Time to Take Warming Seriously

To the Editors:

Don’t get me wrong. I love your magazine, watch eagerly for it to arrive. A New Englander by birth and at heart, I love the ecological dialogue between Northeast and Northwest, where I now live.

As I write, we are in the third powerless day following a fierce storm off the rapidly warming Pacific Ocean – this after two earlier days of power loss from an unusual snowstorm. The paper tells us that 1.5 million of us are in the same dark boat. Still, thanks to our Vermont Castings woodstove, we are warm and able to cook quite good meals.

Still, when I put down the article on woodstoves in your recent issue, I was, let’s say, discomfited. Good as it is to laud the development of more efficient, cleaner-burning stoves, it ends with a local expert’s sardonic remark that he still uses his old, less efficient stove, and adding insult, the author confesses to using one, too.

This is no longer amusing. I would like to suggest that you go to see “An Inconvenient Truth” and then think through what kind of message you want to deliver to your readers. Those EPA regulations are not just a manifestation of some Big Brother at whom it is cute to flip the bird. Things are getting serious about climate change, and it is no longer a secret that we human beings have a very significant part to play in both ameliorating and accommodating to an increasingly ugly looking future. Please, think about what role your excellent publication can play to ensure that our grandchildren might still have a recognizable natural world to enjoy.

L. A. Parks Daloz, Clinton, Washington

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Mom’s No Slouch

To the Editors:

Though generally accurate and informative, the article on delayed implantation in the Winter 2006 edition contained one bear-faced error – to wit, that mama bear sleeps through the winter and wakes up in the spring to learn, wonder of wonders, that she has cubs. This serves to perpetuate one of the hoariest myths about bear behavior.

Experts differ on whether or not black bears are true hibernators, although the majority seem to believe that they are. However, unlike a hibernator such as the woodchuck, whose heart rate and body temperature plummet until the creature is essentially comatose, bears have a heart rate that can drop as low as eight beats per minute but maintain a normal body temperature in the winter den.  This normal body temperature enables bears – especially mothers with cubs – to remain alert and even move around in the den.

Far from being sound asleep, a female bear is very much aware of her tiny newborn cubs, which weigh only eight to twelve ounces. She cuts their umbilical cords, makes sure that she is in position to nurse them properly, and is very careful not to roll on them and crush them. Throughout hibernation, she remains attentive to their needs.

Warner Shedd, East Calais, Vermont

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Framing with Butternut

To the Editors:

Charles Fergus’s article on butternuts has inspired me to share my experience. I was in the South Woodstock Church attic with a flashlight, waiting for my eyes to adjust, my heart pounding: it was dark, and I was not sure of my footing. We were climbing up a stairway in a tower, and the stringers were made out of one-inch boards that were made 175 years ago. The tower was in rough shape structurally, and we hoped the stairs would hold. As the dust particles floated by my flashlight, I saw the mighty kingpost. I could see hardwood braces and scribe marks. My mind began to race, trying to spot old layout marks that would help me solve the ancient mystery of the South Woodstock Church tower.

Then I saw something that I’ve never seen before. Where octagon posts should have been, I saw tree trunks. Usually, they are rectangular posts that get hewn down to form an octagonal shape and then pass up thru the tower roof to support the belfry roof. Here instead were tree trunks that eventually passed through the roof, becoming smooth, tapering columns. I know my trees by sight and by their grain patterns, but I was lost on this one. The bark had been peeled off and the column was painted white, hiding the identity of this wood.

So there we have it. Two challenges: removing the tower and identifying the wood of the columns. First, the tower was dismantled and lowered to the ground. The wonderful thing about timber frames is that they can be taken apart and restored. Being a timber framer who specializes in historical restoration means I also have to be a detective. Finding the clues to how this tower was assembled in the early 1800s makes it possible to take it apart, preserve it, and bring it back to its original condition. Chainsaws are not needed to cut off tenons or braces (that’s a criminal offense in my book). Now that these columns were on the ground, we could get a better look at them in the natural light. After planing off some of the paint, the truth was known. They were butternut! These eight columns were now seen as stately trees with beautiful brown, clear wood. We went to great lengths to preserve these butternut posts. We did major repair work on four of them; two were fine, and two had to be replaced. Luckily we were able to replace the two columns with local butternut trees straight from South Woodstock.

In all my years of doing historical restoration on covered bridges, barns, and churches, I have never seen Juglans cinerea used as a framing member. It was truly a pleasure as a craftsman to join old and new butternut together in the restoration of the church. I will never forget the sound of my hand plane gliding over the wood and the sweet smell of fresh butternut.

Seth Kelley, Plainfield, Vermont

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Houses that Last

To the Editors:

In her article about timber framer Dave Bowman in the winter edition, Susan Campbell wrote that while New England has many timber framed buildings 150 to 200 years old, light frame stick-built houses last only 50 to 75 years.

That is not so. My house, with two-by-four framing, is well over 100 years old, and still structurally sound. Many others in town are even older. Timber framing undoubtedly has advantages, but so does stud-and-sheathing construction, or it would never have become the norm. Both rot quickly if penetrated by water, and both will last a very long time if properly built and maintained. Neither has been around long enough in this country to be sure of their comparative longevity.

Richard Andrews, Springfield, Vermont

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A Hunter’s Place in Nature

To the Editors:

Tovar Cerulli hit the nail on the head with his article, “Life and Death,” in the Winter ’06 issue. Whether one chooses to hunt is, as most things, one’s own decision. To categorize all hunters as irresponsible, bloodthirsty killers is, at its best, irresponsible and inaccurate.

It is my experience that hunters, as a rule, love nature and the great outdoors and are often better conservationists and stewards of the land than many environmentalists. They know of nature because they experience nature.

American Indians of the West both appreciated and killed buffalo. That is not inconsistent or hypocritical but is instead in keeping with practicing this delicate balance of life and death, the title of Cerulli’s piece.

We should all try to remember that.

Bruce Squiers, Salem, New York

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Beaver Success Story

To the Editors:

After reading the article “Living with Beavers” (Autumn ‘06 issue of Northern Woodlands), the Lyme, New Hampshire, Conservation Commission engaged Skip Lisle to help us with a long-standing difficult beaver problem with very positive results. After tracking him down, we immediately hired him to assess the situation in a wildlife sanctuary where the beaver dams hold back and raise the water level of a popular pond. 

The result of this assessment was the installation of a water-level control device (a Castor Master) in the large beaver dam in the sanctuary. The idea is to keep the beavers away from the inlet of this culvert with a cage large enough so that at its surface the water flow is slow enough that it will not stimulate damming activity. Assuming the Castor Master operates as designed, it in effect makes a permanent large hole in the dam.

There are lots of wrong ways to do this kind of project: making the device so large that the beavers get discouraged and just build a new dam somewhere else, making it so small that it doesn’t release enough water, not building it strong enough, etc. This first attempt may not solve the problem perfectly, and will be adjusted if necessary. This project is part of the proactive effort of the Conservation Commission to deal with this difficult situation so that the beavers who live in the wildlife sanctuary and the humans who use the pond and surrounding area for recreation can comfortably and safely coexist.

We are happy to share our beaver control experiences with any interested readers. We can be reached at (603) 795-2014. Skip Lisle can be reached at (802) 843-1017.

Lee Larson, Lyme, New Hampshire

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Killing Frosts and Early Snows

To the Editors:

I very much enjoyed the Autumn 2006 article “Timing is Everything,” by Bernd Heinrich, discussing how long a tree should hold onto its leaves in autumn. As he does in much of his writing, Heinrich combines his powers of close observation and his understanding of ecology to point out intriguing reasons behind organisms’ responses to their environment.

At the crux of his article was a heavy, wet snow that fell on October 26, 2005, snapping limbs and trunks of red oak, aspen, apple, black locust, and silver maple near Heinrich’s Hinesburg, Vermont, home. That same storm damaged many trees in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, where I live. We don’t have many red oaks hereabouts, but other trees sustained considerable damage, including tamaracks, aspens, white and gray birches, and apples. (I’m still clearing out birches that were bowed down over the forest roads on our property.)

One odd thing about the autumn of 2005 was that we had not had a killing frost by the time that heavy snow fell. Usually northeastern Vermont gets a hard frost by early or mid-October. Frost causes an abscission layer to form in the stems of leaves, and the leaves then lose their grip on the twigs and naturally fall off when the wind blows or rain or snow falls. It seems to me that lengthening growing seasons are endangering north-adapted trees: yet another disheartening and unwanted consequence of global warming.

Charles Fergus, East Burke, Vermont

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Hooked on Pulp Hooks

To the Editors:

I enjoyed Carl Demrow’s article, “Using a Pulp Hook.” In my opinion, the pulp hook (a.k.a. wood hook), devised many years ago for handling four-foot sticks of pulpwood, is one of the best inventions since the wheel.

My aging back has taught me that sometimes two hooks are better than one. When working up firewood, I block up a tree where I fell it and load the blocks onto my tractor’s carry-all to transport back to my wood yard for splitting. When loading my carry-all, I use a hook in each hand to snag two of the smaller blocks at a time, embedding the hooks in the ends of the blocks. It defies reason how much weight a hook will hold in that position. When I get to the medium-sized blocks, I hold a hook in my right hand (I’m right-handed), cross it front of my body, and flick it into the left end of a block that is at right angles to my feet, lifting the block just enough to get my left hand under it, then remove the hook and flick it into the right end of the block and lift it with my arms and legs, keeping my back straight. When I get to the real heavy ones, I go back to two hooks, placing one in each end of the block, and again, lifting with my arms and legs, keeping by back straight. I also use this method to load heavy blocks onto my hydraulic splitter. Not only do pulp hooks save a lot of wear and tear on the back but also they also save a lot of time.

Carl didn’t mention that there are two types of replaceable tips available, winter and summer, the winter one being designed to hold in frozen wood. If your local chainsaw or hardware dealer has trouble locating replaceable-tip pulp hooks and tips, have them contact the Faulkner Corporation, in Brewer, Maine, a distributor of logging supplies.

Jim Duncan, Mirror Lake, New Hampshire

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