Snowshoes

Yup, I know, it’s already July in northcentral Pennsylvania and there’s no snow to be seen. In fact, it’s now been months since the last snow melted here. But, I remember how it was last winter when the easiest way to get around in the Big Woods was on snowshoes – and how the old neoprene bindings on my snowshoes were almost worn through.

Those bindings were a sandwich of fiberglass cloth between two layers of neoprene rubber and didn’t last as long as the original leather bindings that came with the snowshoes. When I took the bindings off the snowshoes, the wear the bindings had caused to the snowshoe’s rawhide lacing was obvious – some of the lacing at the spots the bindings were attached had worn through.

This pair of snowshoes was of a style often called “Green Mountain Bearpaw”, 10” wide and 36” long with rounded toe and heel. They’re by far my favorite shape of snowshoe, large enough to provide decent floatation and short enough to be easily maneuverable in thick vegetation. Some of the folks I worked with over the years preferred the “Alaska” style, 10” by 58” – to me that was like wearing skis in the brush without the benefit of speed.

The worn-through lacing said it was time to relace the snowshoes. Having laced snowshoes with both neoprene (“sticky” and almost impossible to pull tight) and rawhide (wet, stinky, and hard on the hands), I chose to use the same flat tubular nylon webbing (1/2” wide) that I’ve previously used to lace five pairs of snowshoes. But, first it was time to remove the old lacing, and then scrape and sand the white ash frames to remove most of the old varnish and smooth any rough spots.

After putting a couple of coats of good quality spar varnish on the ash frames, I laced the body of the snowshoes; the pattern is pretty standard and directions are readily available on-line. A tight pattern makes for smaller air spaces and thus better floatation.

When the body lacing was done, it was time to lace the toe and heel with 3/8" wide webbing – on this pair I used the same lacing pattern on both toe and heel.  

Finally the wood frame at toe and heel were wrapped with lacing material to help protect them from abrasion.

Yes, the lacing is white, pretty garish. A few coats (five on this pair) of spar varnish and the ash frame is protected from water and the white lacing amazingly changes to an amber color that closely resembles the color of the original rawhide lacing.

Done now, and all they need is a new pair of bindings to secure the snowshoes to my feet.

The Brush Pile I

Ever since we built our house on this hillside over 40 years ago we’ve had a small brush pile out back where we dispose of branches that fall or are cut from the trees and shrubs around the house – discarded Christmas trees go there too. The pile has never grown much since decay and gravity break the material down at about the same rate it accumulates.

Every winter there are tracks leading to and from the brush pile and bird tracks all about. This spring I finally decided to put out a camera trap to watch the brush pile. The first month’s results, while not spectacular were interesting:

Gray Squirrel

Common Grackle

Cardinal

Eastern Chipmunk

Carolina Wren - immature

House Wren

Gray Catbird

White-footed Mouse

Eastern Chipmunk

I plan to keep the camera in place for a year -- although it may have to be raised above the snow in the winter. Stand by for more:

Mountain Laurel

June is the month when the mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) blooms in northcentral Pennsylvania. And, mountain laurel happens to be the official state flower of Pennsylvania.

Some years there’s such a profusion of flowers on the shrubs that the entire plant appears white – or, in the case of some individual plants, light pink.  

There’s no denying that the flowers are beautiful or that a forest full of blooming mountain laurel is a sight to behold. It’s a sight that draws people from near and far to drive the mountain roads. There are lots of “oohs” and “aahs” as cars full of folks who would otherwise never venture off a paved road traverse the dirt and gravel roads to see the flowers.

Mountain laurel occupies hundreds of thousands of acres in Pennsylvania, typically growing as an understory shrub in forests dominated by a mixture of oak species. Here it does best on fairly dry, acidic, infertile soils and is often accompanied by black huckleberry.

Call me an old grump, but having spent much of my working life walking through forests with a dense understory of mountain laurel I’m not a fan of the plant. In many places mountain laurel grows from four to ten feet tall with an interlocking maze of twisted stems –  

The heavy shade cast by the plants and their dense root mats, which quickly absorb available water, can dramatically reduce the ability of tree seedlings to survive and grow.

In addition to the pretty flowers there are two redeeming qualities to mountain laurel, or at least to the places it grows in profusion: it’s a good place to find pink lady’s-slipper in bloom –

and it’s a good place to find timber rattlesnakes –