July 18th, 2006
finding treasure at kejimkujik
We spent Sunday hiking on three trails at Kejimkujik National Park. In this post, I’ll just write a bit about the first trail hiked — the Gold Mines trail. It’s just a short trail that leads through a lowland forest. It’s a self-guided tour with small signboards describing the history of gold mining on the site. From the second we left the parking lot, we were accompanied by mosquitoes — almost the first we’ve seen since arriving in Nova Scotia last week. The history of this site strikes me as an interesting study in obsession. It seems that each of the successive holders of the mining claims worked this site for years hoping that they would eventually find the “big one”. After seeing how damp it is in the forest, and imagining how difficult it would have been to work with the crude tools they used, while (no doubt) being attacked by clouds of mosquitoes, one would have to be obsessed. The amount of gold recovered from the site was minimal, and each miner eventually threw in the towel.
Fortunately, we were much luckier in finding treasure. A short distance from the trailhead, we found a spider on an orb spun between some tree branches (see above - click on image for larger view). When I stopped to examine the spider, it quickly ascended a long tripline before pausing on the tip of a very lichen-covered branch. By the marking on its abdomen, I believe the spider is a Nordman’s Orbweaver (Araneus nordmanni). Also seen along the trail were some interesting moths such as this one which I haven’t ID’d yet. We saw several frogs which I, at first thought might be Pickerel Frogs, but they turned out to be brown Leopard Frogs (Rana pipiens). There was a lot of Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora), and also many different mushrooms. We also found a something weird which we can’t identify (see image below). If anyone reading this has some idea of what they things are, please leave a comment. The objects were about 8 to 10 inches tall, always grew in clusters of several spires covered with spherical nodules. They look kind of familiar to me, but I just can’t seem to place them.
[Edit: Ontario Wanderer came to the rescue with a speedy reply. He identified this plant as Squawroot (Conopholia americana). I found an almost identical image on this page on the Discover Life website — see left column, third photo down, captioned as fruit of this plant.]
Evidence of gold prospecting could be seen in the low areas of the site. The trail meandered between a series of pits and “snake diggings” (zigzagging trenches made in search of gold veins). Chunks of milky quartzite were scattered around the site. A few pieces of old mining equipment remain on site, such as an old boiler (see detail of boiler door above), and some interesting ore buckets.
One odd and amusing thing happened while we were hiking around the site. We were the only “people” present on the trails yesterday, but there were several plywood cut-outs of miners placed around to illustrate various tasks performed by those who worked the site. We found the idea of the cut-outs to be a little out of place in such a natural setting. Obviously, Sabrina felt the same way. Each time we encountered one of the cut-outs, she would bark loudly at it several times (see below — I’ve also posted a photo of another cut-out that freaked Sabrina out — see my comments down below). She’s never done anything quite like that before, so it seems she really didn’t think much of these guys!
Tags: Kejimkujik National Park, gold mines, Indian Pipe, Nordman’s Orbweaver, Araneus nordmanni, Indian Pipe, Leopard frog, Rana pipens
July 18th, 2006 at 9:38 am
Sabrina is a hoot. I wouldn’t like those cutouts either.
Glenn says the congested capsules are of a terrestrial orchid. We’ll have to look at the species Nova Scotia has, and you may well find it with all your resources before we do!
July 18th, 2006 at 10:36 am
Mystery plant looks like the remains of Squawroot Conopholis americana.
July 18th, 2006 at 10:56 am
OW - great!
July 18th, 2006 at 11:01 am
Wayne - Yes, Sabrina *is* a hoot… lots of fun to travel with. I often think she would have made a good seeing eye dog as she’s incredibly observant. When we’re hiking in the back country, she likes to walk ahead and lead the way — seems to be a matter of pride with her — and knows to stop at signs and trail markers, even simple ones like sticks with an small arrow nailed to the top and stuck in a cairn of rocks. I don’t think we’ve ever had a dog that noticed such small markers, etc… And as I’ve mentioned in the past, she finds things like millipedes, snakes and frogs for me when I’m out shooting photos. Don has recently noticed that she’s pointing out butterflies now too, and checks out butterfly-shaped objects when she’s walking ahead of us. Pretty neat! Well, I see, Ontario Wanderer already has an answer for the mystery object so we won’t have to try to find this answer!
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OW - Bingo! Right on! Thanks! I just found a photo that is a dead ringer for the mystery objects that we saw. This page from Discover Life shows a photo of the fruit of what they call Squawweed (Conopholis americana) - third photo down, left column.
http://pick5.pick.uga.edu/mp/20q?search=Conopholis+americana
July 18th, 2006 at 11:15 am
Wayne - Looks like we’ve already learned our “one new thing” for today! (-:
July 18th, 2006 at 11:37 am
I must point out here, as it was a good guess, that once you get into the non-photosynthetic plants, like Indian Pipes and Squawroot, the adaptations do begin to resemble orchids!
From USDA Plants, we should have Conopholis here too.
July 18th, 2006 at 11:45 am
Wayne - Yes, indeed! I was actually thinking some kind of orchid as well, so I must admit that I was a little surprised by the identity of the mystery plant. I also checked the range for this plant and it must actually be widespread, but I’m quite sure I’ve never seen these before, or at least, not at this particular stage of development. These really were quite conspicuous. Another thing that I noticed while photographing them was that they seemed to have an odor similar to a fritillary — I’m fairly sure it must have been coming from them and not something else in the vicinity.
July 20th, 2006 at 3:49 am
Loved hearing about your Sabrina barking at the cut-out people.
It must be nice to have your dog along on these fabulous hikes. I love having my Buddy with me when I walk in the woods; oftentimes his attention draws me to something I would have missed otherwise. Of course, his nose is always to the ground, and my head is in the trees looking for birds; we’re sure to spot different things!
July 20th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
The only thing Jessi is sure to spot is water, mud and dead fish.
Funny that she stopped to bark at it, wonder what dogs are thinking when they see something like that. We often give human explanations for it, but I’m sure dogs are thinking something we never could.
July 21st, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Laura - Yes, it is nice to have Sabrina along for these hikes. In 1999, shortly before we got Sabrina as a puppy, we took Maggie (our previous Collie - now deceased) along on a similar trip to Nova Scotia. We weren’t sure how well things would go, but she was great — learning to walk up and down steep stairways to access places like the fossil beaches at Joggins, etc… In fact, I climbed some big sheets of tilted stone one day and was surprised to turn around and find that she was right behind me — she was about 10 at the time, so she was slowing down a bit that year. Anyhow, that was a great trip with many good memories and proved that it can be fun traveling with our Collies (they’re very well-behaved, so very easy to travel with). The only catch is that we can’t do things where we can’t take our dogs (whale watching, going to museums, etc…), but we’ve done most of those things at least a couple of times, so not a big deal — just means more time for hiking and other outdoor pursuits.
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Peter - In the case of one of the cut-outs — this one (see below) of a man crouched in a pit with a box of dynamite - Sabrina barked furiously as soon as she saw him. I think that something about her vision - perhaps more shape-oriented - made her think these really were people and she didn’t like the way they were lurking about down in the pits. In the photo in my post, she looked at that cut-out from a different angle, really staring at it, and then moved along the railing looking at it from the other side, and then finally started to bark at it. I think she might have barked because the “man” didn’t move and she decided there was something weird about him. She also did the same thing when she saw another miner waving to us in the parking lot at the beginning of the walk. We found it rather interesting and also quite amusing. I really do think the problem was that these cut-outs seemed so out of place in a forest and that didn’t register well with Sabrina.