On the Road to Tahawus

Yesterday my conscience got the better of me - I really HAD to finish up my invasive plant routes for APIPP. So, having the day off, I tackled the road up to Tahawus and the Upper Works. You can read more about this Iron/Titanium Mine here.

It was an off and on cloudy day, with the wind blowing rather robustly. I was glad I wore a couple layers, just in case.

It's about a ten-mile drive from the Blue Ridge Road up to the Upper Works, and at about 8 miles an hour, it took a long while to do the route. Two and a half hours, in fact.

The first thing that caught my eye was this dogwood with its lovely pink berries (only one had turned blue - can you find it?).


I was looking for invasives, but the only one I saw (that was on my list) was knapweed. But I'm not 100% sure if it is spotted or brown. Spotted has paler flowers than the brown, but much of the ID has to do with the color of the bracts. Are these brown or black tipped? I'm not sure. I'm hoping Jackie will chime in with her expertise.


I found two stalks of silverrod, too. This is a native flower, in the goldenrod clan. The difference? Well, the obvious difference is that the flowers are white, not yellow. Hence the name.


The extensive erosion along this waterway caught my eye.

What has caused the soil to slump so drastically here? It's sandy soil, which automatically suggests it doesn't have a lot of grip, and there is little vegetation in evidence to provide any sort of structure to hold the soil in place. Is it just gravity, or did that stream (could it be the Hudson?) rise dramatically with some of our heavy rain storms and tear away the soil as it rushed past?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I love wetlands.


I believe this is part of Sanford Lake. What do you see along the shoreline? It's a rather large beaver lodge. Here is a perfect example that not all beavers build dams. Sometimes the water is deep enough for your food and all you have to do is build a home. A good shoreline is a fine place to set up housekeeping.


Looking northward toward the High Peaks.


This is the only building from the small town of Tahawus that is in any kind of condition worth saving. The rest are in various stages of utter decay (see link above to my piece about Tahawus).


These little rock cairns are ALL OVER THE PLACE these days. Someone (or someones) has been busy building them all along the roads, especially between Minerva and North Creek. Our golf course in Newcomb also has quite a few, some of which are over three feet tall!


As you can see, the autumn colors are really getting going now. If things go continue as they are now, the color should be good this year. Here we are once more along the Hudson (I think). I love that old stone ruin off to the right side of the river (click on photo to enlarge). Probably part of a bridge once-upon-a-time.

I'm happy to report that the evidence for invasives was pretty Spartan. With all the traffic Tahawus sees, though, I'm sure that in a few years there will be more than knapweed to worry about along this stretch of road. In the meantime, it is a lovely drive with some great views.

Before and After

Erosion 101

Here we have a nifty rock along the shore of Rich Lake 9 July 2009:


Here is that same rock just over a year later (29 July 2010):

All those lovely protrusions have been worn away! [Or at least they look that way from this angle. Admitedly, I was out in a canoe when I took the first image, and on shore for the second, which could make some of the protusions seem smaller due to angle.] What was a beautiful, fanciful rock appears to be a worn stub. Wind, rain, ice, snow...weather can be a bummer for a soft rock.

We tend to think of erosion (especially on rocks) as something that occurs over geologic time, not within a year. Yet it can be a powerful force that can leave its mark in a short period of time. Some rocks weather a lot more quickly than others.

Around here, we have a lot of limestone and Grenville marble (or perhaps the Grenville marble is limestone based?). These are soft rocks.

Not being great at geology, I've asked my friend Lesley, who runs a rock shop over in Long Lake (Minerals Unlimited) if she could help me out here. Without actually seeing the rock up close and in person, all she could say was it looks like a type of limestone.

Still in need of info, I searched online for some kind of definition of limestone and marble. Here's a great description I found at http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/acidrain/4.html:

The main difference between limestone and marble is that limestone is a sedimentary rock, typically composed of calcium carbonate fossils, and marble is a metamorphic rock. Limestone forms when shells, sand, and mud are deposited at the bottom of oceans and lakes and over time solidify into rock. Marble forms when sedimentary limestone is heated and squeezed by natural rock-forming processes so that the grains recrystallize. If you look closely at a limestone, you can usually see fossil fragments (for example, bits of shell) held together by a calcite matrix. Limestone is more porous than marble, because there are small openings between the fossil fragments. Marble is usually light colored and is composed of crystals of calcite locked together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Marble may contain colored streaks that are inclusions of non-calcite minerals.

If you paddle around Rich Lake, when the water levels are low, you will see lots of rocks that look like creative sculptures. The softest portions have worn away, leaving the harder, more resistent rock behind. Some, like my rock above, can be quite lovely.