Colors of Spring - Trail Update
Spring in Maine comes in fits and starts of color. The snow melts, dingy and wet, and bares the brown remains of yesteryear. Then we get another snow flurry, and everything is briefly clean, white, tidy - the tree limbs dripping diamonds back into the earth. And by noon it is brown again. Brown and wet, messy and muddy. Maine’s least flattering look.
After a few warm days in late April the skunk cabbage unfurls its huge leaves, turning the shady swamps into a sea of verdant life. In drier areas, the daphne follows next, tiny purple flowers blooming directly from the skeletal limbs, releasing an intoxicating jasmine scent for a few days of glory before the scraggly shrubs become entirely unremarkable again for the rest of the year. Then the grass begins to flush green and grow quickly, luring still-mottled snowshoe hare and deer out of their winter cover. The fruit trees are now starting to bud, hinting at the clouds of pink and white blossoms to follow. Soon the hardwoods will bud, turning a gold-tinged chartreuse.
The long, sunny days instill a sense of urgency in busy creatures. There is work to be done. I am currently working on this year’s bridges. Starting with the elongation of the boardwalk at the north edge of the Blueberry Hill trail, now almost complete, to be followed by a section on the new west branch of the Broad Point trail. I am excited to open this new spur which passes through a grove of stately hemlock on its way to the shore, where it skirts Broad Cove for hundreds of yards before returning to the main trail. I will also be reinstalling the bridge over the breach at the Hutchins Preserve, and moving another short section of bridge over one of the drainages further into the preserve, made wobbly by erosion. A stack of ten-foot-long rough-cut hemlock planks is depot-ed at the Cregar Center, waiting to be installed over muddy patches at Lily Guest and Blueberry Hill.
In between bridge work, I’ll be planting apple trees at Blueberry Hill. We plan to expand the orchard across the hill side below the lower garden, filling in gaps in the old orchard and connecting the far-flung trees near the south trail head to the larger group to the north. IIT has been selecting a variety of hardy heritage varietals for the past few years, and with any luck there will be a large productive orchard there for many years to come.
Also at Blueberry Hill, I envision a sun scoop area built from a series of hugulkultur terraces just off the south-east edge of the blueberry fields. A sun scoop is a landscape feature consisting of a terraced concave arc open to the south that creates a warmer microclimate. A hugulkultur - “hill culture” in German - is a technique of burying cut logs and brush in a mound to create a fertile bed for planting. As the wood rots it releases nutrients into the soil and retains moisture, providing an ideal planting environment. Wood will be used from trees cleared around the parking area for the nature center. A two-fold benefit of burying the wood is carbon sequestration, instead of the release of carbon from the common practice of burning the material. The goal here is to create a food forest and permaculture garden as an educational site not far from IIT’s planned Miller Center for Environmental Education.
As you may know, I have taken on running the Islesboro Island News from Maggy, which is turning out to be a lot more work than I expected. My goal at IIT is to finish the projects I have planned, along with the usual trail maintenance, and once a replacement is found I expect to bring them up to speed. I am grateful for the experience and proud of the work I have done. Many of my favorite places are in IIT’s preserves, and I’ll continue to see you out there.
Thank you,
Daniel Hatch Tutor