and making an absolute racket. When I got to my beach 16 ducks quickly began to swim away from the piles of leaves at the water’s edge – from which they were eating. There was a light dusting of snow on the beach, and the only green vegitation came at the courtesy of the sole Northern White Cedar. I walked around and took a few photos, then just sat for a while, watching the sunset. A few minutes passed, and I heard the ducks honking. They seemed to have decided that I wasn’t a threat, and had returned to their leaves. It seemed somehow fitting – as the sun set on my first semester at UVM, just the ducks and I were sitting at the beach which soothed my loneliness back in August. It got dark, and therefore cold, so I began my long walk back to campus, and had dinner with friends.

I went to my favorite place in the world a few different times during break. My first visit to Crane Beach was on a short walk with my two dogs. The mere smell of the ocean seemed to lift me out of the rainy Burlington slump that I had fallen into. I may have laughed when I heard and saw waves crashing onto the beach. John Muir wrote and spoke frequently about the restorative power of nature, and I felt it in full force that day. I saw a flock of eiders floating along with the outgoing tide, just further than my dog was willing to swim out to chase them. Every time I go home after a while of being away, more and more sand dunes disappear. Every time there’s a good storm, the dunes take the brunt of the impact, protecting the Basin of salt marshes and islands that lies behind it. They’ve been eroding more in recent years than they ever did before, though. I try not to let it get me down. I noticed one area where dune restoration was taking place; there was an area where what appeared to be rolls of hay had been laid down to keep a dune from crumbling. The marsh grass had all turned orange, and the contrast it made with the blue ocean water was truly beautiful.

The small slice of waterfront realty that I call a beach in Burlington pales in comparison to Crane Beach. The beach in Burlington, though beautiful, is man-made. The sand was put there, and there are large amounts of rocks that were clearly laid down to shape the landscape into the attractive waterfront that it is. Crane Beach is primal; nothing is man-made, other than the boardwalks over the sand dunes and the small paths that cut through the dunes themselves. None of the white pine stands, early successional forests of aspen and birch, cranberry bogs, or vast amounts of marsh heather were planted there. I wonder if any of the trees and shrubs down by the water in Burlington arrived there naturally, other than the invasive honeysuckle and buckthorn. There was much less trash at Crane than there usually is in Burlington, not surprisingly, as the former is in a small town and the latter in a large city. For me, the restorative power at Crane is stronger than in Burlington, and I don’t know if it’s because of the primal, untouched nature of Crane, or because I am so much more familiar with the beach in my hometown than the one where I go to school. Either way, I’m grateful that both places exist as my personal escape from everything that isn’t sand and water.

Crane Beach, Ipswich Massachusetts

Crane Beach at sunset

I woke early this morning, Saturday, November 03, to try to catch the colors of sunrise reflecting on the lake. Unfortunately, the rain and fog thwarted my plan, so I arrived to my favorite patch of beach in a hazy dawn. I heard a songbird as I neared my spot, pedaling along the bike path. I was shocked to see that the trees were almost completely barren. The one Cedar still held his flat, green needles, but the Cottonwood, Dogwood, Silver Maple, Elm, Ash, and Black Willow merely clung to brown, dead leaves, if any at all. I immediately noticed that all of the trash that had once littered the place was gone, and I’m grateful to whichever Good Samaritan picked it all up. As I sat on a log by one of the fire pits, clinging to my mason jar of warm water through gloved hands, a duck settled down into the shallow water. He was a male (had a green head), and was alone. He honked his horn twice, dunked his head in the water once, honked again, and flew off. As he flew away, I noticed the persistent cry of a gull. A few minutes later, a pair of ducks – one male, one female, settled down in the same place the first had been. These two didn’t make a sound, and swam around for a few minutes before doing anything seemingly productive. Then they started what seemed to be breakfast. Not making a sound, they repeatedly dunked their heads in the shallow water, feasting on what I hope was a satisfying morning meal. They were still chowing down when I finished my hot water, and the combination of cold and wet became too much for me, so I climbed back onto my bike and headed to campus, excited to have some breakfast of my own. As I did so, a crow squawked and flew out of the Elm tree above me.

When I could swim

If I let my vision go

The November rain seems to fade.

I can almost feel the sweet embrace

As ripples of energy caress the shore.

Woosh, Shhh, Woosh, Shh,

In, out, in, out.

It is September,

And there is no hood over my head.

Goggles cover my eyes,

And the water that enters my mouth

Tastes like leaves,

As I smile at a fish who swims along by.

Though I saw little wildlife, or evidence of any wildlife on my visit to the lake today, I did notice that many of the leaves have turned from their former green to yellow, red, or brown. Many have fallen off. I was able to identify, with the help of GTA Grace, a few of the species of trees and shrubs living in my spot. The tree that lives on the beach is a Silver Maple, and there is also Staghorn Sumac, Dogwood, and Black Willow all around.

Though I didn’t swim today because the water is cold and I didn’t feel like putting on my wet-suit, this small patch of beach on the south end of North Beach is one of my favorite places to swim in Burlington. It’s really easy to get to. I simply ride my bike down the hill until I get to the waterfront bike path, and then I follow the path north until I reach my beach. It was a bit chilly today at 3:30 pm – around 55 degrees Fahrenheit. It was overcast, and I couldn’t see all the way to the other side of the lake like I can on a clear day. There was a slight breeze, but the water was calm. The leaves are changing colors now, and some are beginning to drop onto the ground, joining the significant amount of garbage and driftwood that litter the beach. I intend to clean this place up over the next few weeks.

The most common woody species there are:

Eastern Cottonwood

Northern White Cedar

Ash

Buckthorn

Honeysuckle

Elm

There were a few species that I didn’t recognize, including one tree that was clearly a maple, but grew sort of like a Boxelder – with many trunks growing from the same area. The leaves resembled those of a sugar maple, and were turning a beautiful shade of red. There were a few shrubs that I didn’t recognize either, and I will work to figure out what these are.