As I stopped snowshoeing just long enough to remove my... vest, I couldn’t help but smile, feeling the sweat gather...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD
By Joe Forsyth, AneriCorps 2011
Boundaries at Franklin Bog: Winter 2011
As I stopped snowshoeing just long enough to remove my knit-hat, gloves, and bulky insulated
vest, I couldn’t help but smile, feeling the sweat gather on my back, remembering something that
Bob Klein had mentioned upon my introduction to the Vermont Chapter in September of last
year.
“You’re going to know our preserve system intimately,” the State Director had said, before
adding, “And you’ll learn, too, that stewardship doesn’t stop in the winter.” At the time I wasn’t
sure if he was inviting my enthusiasm or simply doling out a warning. I’ve decided since that he
meant a little of both.
Most of the stewardship work that we’ve done this winter at the Vermont Chapter has been on
the milder days, when the mercury approaches thirty degrees and thick clouds roll over us,
sometimes gathering to become overcast and threatening another snow squall. Or we’ve travelled
to a preserve the day after a storm has passed, when the sky is clear, but the sun is so distant and
accompanying winds so determined that we must don facemasks and cinch our hoods closed to
guard against frostbite. But this past week the stewardship team was granted a unique
opportunity: snowshoeing over a frozen dwarf-shrub bog in the middle of a Vermont winter,
hatless and gloveless, wearing only wool shirts and surveyor’s vests on our backs.
Welcome to Franklin Bog, a National Natural Landmark, and one of Vermont’s largest and
most intact examples of an open peatland natural community. The Conservancy protected over
one hundred and fifty acres, or roughly three quarters of the bog in 1993. The remaining fifty
acres of the bog are in private ownership, but have been left relatively undisturbed. Upland forest
obscures the bog from VT-120 and so stepping out of the dripping woods onto the frozen
sphagnum mat struck me as a surprise and a delight, especially on a day such as this.
The day’s forecast calls for a high of 52 degrees and possible rain in the afternoon, but with three
feet of snow insulating the frozen sphagnum, we have decided to go ahead with our scheduled
boundary marking. As I was to learn, another meaning beneath Bob’s statement pointed to the
fact that with all the invasive plant treatment, biological monitoring, native plant restoration, and
trail maintenance that the stewardship department undertakes in the warmer months, marking the
boundaries of our preserves must usually wait until the winter.
The warmth has brought the birds out from their shelter. As Conservation Assistant Lynn
McNamara and I stand at the tailgate of our car, dividing equipment and checking our maps,
one of our volunteers spots a barred owl in a tree across the road.
“It’s in the yellow birch, there,” she says, pointing. The owl is close enough that I can see its
eyes blinking as it calmly watches us scramble for a camera. But before our volunteer, Nicole,
who is along to shoot some film for the Conservancy, can adjust her stand, the large bird steps
off the branch, opens its wings without a sound, and drops into the woods, out of sight.
“Almost had it,” I say, smiling. We’re lucky to have two volunteers for the day, as well as
Volunteer Coordinator Donia Prince. With five of us we can split-up and cover more ground.
Lynn and I quickly conceive a plan for the day, knowing that it won’t remain intact for long.
With boundary marking, and in fact with most of the field work we do, any task can seem simple
when you’re sitting in a warm office or standing on a cleared road, but as soon as we step into
the woods we relinquish absolute control—if we even had it to begin with. The weather can turn
poor, tools break, snowshoe bindings crack, a beaver has felled a boundary tree, our maps and
GPS don’t match with the evidence we see on the ground: it’s guaranteed that we’ll be shaken
by circumstance throughout the day. What matters is how we react and adjust ourselves
accordingly.
Armed with this foreknowledge, we divide the volunteers, strap snowshoes to our feet, and step
over the snowbank. The boundary follows VT-120 for an eighth of a mile, and the volunteer and
I creep along on top of the berm of ice and snow formed by the plows. The volunteer working
with me today is Polly Perkins, another VHCB AmeriCorps member serving part-time at the
Franklin Watershed Committee in Franklin, a few miles to our southwest. She enjoys her work
and is especially looking forward to getting more kids involved in their streamside restoration
this summer. We chat as we walk about skiing, farmers and conservation, and Franklin Bog.
Polly has to admit that until today she didn’t know the bog existed.
“Didn’t even know it was here,” she says, tacking a small Conservancy preserve sign to a tree
to denote the corner of the Natural Area. We will place large signs displaying our more
important regulations for use of the Natural Area—Hunting Allowed by Permission, No
Unauthorized Collection of Plants or Animals, and No Camping, Fires or Vehicles—at each
corner. We carry smaller signs for the boundary lines. If we find actual blazes or bits of peeling
paint on trees along the line, we’ll re-blaze and re-paint them. Marking boundaries accurately is
in part about acting as a good office and file sleuth, and also about paying attention to what we
can find in the field. At our first corner I point out a triple-blazed tree and the beginning of a
fence line running into the bog. A hay field and a house blowing smoke from its chimney sit on
the opposite side of the fence. We turn to the right, ducking under the branches of a white pine
that grew up in this field too quickly for its neighbors, leaving the road and walking downhill
toward the bog.
The woods transition from yellow birch, sugar and red maple, and white pine into hemlock
and then to white cedar and ash as we walk steadily downhill. The snow has thawed and
compacted this morning, and we travel easily, following the fence as it dips under the surface
and reappears 20 yards further. The woods begin to thin out as the terrain levels, and we start to
pass cattails, collecting seed as we brush by them, doing our part to spread the native plants.
The sun is on us now, and here I stop for water and to remove my extra layers. We are at the
edge of the bog, standing before the moat that surrounds the floating mat of sphagnum. Stunted
balsam fir, bare-branched tamarack, and black spruce dot the open landscape. Black-capped
chickadees flit through the trees. It is still too early in the year for Lincoln’s sparrow, common
yellowthroats, or the northern harriers spotted here two years ago to arrive and begin nesting. But
there’s something different about the chickadees’ calls today. And then I realize—with the sun
warming my face and my feet still encased in snow—that they’re not calling, but instead singing.
A sharp, two-toned song.
Phee-bee! Phee-bee-bee!
I finish stuffing my vest into my pack with an easy smile on my face. I have read that male
chickadees may be the first northern forest birds to begin signing each spring. These birds sing
as if they expect others to be joining them shortly.
But next we must cross the frozen moat and continue on the sphagnum. And I want to be careful
here, for I’ve been warned by Lynn that the last two AmeriCorps Members to visit Franklin Bog
in the winter both fell through the ice on separate days and got soaked up to their hips. I put each
snowshoe forward slowly, compacting the snow before transferring the rest of my weight. I have
no intention of continuing this particular legacy. Polly follows, and the frozen sphagnum holds
firm under us. Weaving through the cedars and cattails, I look back intermittently to make sure
Polly hasn’t disappeared underneath the snow. Once when I do this I tangle my own snowshoes.
I flail for a moment, grasping for something to hold me up, but there are no trees within reach
and I slowly nose-dive into the snow. Polly is kind enough not to laugh as she helps right me
again.
We continue on, but there aren’t many trees to mark, the fence has disappeared, and we can’t
locate any sign of the boundary. Instead we flag what we deem the approximate line according to
our GPS and survey map. We come to another corner, but again there’s nothing on the ground to
indicate an exact location. Without prior evidence we can’t paint or blaze the corner, but
establishing the corner is important, and I’m fairly certain of its location. And so we choose a
dead cedar and wrap three blue ribbons around its trunk. We’ll no doubt be back soon to
complete another adjacent parcel, and I make a note to myself to search our files further and
return with a better idea for a sign location. Without marking the boundaries of the Natural Area,
either with signs, hatchet and paint, fence, or even blue surveyor’s tape, we cannot legally
protect the land from trespass. There’s no immediate threat of that here today, but it’s an
important practice to continue. Aside from this, these trips—in every season and under any
conditions—are essential for us, the stewards, to establish and continue a relationship with the
land. What we see, hear, and remember about the Natural Area is sometimes more valuable than
the task we complete that day.
Polly and I continue on to another parcel of Conservancy land that acts as a buffer to the bog, in
the upland forest to the northwest, but as I anticipated we’re both short on evidence and time.
Polly has to be back to her car soon; she has appointments in Burlington later in the afternoon.
We stop for water once more before turning around and retracing our steps. Standing in
snowshoes on the road again, I imagine how a loon must feel when it leaves the water and tries
its awkward and rubbery legs on the land. Back at the cars I thank Polly for her help. She has
been good company, and we’ll want her back another time.
When she’s gone I drop my pack, surveyor’s vest, and snowshoes into the truck bed and fold
down the tailgate. I eat my lunch in my long underwear top, chewing my sandwich and swinging
my legs as they dangle over the tailgate, feeling like a school kid outside for recess the first day
after winter when they no longer have to wear a coat. The chickadees continue their signing, and
I wave to the occasional car that passes along the road. After a while I get to considering the
other group. The second volunteer, Nicole Marcotte, who was carrying a video camcorder into
the bog, must have already left as well—her car is gone. That leaves Lynn and Donia still in the
woods.
I don my snowshoes once again and follow their tracks away from the road. I’m only a few feet
down the hill when I stop to reconsider my foolishness. I’ll never catch up this way, and they’re
probably walking out to the road a half-mile away. A garbled phone call to Donia confirms this,
and I head back to the car and cruise slowly up VT-120 in their direction. I find them on the
shoulder of the road, brushing snow from their pants and checking to see that they haven’t
abandoned a hammer to sink into the bog come spring. We open our maps and compare notes.
We’ll have to come back here again to finish the boundaries on the northwestern parcel, but for
now we’re satisfied. We’ve done good work for the day.
On the drive back to the highway I open my window, just for the thrill of smelling wet, warmed
earth and manure—that sour tang that stings your nostrils each spring in Vermont. Rain begins
to fall on the interstate heading south, but from the weather reports we know it won’t last. We
have to remind ourselves that it’s still February. We’ll see plenty more snow before spring
begins in earnest, but sitting in the front passenger seat on the drive home to Montpelier and a
hot shower, letting my tired legs slump against the door and remembering the simple song of the
chickadees, I’m confident that I can handle whatever else this winter will bring.