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 2

Wild Cherry Nipple Gall caused by eriophyid mites on chokecherry leaves.

In this post, I continue the photographic essay on hiking up the right of way on our land up Barton Mountain. An introduction is here and part one is here.

White Cohosh (Actaea pachypoda)
also called White Baneberry

Blue Cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides)
Also called squaw root or papoose root.

A colony of Artist's Fungi (Ganoderma applanatum)

Under an Artist's Fungus.

A quarry cut block of granite far from any quarry and now buried,
over a century later, by the forest.
See more Barton Mountain granite quarry history here.

Hickory Tussock Moth larva (Lophocampa caryae)

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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