Every visit into the nearby woods yields more scenes of big trees culled out of the ground by the strongest winds in decades.
maine woods
More beaver work
With ice covering the entire bog, it is difficult to see where the beavers enter or exit the water to do their work, but their work effort is quite obvious.
Checkpoint Beaver
On our first visit down to the far bog in several weeks, we found the beavers have accelerated winter preparations. It looks like a race between the beavers and the snow mobile trail maintenance crew is in process.
Autumn wood by the stone wall
The late day sun reflects on an old tree stump slowly decomposing along a stone wall built over a hundred years ago.
Maine tree fall 10
The trail west of the Smithfield Plantation parking lot now has at least one blockage.
Maine tree fall 9
Maine tree fall 8
On our walk around the Smithfield Plantation, as noted previously, the tree falls from the October storm are numerous. There are three or four spots, such as this one, where the trail is directly impacted.
Getting ready for winter
We found some time in this late fall, daylight challenged time to recon the far bog. We are encouraged by these beaver-customized trees near the beaver den. After a summer of extreme drought, we have been apprehensive about the impact on our beaver neighbors.
Maine tree fall 7
On our walk through the Smithfield Plantation we found numerous large trees blown over and these were only the ones visible from the trail. The conservation land is hundreds of acres and the number of affected trees may reach 100.
Maine tree fall 6
More in our wind storm aftermath series. We surveyed the forest in the Smithfield Plantation conservatory and found numerous oak trees blown over or leaning.
john's f-stop 