Hiking the ROW Part 3

Buddy and Oscar will follow John to the end of the earth.

An unidentified fungus.

Porcupine quills at the bottom of the cliffs.
John thinks the porkie may have fallen off of the cliff (and survived)
because of the number of quills that were there.

The very bottom of the cliffs.

Oscar poses for the camera.

Scarlet Waxy Cap Mushroom (Hygrophorous coccineus)

Another unidentified fungus.

Up the tree!

Insulators

The transformer is nearly eye level because the slope of the
mountainside is so steep under the cliffs.

Well, that's all there is about this great hike. To view the other photos:
Introduction: Strangers on the mountain
Hiking the ROW: Part 1
Hiking the ROW: Part 2
Hiking the ROW: Part 3

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Hiking the ROW Part 1

Fairpoint Communications telephone pole ID

On our property there is a right of way (ROW) up to the ridegeline of Barton Mountain for electricity and cables to the cell towers up top. This past September, Fairpoint put in fiber optic cables on those poles. I wrote about this invasion in an earlier post. Because of our concern about the Fairpoint activity we saw from the house, we decided to climb up the ROW to see what damage had been done to the land. We saw plenty. Unfortunately, I didn't take photographs of the damage, but it is still visible and will be visible for years. I will return after mud season to document the damage better. The photos here in this multipart photographic essay are of our activity on the hike — of John, me and the cats Buddy and Oscar. Despite our anger at the invasion, we had a wonderful afternoon. I took only my 70-250mm lens, which was inadequate for most of the macro photos here. Next time I'll take the whole kit and caboodle.

Looking down the ROW.
Our home is through the woods to the left.

Looking up the ROW.
All trails end at the bottom of those cliffs, which is where bear and bobcat live.

Buddy wanted to rest here.
He actually wanted to turn back and go home, but continued on with us.

A couple of chickadees kept a close eye on us the entire hike.

We found even more apple trees from the orchard a century ago!

White Worm Coral Fungus (Clavaria fragilis)

Bear scat full of chokecherry pits.

To be continued . . . .

To view the other photos:
Introduction: Strangers on the mountain
Hiking the ROW: Part 1
Hiking the ROW: Part 2
Hiking the ROW: Part 3

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Strangers on the Mountain

Fiber optic installers on Barton Mountain

The back of our house has great views of the ridgeline of Barton Mountain. Nobody is ever there. We have no curtains and we have no modesty. We are always alone, with only thousands of acres of forest behind us, which is just the way we like it. Until last August. Suddenly there were strangers all over the place and we felt invaded.

There is a ROW on our land to the top of the mountain for cable and cell antennas. This summer, Fairpoint Communications, Vermont’s telephone service provider,  thought they needed to install fiber optic cables up the ROW. I chased off the guys who never asked permission to park on our land, and from that point on everybody was very polite and requested permission for parking. I also tried to scare them off by telling them to be careful of the bears and bobcats up on the cliffs (which really exist). But they are Vermonters and such critters don’t scare them. They hiked up unarmed, something we, who frequently hike up there, won’t do.

The installation took several days. There were men on top of the mountain who fed down the cable to the guys down here. But the guys down here also took cable off of a truck up the mountain as far as they could go. They used four-wheelers and wrecked up the land something wicked. They caused run-off, which is illegal (we have never reported them). They took the vehicle up over boulders instead of using an ancient road that paralleled their invasion. They chopped trees down and tossed them off the ROW and onto private property. Those trees will provide habitat for lots of animals, but it looks ugly and doesn't demonstrate any respect for the forest. I will post those photos in the near future.

Towards the end of the cable installation, some new strangers showed up above the house on the ROW and scared the hell out of me. Thanks to my long lens, I got a decent photo of them. But they can't be identified. Shucks. The photo was taken from the back door.

To view the photo essay of our hike to view the damage::
Introduction: Strangers on the mountain
Hiking the ROW: Part 1
Hiking the ROW: Part 2Hiking the ROW: Part 3

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The Ice Tree

January

Out past our house, on Route 16, is this ice tree. The owners of the tree, I heard, wondered what it would look like caked in ice. So they ran a hose from the pond to the tree and this is the beautiful ice formation that developed. This photograph was taken in January. We are all wondering if the tree will survive the weight of the ice. I can't answer that yet, but you can see, below what it looks like now. It seems like they may have reinforced the tree, also.

April

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October’s First Snow

Our white house is tucked under the mountain down the road on the left.

Why in the world, one week after a three foot snowfall, would I post photographs of a dusting of snow in October? Because I love the photos and with all the computer and software problems I have had the past few months, I have been unable to post these until now.

Our first snow this winter was on Halloween. I did a Halloween post because the kids had to bundle up in snowsuits to go trick or treating.

The photo above shows our house underneath Barton Mountain. A cloud is beginning to pass over the mountain. The monochrome colors are broken by the double yellow line down the road. The small barn on the left stabled two horses back then. They have moved to another farm. The flat land on the right is the beaver bog (a small slice of a very large area). We love it here.

Roofs

Old New England farmhouses grew over the decades. They have many roofs at different angles. I am fascinated by the geometry of these roofs. Do you see the two windows on the right of the house on the first floor, underneath the right chimney? Those windows are now invisible — hidden by feet and feet of snow. The backdoor could not be opened because of deep  snow blocking it. These windows and that door are always buried like this every winter. But some melting, some dripping from the eaves, and John's strength finally freed the door yesterday. He cleared a very narrow path from the back door to the left of the house so that I can go out and feed the birds. The spindly looking tree in the foreground is one of our tamarack trees — which I blogged yesterday.

I wandered out to the apple orchard to see the snow on the trees and brush. The first snow is always beautiful.

Tomorrow the weather here should be sunny and nearly 40°F (4.4°C)! I think I'll go outside. If I can find snow shallow enough to walk through.

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A Christmas Eve View

The view of Barton Mountain
from our bedroom window on Christmas Eve morning.

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A Pontiac in Wintergreen

Pontiac hubcap

This Pontiac logo was discontinued in 1956 or 1957. I found this hubcap propped against a tree, amidst the wintergreen, in the woods up the mountain behind my house. I'm wondering who found it and put it there!

The original logo was that of an American Indian headdress, which was used as a logo until 1956. The American headdress is connected to the name of brand "Pontiac" which was the name that was taken from Chief Pontiac, an American Indian chief who led an unsuccessful uprising against the British shortly after the French and Indian War. Source: www.dinesh.com/history_of_logos/car_logos_-_design_and_hi...

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One Single Impression: Ochre

The Doe I follow her trail through a forest of ferns, over blow-downs, through brambles of blackberries. The going is rough on this granite-blanketed mountainside. She moved silently while I burst through — huffing and cursing her nimble feet and my awkward feet. I lose her after the hoof mark in the stream's ochre mud. This forest has cloaked her and rebuked me.

Click to read more beautiful poetry.

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Best Laid Plans: Moose Tracks

Route 16, which goes by the house, has been repaved. It's been a long process. On May 17, the crew finally had laid the new shoulders of blue stone. They had expensive machinery pounding the stone in the shoulder in a solid, hard mass. This isn't the soft, sandy shoulders of the old road. And then overnight . . . a big, old moose came out of the bog, walked down the road on the new shoulder for almost a quarter of a mile before it crossed the road to the mountain. The shoulder there is permanently holey now. So much for the hard work of that crew.

On the same day, Amelia and I took all three dogs for a walk. I have Willow, so you don't see her. Here is Amelia with Scout and Sophie. Our house is way, way back (that white speck), and the mountain is Barton Mountain, the middle hump. Barton Mountain has three humps: big, medium (in the middle) and small. From where we live, the mountain does not look like a mountain. But that is because we are only about 800 feet (244 m) from the summit, which is at 2, 235 feet (681 m).

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The Granite Quarries of Barton Mountain, Part 3: Our Quarry

A year ago in April, John and I found this small quarry on my land way back in the woods. Amy has since told me that she had found it long ago, but she never told me about it. This quarry is not on the maps. John theorized that it was an exploratory quarry and when the seams of quartz were found, it was abandoned. But we have found (as you will see in Part 4 in the future) that this quarry was used to make our house.

Above: cut granite was never taken down the mountain.

Above: Buddy Cat (who always hikes with us at home) hears a mouse.

Above: a closeup of where Buddy heard the mouse.

If you have never seen an old, abandoned quarry, you could walk into it and not recognize it. Below: you can see the marks the drills made in the granite.

The Granite Quarries of Barton Mountain, Part 1

The Granite Quarries of Barton Mountain, Part 2

The Granite Quarries of Barton Mountain Set

A Walk in My Woods Set

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The Granite Quarries of Barton Mountain, Part 2: The Raymond Paquette Sr. Conversations.

The Crystal Lake Falls Historical Association contains the text of a conversation with Raymond L. Paquette, Sr., a resident of Barton, in which he recalls the history of the granite quarries on Barton Mountain. Below you see the area that is spoken about. Below this image is a tighter image that shows my location on Barton Mountain in reference to these sites.

The altitude is in meters. The conversations below refer to the red push pins on the map. #1 is the bottom red pin, 2 is middle red pin and 3 is the upper red pin.

The text of the conversation with Mr. Paquette about the Barton Mountain Granite Cluster:

#1: John Barnard's Quarry "John Barnard's farm had falls on May Pond Brook, a grist mill for power, and four barns. across Route 16 and up Barton Mountain, John Barnard had a granite quarry. Later, Ryle Miller built a house on the grout pile at the Barnard Quarry."

#2: Pete Damon Quarry (on present-day Labrecque farm) "Pete Damon had a granite quarry. 1915 or later. Knew his granite. He built a lot of granite bridge underpasses for the cows to go under the road. The Labrecque farm had one and the Michael farm has one." "When I owned the present-day Michael farm there was a granite water tub in the old milkroom that was built by Pete Damon. The granite in that tub was four inches thick."

#3a: Harry Fisk Quarry (on present-day Michael farm) "The quarry covered four acres. A granite company had a four-year lease. They worked four years and then, gave up. A man named Ferguson worked this quarry after the company left. He worked alone and did hand-work only. They brought the granite to South Barton."

#3b: Harry Fisk Quarry (on Spiller Road, first mobile home on the left) "Very small quarry. His quarry never got electricity."

"In 1920 (plus or minus), electricity was brought to the first three quarries before anyone in Barton got electricity. Barton got this electricity from Charleston.

In the early times, almost all of the granite was cut by hand. Route 16 was dirt back then. When the granite was brought to South Barton, they used what they called 'shoes' to trig the wheels of the wagons that were loaded with the very heavy granite. These 'shoes' were made of cast iron at the Markland Company which was located on Water Street in Barton."

"In the 1920s, Richard Ryan made the gravestone for my little sister who is buried in St. Paul's Cemetery in Barton.

"In 1946, I bought the Fisk farms which consisted of three hundred and sixty acres of land. I used the electricity from the Fisk Quarry."

The Granite Quarries of Barton Mountain, Part 1

The Granite Quarries of Barton Mountain Set

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The Granite Quarries of Barton Mountain Part 1

http://meeyauw.blogspot.com/2010/05/granite-quarries-of-barton-mountain.html

Snow, Oil, Dogs and Cellar Holes

On May 10, Ironman had the camera again and took photos of our oil delivery. We’ve never had to have a delivery in May, but it snowed the first two weeks of the month and we ran out of firewood. We should be set with oil now for a couple of years.

Then the 4 year old took the camera into the room that John is renovating and got this shot of the cellar hole. The boulder is part of the original 1900 stone foundation. It is a granite boulder that was quarried on Barton Mountain in our quarry.

These are some old farm implements that were tossed into the cellar hole. There were treasures and trash under the floor — some of it was over 100 years old.

Ironman’s self-portrait.

Scout (left) and Willow napping on the couch on the sun porch.

To see a naughty photo of Scout that Ironman took, click here. I won’t post the photo on the blog.

Ironman’s 6 year old sister, Catgirl. Ironman is on the right.

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