These Trees Tell a Story by Noah Charney;

Author:Noah Charney;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300271294
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2023-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

MAJOR LESSONS FOR INTERPRETING A LANDSCAPE

• Consider the global biogeographic context of the species and rocks at your site.

• Look at the small-scale patterns of the elements of your site. Are they distributed in a random, regular, or clumped fashion? What is driving this patterning?

• Consider nutrient flows and chemical cycles at your site. What limits productivity?

7. Elevation

Figure 7.1. A lookout on patterns.

As I hauled my canoe back up onto the mainland at the mouth of the Connecticut River, I met several locals who were out admiring the view. One older couple sat in a pair of lawn chairs, reading as the sun set over the marsh. A birdwatcher asked me what I was up to, and then he asked if I had read a recent book about canoeing the full length of the river, from the source to the sea. Starting at the mouth, if we were to swim upstream, the river would get narrower and narrower as tributaries branched off. Passing fork after fork of successively smaller rivers and then streams, we would eventually arrive at a tiny beaver pond on the border of Canada.

Floating the full length of the river is definitely on the list of things I want to do, although it always feels a bit arbitrary as to which of the many forks gets the honor of carrying the official name of the river. Is that beaver pond up by Canada so different from the beaver pond where the coyotes barfed-up voles at the head of another tributary of the river? If we really want to experience the full range of the river valley, perhaps we could seek out more ecologically meaningful extremes. Instead of traveling the length of the watershed from one end to the other, what if we were to go from top to bottom? At the lowest elevation we have a coastal salt marsh. And at the top? The alpine summit of Mount Washing-ton in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

I’d love to take the kids up Mount Washington, but a hike with toddlers to the top of the tallest mountain in the Northeast didn’t seem in the cards this year. There is, however, a cog railway to the summit. It was getting late in the season, so we planned a trip for the following summer when the train would be running and the alpine wildflowers would be blooming. In the meantime I took an afternoon trip to a different summit in our watershed, Mount Cardigan.

By the time I reach the trailhead at 3:30 PM, the day feels almost over. Unlike all the other field sites in my book, I’ve never been here before. I arrived late because I was following my car GPS—it kept sending me on dirt roads marked by warning signs, “GPS route not recommended.” Then the GPS batteries died. In the gravel parking lot, one other hiker is waiting to meet a friend so they can race up the mountain to catch sunset at the rocky summit.

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