“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”
― Gary Snyder

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Yesterday I spent three hours with a group of people exploring the Lyme Hill Conservation Area in Lyme, NH, a 237.4- acre property with about 4 miles of trails (and adjacent to 183 acres that are privately held, conserved by the same land trust). In our group were a certified wetlands scientist who has evaluated this property and mapped its wetlands, a botanist who helped us identify many plants along the way, and a stewardship assistant from the Upper Valley Land Trust, which owns this property, who talked about management considerations.

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The area is unusual in New Hampshire for its Ammonoosuc volcanic boulders, which contain mineral-rich amphibolite. (These were under-sea volcanoes during the Ordovician Period, 430-500 million years ago.)

Wetlands are abundant here —

— seeps,

former (and possibly future) beaver ponds,

slow-moving and fast-moving brooks —

and it’s got a rich mesic forest habitat with some unusual plants.

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Among the plants that might grow here  — all of which we saw — are sugar maple (Acer saccharum), basswood (Tilia americana), ironwood (Ostrya virginiana), yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis), bellwort or wild oats (Uvularia sp.), plantain-leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea), dwarf ginseng (Panax trifolius)

northern maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum),

blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides),

rattlesnake-fern (Botrychium virginianum),

wild ginger (Asarum canadense),

downy yellow violet (Viola pubescens) … or some yellow violet, anyway,

mountain sweet-cicely (Osmorhiza chilensis),

sharp-lobed hepatica (Anemone acutiloba),

goldthread (Coptis trifolia) in bloom,

miterwort (Mitella diphylla) in bud,

myriad large-flowered trillium (Trillium grandiflorum),

and the eastern leatherwood shrub (Dirca palustris).

We also saw eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), beaked hazelnut (Corylus cornuta), alder (Alnus incana, speckled alder, I think), silky dogwood (Cornus amomum), a bitternut hickory (Carya cordiformis), American beech (Fagus grandifolia), white pine (Pinus strobes), red oak (Quercus rubra), sarsaparilla (Aralia sp.), and many others.

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“Show me a healthy community with a healthy economy and I will show you a community that has its green infrastructure in order and understands the relationship between the built and the unbuilt environment. ”
― Will Rogers, Trust for Public Land

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It was hard to find a place to plant one’s feet, with so much of interest growing underneath. Ferns are plentiful; not only the maidenhair, as noted above, but Christmas (Polystichum acrostichoides), wood ferns (Dryopteris spp.), ostrich (Matteuccia struthiopteris), sensitive (Onoclea sensibilis), and either a silvery glade fern (Diplazium acrostichoides) or a narrow-leaved glade fern (Diplazium pycnocarpon), both fairly rare in our area, I believe.

We also saw American walking fern (Asplenium rhizophyllum), a first for me.

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To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter… to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring — these are some of the rewards of the simple life.” ― John Burroughs, Leaf and Tendril

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As we were first standing in a wet meadow, a mouse (deer mouse? field mouse?) with a very long tail rushed by me and then stopped, frozen, under grasses, doing its best to hide from us.

Later, by the beaver meadow, I saw this little bird’s nest sitting low in a shrub, exposed.

Having learned about and experimented with swales as part of my permaculture study, it was good to see how water bars, used for erosion control and to keep water off a trail, look and work. They’re different tools: Water bars divert water, while swales — a ditch-mound combo — hold water; but to build either you need to understand contours. I imagine my dad built a lot of water bars in his trail maintaining days.

All in all, an educational, fun time with a great group in a bewitching spot.

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In the name of the bee
And of the butterfly
And of the breeze, amen!
― Emily Dickinson