This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
02/09/2022 06:00 AMNew England’s Roadside Ecology: Explore 30 of the Region’s Unique Natural Areas
By Tom Wessels, Timber Press, 2021.
Ten years ago, I joined an unforgettable guided walk with author Thomas Wessels at a black gum swamp in Vernon, Vermont. The swamp’s 1,000 year-old ecosystem had evolved without much human interference, and Wessels opened my eyes to the features of this rare landscape. He also opened my eyes to the topic of forest forensics, the practice of “reading” trees, plants, rocks, moss, lichens, and more to understand the land’s history, both recent and in the distant past.
Wessels is perhaps best known for his books, Reading the Forested Landscape (Countryman Press, 1997) and Forest Forensics (Countryman Press, 2010). He is also known for his many woodland workshops. He is professor emeritus at Antioch University New England, where he founded the master’s degree program in conservation biology.
If anyone can identify and explain obscure or unusual forest elements, it is Wessels. Luckily, his latest book provides interpretive notes for 30 New England locations. He selected these locations, he writes, not only for their unique ecological features but also for their well-developed trails, easy to moderate walking surfaces (mainly), and proximity to parking. In other words, you don’t have to be an Appalachian Trail thru-hiker to explore these wonders.
He describes three sites in Connecticut, two in Rhode Island, and seven in Massachusetts that are easy day trips from the shoreline area.
Tyler Mill Pond Preserve
Equipped with his book, I walked at Tyler Mill Pond Preserve in Wallingford, managed by the Wallingford Conservation Commission. Wessels’s narration begins at the parking lot at Tyler Mill Road and Northford Road (Route 22) in East Wallingford.
A 2018 tornado felled countless trees in this preserve. The damage is still visible, but community volunteers, town crews, and the Department of Energy & Environmental Protection made the trails passable again. As a result of their efforts, a walker has no problem exploring the property.
It would be easy to assume that all the downed trees, split trunks, and stump sprouts resulted from the 2018 event. But here’s where Wessels’s forest forensics put a more robust lens on the land. For instance, he points out old coppiced oaks, a sign of a pasture border. (Coppicing is the practice of harvesting portions of trees for timber or firewood and allowing them to grow back.) Basal scars on tree trunks tell of a long-ago forest fire.
The text narrated our descent along trap rock ridges and alongside talus rock slides until we reached the bottom. There, in a valley, we followed a dry, stony trail around a misty swamp where emerald green moss covers rocks and old roots and water surrounds tree trunks. (I kept an eye open for woodland gnomes.) Tall tamaracks, hemlocks, and birch abounded. The swamp environment was other-worldly.
I thought: I would never have found this place without the book.
Tillinghast Pond Management Area
We can never have too much of a good thing, so the next day I visited another of Wessels’s recommendations, Tillinghast Pond Management Area in western Rhode Island. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) manages this 2,000-acre preserve, the largest protected area in that state and, according to TNC, the largest forest between Washington and Boston. The entrance is only about two miles from the Voluntown and Sterling borders as the crow flies.
Wessels’s narrative begins at 100 Plain Road in West Greenwich at a convenient parking lot where tall evergreens frame the tranquil pond. The pond loop trail proceeds from there; white pines, Christmas ferns, clubmosses, and “wolf trees” from agricultural days gone by dominate the first part of the walk. Soft needles cushion the trails; the scent is subtle and sublime. Stone walls mark old homesites and a cemetery.
We branched onto the extended trail, where an understory of native blueberries, huckleberries, cranberries, and more grow in and around “Glacier Garden.” (Note to visitors: Never take native plants from the woods.)
There is a critical note if you go: Check on hunting season dates. If hunting is in season, Tillinghast requires day-glow orange hats or vests.
New England Roadside Ecology is the kind of book I’ll keep in the car, just in case my travels bring me close to one of the other 28 locations Wessels describes. It’s nice having an expert guide when you walk in the woods.
Kathy Connolly writes and speaks on landscape design, land care, and landscape ecology from Old Saybrook. Reach her through her website: www.SpeakingofLandscapes.com.