Site Discussions

As one who has tapped tress for forty years, I have never seen the likes of this year.  Wells around the trees prompted me to tap January 30, 2016 and sap is flowing. Thank you for your information.  I found it very useful.

Doug, I haven’t been sugaring for 30 years, but correct me if I’m wrong…the sap we collect comes from the crown of the tree not the root system. As the sun warms the tree gravity or suction pulls the sap from the crown. I don’t believe frost 9 feet deep will effect yield.

Stone piles, cairns, walls, and mounds occur all over the eastern seaboard states, inland to Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and perhaps others of which I am unaware. These man-made features on the landscape have been shown, through archaeological investigations, to be associated with prehistoric native Americans and historic-period colonist-settlers. Recent investigative methods such as aerial photography, ground penetrating radar, and LiDar have provided means to demonstrate historic-period origins for some of these features. Others remain enigmatic and more difficult to attribute to a specific time period. Early archaeological investigations, circa 1880 to 1930, have shown that, even when excavated, some of these features can not be confidently attributed to a specific time period. Some of these features have been shown to have astronomical alignments and association with prehistoric mortuary practices. In my opinion, it is best to consider stone features as cultural resources that may have played a significant role for prehistoric people while also understanding that stone features on the landscape may be as mundane as historic-period walls associated with property lines, debris from field clearing, or storage of construction material. All of these possible functions should be considered possibilities and perhaps significant in local, state or regional prehistory or history.

Wow! Never see these butterflies! I hope will see these butterflies in my country.

Hello. I stumbled upon this article when conducting some research for general information about Great Horned Owls, because yesterday morning at 6:00, I was on my front porch chatting with one! I was headed out to start my car and in the predawn quiet of my oceanside neighborhood, I caught the distinctive hooting of this beautiful bird. No other houses had lights on, so I was not shy about mimicking her calls.She answered me immediately and we had a brief conversation. I was truly thrilled and enchanted.

We have snowys here in southern Maine now too.

Cindy Nilsen

Large western federal land holdings are always going to be a burr in the saddle of ranchers, timber interests, miners and drillers. No matter how those lands are managed, there will always be those who see untapped natural resources they wish to access for profit.

Those wishes and what is best for the lands involved—and the public interests in those lands—are difficult to combine and accommodate successfully.

The bottom line is there will always be those who resent federal land ownership.

I’ve read your article dated 2005 and wondered if you were still available on that subject.

I believe I’ve identified the critters to be shrews because of the sound they make…echolocation?? We have them in between our roof (metal) and insulation. They run along and then make this short ‘brrrr’ sound. We’ve set traps outside and caught mice, voles and only 3 shrews. We’ve been able to identify through your article…mice with white bellies, voles with golden brown fur and four ‘fingered’ toes and then finally the shrew with the pointed snout and five ‘fingers’. We’ve cut the noise down considerably with the catching of the three shrews but can’t seem to get the last (we hope) one. Now, with the cold of January on us and some snow on the ground, we don’t hear them much at all.

My question was about the noise we hear….about every 2 feet or 10 seconds…is it the echolocation or are we not able to hear that frequency?

Thanks
Jon & Patricia

Thanks so much for this article. I have a group of crows that greet me most mornings as I’m going off to work. I call them my guards. I love their calls.

Dave, once again you masterfully write about a sensitive subject that avoids victimizing your politically diverse audience.  I appreciate the many comparisons to various happenings around the country; VT and the expansion of the National Forest, SD and the legal disputes over land management and compensation, to the events currently happening in OR.  Unfortunately, Bundy and his extremists actions, have stolen the headlines from a legitimate dispute between two parties.  We must not allow extremists to fog the glass of legitimate legal disputes.  What the rancher in OR needs more is an action network of lawyers and activists no different from organizations that stand up for the rights of the less fortunate and minorities.  Then, the arguments presented in the case to the media will have firm ground to stand upon.  Perhaps ranchers and farmers out west should consider starting an organization to help them fight for common ground or perhaps there is one whose voice is unheard.

Nice to see someone thinking their way through a complex problem and putting it into broader perspective.

just read your article about live tree cells adapting to very cold, freezing temps.  More pliable cell membranes, increasing osmolarity with retained sugars, and finally the viscous state of the cytoplasmic proteins when frozen.  Would be nice to know how to convince human cells to adapt similarly.

I plan on cutting logs for a cabin, and thank you for the information you have given. I have a large selection of trees, but most are only around 10” in diameter. The one thing that I have going for me is they are pretty straight. Thanks again for the tips on peeling a tree. I will look into the best time to cut trees in my area.

These animals are so smart, but the hands thing have my attention. Training seems to be done with hands and signals.

Thanks for the correction, Sue. I’ve tweaked the text.

A guy that served as a selectman with me years ago - as old then as I am now - once said: “The older I get, the less sure I am of anything.”

Thank you for a thoughtful and balanced piece, sympathetic to all the interests and emotions in play.

I ask my progressive friends: Take away the guns, which are there just as a symbolic display, how is this any different that Occupy Wall Street?

Hines is outside Burns, OR. Bend is further west on US 20 by a couple hours. Bend has a logging history similar to Hines but has grown away from its conserative roots through bustling tourism,  small business, high tech and craft beer.

I grew up in New England,  spent my childhood hiking the LT and summers on Stratton mtn-Grout Pond and the whites.  The current struggles in OR certainly are similar to the dynamics in New England between ‘the old way’ and the ‘yuppie-environmentalists.’

A thoughtful piece to consider before hurling verbal grenades at the “crazies” ____ fill in the blank on a definition of who that is.

Don’t feel too bad for those guys, they’ve been feeding at the public trough for many, many years. Even though Papa Bundy pays less to lease public land than he would to lease comparable private land, he still owes well over $1 million to the public treasury and shows no sign of ever paying.

All they want is the ability to repeat the abuse the land suffered at the hands of ranchers in the distant past. they forget, or maybe don’t think, they’re part of a larger country and that land belongs to all of us - even people who aren’t like them.

Many years ago I worked for a forest products company in northern New England, a company that was liquidating its timber. Because they cut every acre that was worth cutting, those acres haven’t supported any loggers or mill workers for decades. How much better it would have been if the woodland had been in public ownership and managed responsibly. The acreage may not have supported as many families as it did when logging was in full swing, but it would have supported some for the long-term.

Public ownership of woodland in the east is a direct result of the cut-and-get-out abuse of private owners. A primary reason much of the public domain in the west was retained was that same abuse. And, don’t forget that huge acreages of western land were essentially given away as subsidies to corporation that were building railroads. Those acres are now either ranches or corporate timberlands. Much of that timberland was apparently overcut resulting in the mills becoming dependent on publicly owned timber to keep operating.

While I sympathize with the individual loggers or small ranchers, many of them don’t seem to recognize the real root of their problems.

I sometimes say my “curse” in life is that I can always see both sides of an issue.  It’s not entirely true and I seldom lack for a solid opinion on things, but it’s always nice to see a fellow traveler sorting out issues like this.  Excellent writing/thinking/probing, David.

Every morning my crow(s) call me from a nearby tree.  They are waiting for scraps of bread or other treats. Sometimes I give them pieces of meat trimmings which they choose first.  Once, by mistake, a few pieces of broccoli slipped in.  They are still on the ground.