Turkeys woke us up Monday morning, woke us up to at least a couple of inches of new snow.
Not this turkey. This is Inigo, one of the domestic bronze turkeys who live here in the residential neighborhood of The Quarry Farm. And not the turkeys pictured first. Well, probably not them, at any rate. It could be, I suppose; they’re representative of the wild turkeys that live here, but probably not, as that photograph’s at least two years old, possibly four. While turkeys in the wild are known to live to the ripe old age of 14 years, the average lifespan is only three. So, possible, but not probable.
More likely, it was this one, though it’s a poor likeness. Him and his friends, no doubt. He made himself known late this evening, pacing back and forth along the fence line that separates the sanctuary from the preserve, the domestic from the wild, chortling to himself or to a hen on the other side of the fence. I crept out with the idea of getting a good photograph. He’d have none of that, though, and took to wing.
But back to yesterday morning.
Outside the house, through the doors and windows, there was a whole lot of white. All that new snow made Lolly twitchy. For her, it was like a clean canvas to a painter, an empty page to a writer; she just had to go out and make her mark.
Monday morning’s walk was very much like Sunday’s, though there weren’t as many tracks readily visible as the day before. The new snow had covered the old and there weren’t nearly enough intrepid explorers out and about before Lolly and I got there. We did see some eastern cottontail rabbit tracks and what we assume are fox tracks; at least, that is how they appear to us. Lolly almost first thing scared up an eastern fox squirrel; scared it right up a series of consecutively larger trees, in fact, until it settled in a big, old sycamore that sits just up and off the path. Lolly must carry herself with a certain amount of menace, because that squirrel left the better part of its hedge-apple breakfast behind. If that squirrel only knew, it would have blown a raspberry and kept right on breaking its fast. Off we went, then, along the path some more and across the bridge and skirting the edge of the quarry, covered in a blanket of white with hardly a mark on it. Just the tracks of that rabbit I mentioned earlier. We could hear the occasional bird, but they were keeping their heads down; down and tucked under a wing, most likely, out of the snow.
The big back field was as quiet as the quarry and we passed through without seeing much of anything. Rounding back, we took to the path that leads down into what some locals refer to as Coburn’s Bottom. We saw a downy woodpecker or two and signs of them in some still-standing dead trees. The thorns on the honey locust trees (Gleditsia triacanthos) were softened with snow, though you’d sooner want to kiss a porcupine than hug a honey locust; the wild ones, anyway.
A little farther on and we came to a magnificent old gentleman of a tree; a huge and stately American sycamore that Anne calls by the name of Old Man Sycamore. There are any number of American sycamores (Platanas occidentalis) growing within the riparian areas of The Quarry, and we’re pleased to have them. The trunk and branches are of a mottled color, with reddish brown, pale gray, light green and olive shades of bark setting side by side in irregular patches. This is because the bark of the sycamore isn’t as rigid as the bark of other trees and sloughs off in patches, leaving a pattern created by different layers of bark. A hardwood, sycamores have been used for furniture, siding and even the creation of musical instruments. Because they’re so hardy, they do well in urban and suburban settings, and they do grow quite large; four foot in diameter is common and 70 to 100 feet tall isn’t unusual. Their canopies are welcome on hot summer days and even their stripped branches in winter offer a good deal of shelter from the elements.
As for Old Man Sycamore, he’s a good four and a half feet in diameter and fifty feet high. That he’s had to work to get to sunlight is apparent. His trunk has a great bit of a bow to it where he worked his way past a rock, another tree that has long since passed or some other unknown obstacle, and his trunk bears a wide rent in the southern side that opens out into a wide cavity. Lolly just couldn’t keep her nose out of it…then her shoulders. Finally, all but her tail was snug inside.
There’s a nice swale near the Old Man that’s formed by the run-off from the vernal pools down into Cranberry Run and we took advantage of it to walk out onto the stream. Lolly and I followed the Little Cranberry for quite a ways, though every time the ice cracked or popped, Lolly hopped and scurried forward and away. Eventually, though, we made it back to the ford without much incident and out and back up to the house.
And so ended a nice morning walk in the woods, with Lolly curled up on our bed, licking the warmth back into her feet and me easing back with a hot cup of Earl Grey.
