Rain, Rain: We're Camping Anyway

Ripe bunchberries growing in the middle of our trail up Blueberry Mountain.

I'm sorry for inundating you with so many posts all in one week. I'm making up for having written only one post in all of July (warning: I'm not done yet). It wasn't that I wasn't spending time outside. It was that I was spending so much time outside that I didn't have time to write anything. Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, we had a visitor from Missouri for two weeks. A friend's 13-year-old son wanted to ride an airplane (the only other time he has been on a plane was when he and his mom visited us when he was 7), so we arranged for him to come and help out with the kids this summer in exchange for some Boston sightseeing and a backpacking trip.

A view of the upper slide on Bickford Brook.
Sunlight is reflecting off the stream pouring
into a deep mountain pool.

Unwisely, we planned the backpacking trip for his last weekend with us. Mother Nature cooperated in her usual way and planned to thunderstorm both days. We searched for an alternative camping spot, but it seemed that the entire east coast within reasonable driving distance of our home would be hit with the storm. Having promised our young friend a camping trip, we had little choice but to pack up the rain flies and emergency rain ponchos, cross our fingers, and head for the trail.

The skies were alternately cloudy and sunny on our  4 hr drive to Maine (we hit some traffic). "I won't mind if it stays like this," one of us said as we looked up at a gray but not forbidding sky. It was overcast as we drove through the White Mountains along New Hampshire's scenic Kancamagus Highway, and our visitor got only a limited view of the magnificent, rolling peaks. Still, given the flatness of his native Missouri, the limited view must have still been impressive. When we finally arrived at the Bickford Brook trail head near Fryeburg, Maine, we were optimistic that the weather report had been in error.

My 2-year-old on the trail. As you can see,
it wasn't raining here. This was on our hike out.
I didn't stop to take pictures during the rain.

I'm sure you can predict what happened next: As soon as we got our packs on and started down the trail, it started to rain. Then it started to pour. Fortunately, the tree canopy shielded us somewhat, but we all got out our rain gear. When we found a camping spot about half a mile in (the shortest hike-in we've ever had, I think, but it was a good time for it), the first thing we set up was our newly purchased rain tarp (we'd realized we owned three hammocks but only two rain flies for said hammocks). Then we hastily set up the remaining rain covers and got to work collecting firewood before it got completely soaked.

It rained all that night, but night is the best time for rain. I love the sound of rain pitter pattering on my rain fly while I'm snug, warm, and dry underneath and have nowhere to go. In the morning, the rain had stopped, although the day was still gray. We'd made camp by a trail junction, and one trail led to a brook. A sign indicated we were at the lower slides and pointed down a side trail to the upper slides. My kids were disappointed to find out that the water slides were not nature's version of a water park and that the slides were not for human use. Still, the brook provided ample entertainment, and they got right to work building stone dams and houses.

My eldest son picking blueberries. This was
actually not on our camping trip but under some
local powerlines. I neglected to take pictures
atop the mountain.

 After a breakfast of sourdough pancakes and maple syrup, the older boys, dog, and I hiked up Blueberry Mountain in search of -- you guessed it -- blueberries. As I had feared, the berries had ripened early this year (everything is early this year), so the berries were scarce. We got a few, nonetheless, and our visitor got to taste his first wild blueberry (in case you haven't had wild blueberries, either, you should be forewarned that they are small, but they pack significantly more flavor than the cultivated variety. At least around here, you can buy wild Maine blueberries in the frozen-fruit section of the grocery store; this is much more labor effective but not nearly as much fun. Plus, you can't get fresh berries that way).

Blueberries growing under the power
lines. Many were not ripe.

Although we had brought our lunch and our camping stove with us to the top of the mountain, and although the light rain that had started during our ascent had stopped, and even although we had a hammock with us, we had to head back down the mountain not long after reaching the summit. The original plan had been for my husband and 2-year-old to come up with us and for the 2-year-old to nap in the hammock at the top.The little guy had elected to stay behind at camp instead, but unfortunately I realized that a certain special blanket and binkie were still in my day pack. I knew he wouldn't nap without them, so back down the mountain we went.

My 2-year-old on our hike out.

Despite the steep, rocky climb, the rain, the scarcity of blueberries, and the short summit stop, I was glad we'd made the hike because I got to taste bunchberries. I recognized them immediately from my garden, but the plants in my garden haven't made berries. These mountain plants had bright red berries in the center of six-petaled whorls of leaves.

Bunchberries in the trail.

You might recall that I found and dug up some bunchberry plants on a spring camping trip in northern NH. The plants were in flower at the time. The transplants to my garden have mostly fared well, but not well enough to fruit, so I have never tried a bunchberry. I wasn't hoping to be wowed: I'd read that the flavor is bland and uninteresting but would at least sustain a starving person in the woods. The best quality of the bunchberry seemed to be its beauty and the fact that it wouldn't give you a tummy ache if you ate significant amounts of it, as would a more flavorful berry such as blackberry or blueberry. With all this in mind, I maintained low expectations as I prepared for my first taste test.

Perhaps it's all about lowering expectations, but I enjoyed it. The berries have a single stone, which I'd read was inseparable from the fruit and thus needed to be eaten as well. I spit my seeds out -- I suppose I wasted some of the fruit this way. My middle son enjoyed his berry, too (my elder son wouldn't try one). It wasn't exciting, perhaps, but it was pleasant. My son and I both took another.

My middle son sitting by the upper slide.

I cooked dinner -- beef-jerky stew -- in the rain that night. We again slept under the sound of water falling on our rain flies. But in the morning, I opened my eyes to shafts of sunlight breaking through the trees. The day could not have been more perfect. My eldest son and I awoke before everyone else, and we headed down to the brook to retrieve our food bag, hung high in a tree away from bears. First, we decided to explore the path that led to the upper slides. After a good 15 minutes of hiking, we came upon a secluded pool, accessible only by a climb down a steep slope. Water streamed down a smooth rock face and slipped into pool almost without a splash. The pool was deep enough for swimming, and because the falling water barely disturbed the surface, we could see clearly to the rocky bottom. It was serene, magical, beautiful. Later, while I broke down camp, my husband and the four boys hiked back to the pool, with my eldest son as the guide, and I joined them with our picnic lunch once I had everything nearly packed up. Two of us (me and our 13-year-old visitor) went for a dip in the pool. Our piercing screams could be heard throughout the mountain as we discovered the water was even colder than we'd imagined, but it felt good, too.

Soon afterward we were hiking back to our car. The sun was still shining brightly, but off in the distance I thought I heard booming thunder. Then I was sure I heard booming thunder. But the sunshine persisted, and we had stunning views along the Kancamagus Highway. Later, we drove through brief but torrential downpours -- but by that time we were warm and dry and halfway home.

Picture Gallery

Here are some additional pictures from the two weeks we had our visitor with us. We went to a local farm and wildlife sanctuary, hiked a new trail near our town's water tower, and took a boat to the Boston Harbor Islands (no pictures of that appear here), among other things.

My youngest (left) and middle sons climb a petrified tree at a local wildlife sanctuary.

This goat obligingly conversed with us for as long as we stayed to talk to her. My eldest son is laughing at the latest "Maa-aaa -aaa!"

My youngest son rides a pretend horse with a real saddle in the farm's barn (where there was a real horse, too).

My boys and our borrowed 13-year-old climb a boulder on a trail near our local water tower.

Three Hops for Hopniss!

Hopniss (ground nut) vine in flower.

It looked just like the pictures. And supposedly, it grows all over the place. And yet I had been unable to find it until I'd gone on this guided foraging walk. Our guide, Russ Cohen, dug a small, roundish tuber out of the ground at the base of the ground-nut vine. The tuber, too, looked just like the pictures.

Hopniss leaves from the vines we found in the parking lot.

Also known as hopniss, ground nuts were a staple food for Native Americans, who shared knowledge of the plant with the Pilgrims and helped them to survive their first winter on this continent. Ground nuts have been compared to potatoes, only they are sweeter, nuttier, and much higher in protein. (To learn more about hopniss, including attempts to commercialize the plant, check out this interesting article by Tamara Dean in Orion Magazine.) Once I'd seen the vines in their natural habitat, it wasn't long before I'd recognized a mass of them at the edge of a parking lot at a large warehouse-type complex where my eldest son and I had gone to collect blackberries. It seemed like hopniss habitat, and I soon spotted the leaves. Then I noticed the attractive pinkish-purple flowers trailing along the ground and hanging among the bushes. This was the first time I'd seen hopniss flowers outside of a book, but they were unmistakable. I poked around in the dirt a little but couldn't easily unearth a tuber with the small spade I had, and anyway, I didn't have permission to dig there (yet).

Hopniss vines are thin, like a delicate yarn.

The next morning on the way to our local produce store, my eldest son and I stopped by the parking lot again, this time with a larger shovel. It was Saturday, and the lot was deserted except for one truck and a car down by the loading dock, where two men were eating at a picnic table. I parked and walked over to them. "I have an odd question for you guys," I began. "Who would I talk to if I wanted to dig up some hopniss vines from the edge of the parking lot?"

Predictably, the first response was, "Some what?" I explained briefly about the hopniss vines -- that they were native plants, that I'd heard you could eat the tubers, that we would only take a few. "Just dig 'em up!" said the man. "They're not landscaped, right? No one wants 'em."

Ideal hopniss habitat. Cattails grow
in shallow water behind this mass
of hopniss vines in flower.

Now, although I'm quite certain he was right, we also established that he only worked for the land owner, whose number could be found at the entrance to the parking lot, where a large billboard advertised rental space. Still, because there was no one else around and because these guys didn't seem to mind, we took our shovel over to the mess of undergrowth along the edge of the parking lot and unearthed a scoop of dirt at the base of a hopniss vine. And there it was! A tuber about the size of a golf ball.

That's actually a sizable hopniss tuber. Most were the size of large marbles. We dug up a handful -- enough to eat a few and plant a few. We walked back over to the men and showed them a vine cutting and a tuber, just in case they were interested. I don't know whether they were, but they listened politely.

Cleaned and peeled hopniss tubers. The tubers exuded a
sticky substance that collected in tiny white droplets all over
the peeled surface. It also stuck to my fingers and,
once it dried, reminded me of rubber cement in the way
it stretched in long strings between my fingers and rolled into
little sticky balls.

Hopniss likes to grow among the roots of other plants, particularly Jerusalem artichokes, which I happen to have in my garden. I planted some of the smaller tubers there. The larger ones I cleaned, peeled, and thinly sliced, then sauteed in a little salt and butter until they were browned and crisp. They were dryer than I expected, but very much like a nutty potato. The flavor supposedly improves after a frost, but the whole family enjoyed this summer version. I'm excited about the culinary potentials of these tubers.

Of course, I carefully documented my hopniss excavation so that I could share it with interested blog readers. I arranged the tubers next to a bit of vine and some flowers and took a picture. I plugged my camera into my computer and transferred the photos -- all but the one of the unearthed tubers, apparently. Then, without double checking the results of my file copying, I deleted the files from my camera.

Hopniss tubers (ground nuts) in hand
with a hopniss vine and flower behind.

And that's how my middle son and I ended up back at the same parking lot to dig some more hopniss this morning. (Incidentally, the same two guys came out to eat their lunch at the picnic table.) Although finding the tubers yesterday had been a piece of cake, this morning we didn't have such good luck. I hope it will be easier when all the undergrowth has died back; hopniss is supposed to taste best if dug after a frost, anyway. Regardless, after a bit of effort I managed to find two small tubers. Then, just out of curiosity, we took a stroll around the edge of the parking lot to see what else might be there.

Unripe apples.

It was an immense lot that completely encircled the large building complex. The hopniss had been growing at the edge of a wet area, where cattails enjoyed the shallow standing water. At the other side of the lot it was drier. Sumac bushes popped out from the tree line here and there, and several trees dangled tiny, green, unripe apples from their branches.

Here I'm showing the underside of a black-cherry
leaf. The upper side, visible on the right, is
shiny. Ripe fruit dangles in the top left corner.
Black cherries often have a rust-colored fuzz right
next to the midvein at the bottom of the underside
of the leaf. You can see the fuzz in this picture;
it's a good identifying characteristic of a black cherry.

There was a black cherry tree, loaded with ripe cherries. Alas, most black cherries don't taste very good, and these were particularly bitter. Last year I did find some cherries with a nice flavor. The skins left a kind of fuzzy feeling in my mouth, but when I simmered them and strained out the skins and pits, the puree, mixed with some blackberries and pin cherries, made a nice jam.

Pokeweed plants forming what looks like a large bush.

There were also some of the largest pokeweed plants I've ever seen. Some had stalks as thick as small tree trunks and had grown taller than I am in order to break out of the undergrowth and get some sunlight. In some places the pokeweed plants had no competition, and there they formed what looked like large bushes out of what was actually many different plants. This would be an excellent place to return to gather shoots in the spring (see my April 27 post for more on pokeweed).

Unripe autuumnberries.

The most prevalent bushes on the non-hopniss side of the lot were autumnberries. Autumnberries are invasive in Massachusetts, so they aren't hard to find. They are one of my middle son's favorite wild fruits, though, so we're always excited to find more of them. The flavor can vary considerably from location to location, too, so it's always nice to taste test from a new group of bushes.The berries on these bushes were in various stages of ripeness. Some were hard, brown, and smaller than the end of a Q-tip. Others were pea sized and somewhere on the way from yellow to orange to red. When ripe, autumnberries are red and soft. All berries are covered with tiny silver speckles (and the undersides of the leaves are coated in silver, as though an artist has painted them a metallic sheen). A few of the berries seemed red enough and soft enough to warrant a taste test, even though it's a bit early in the season. They were passable -- but we didn't reach for a second.

These autumnberries are getting riper. Some are
yellow or even approaching red.

One autumnberry bush provided something much more exciting than its fruit, though. If you have a drum nearby, I think this warrants a drum roll: at the base of an autumnberry bush was what looked almost exactly like a walnut tree. In fact, there were several walnut tees, some old enough to bear nuts, in that part of the parking lot. But this tree, growing at about 3 1/2 feet high, was not a walnut tree. Unlike a walnut tree, it had a well-developed terminal leaflet on each of its leaves. And that could only mean one thing: butternut!

Butternut sapling growing under
an autumnberry bush.

If you've been following my blog for a while, you know that this find was an exciting, breathtaking moment. I won't say it's the culmination of a long search because this tree was much too young to bear any nuts. Someday, I hope to actually taste a butternut. No doubt this will be quite a let down after all the build-up, but the hunt is most of the fun, anyway. If I have to wait for this particular tree to reach maturity, though, I might be in trouble. It looked like it was heading straight for a tangled ceiling of autumnberry branches. Perhaps the trunk will do a little zigzag to get out in the sun. Or perhaps some kind-hearted lover of butternut trees will rescue this one by moving it to a less compettive location (suggestion: my yard would work well).

Butternut trees are being killed by something called the butternut canker, which has reduced butternut populations by as much as 80% in some states. Trees in sunnier locations seem more resistant to the disease. Butternuts are the only known natural host to be killed by the parasite, called Sirococcus clavigignenti-juglandacearum, which can survive on dead trunks for up to two years. So, if you know of any butternut trees, take care of them, and plant a few nuts in promising locations every year!

Wapato (arrowhead) leaves with hopniss vines
in front.

After leaving the butternut tree, we had almost completed our tour around the parking lot and were nearly back at our car. As we neared the cattail marsh, more hopniss lay sprawled lazily across the ground; here they had fewer other plants to climb and were left to their own not-so-sturdy devices. I decided to take my shovel into the midst of the hopniss for one last attempt at unearthing more than the two tubers I'd thus far gathered. As I stepped into the vines and brush, a snake slithered away under the grasses. With my eyes, I followed the wave of motion toward the water and spotted some arrow-shaped leaves I immediately recognized as wapato.

Wapato leaf and flowers. Wapato is sometimes confused
with arrow arum, which has a similar leaf shape but different
venation. Arrow arum has a central vein with
shorter veins stemming off of it, whereas all veins on a wapato
leaf originate from a point at the base of the leaf.

Wapato is another tuber, one that usually grows in shallow water or mud. I've never tried one, but it's another plant on my list of desirable finds. Although the tubers are probably the best-known edible part, the young leaf shoots and flower stalks are also edible and, according to Samuel Thayer in The Forager's Harvest, are delicious when boiled. It's past the season for either of those parts now; these wapato plants already had flowers (I understand that later in the season, the yellow center of the flower will give way to a green seed ball). Thayer says the best time to collect the tubers is in the fall, when the plants begin to brown and die. I'll be back at this lot a little later, and I'll give you a report.

Ripe sumac berry cluster.

On our way home, we stopped by another parking lot -- the one where we've collected milkweed, day lilies, wild carrots, evening primrose and, last year, autumn berries. Yesterday after my first hopniss harvest, I had stopped by this lot to see whether the sumac was ripe. I licked a finger and touched one of the red berry clusters, then licked my finger again. An unmistakable tartness told me these berries were ready to be picked. My eldest son and I soon had a plastic grocery bag full of about 20 berry clusters, which we used to make a refreshing pitcher of sumac-ade. In fact, today it is nearly gone, so my middle son and I were now back for more.

Sumac-ade is similar to lemonade
in its tart, fruity flavor.

To make the sumac-ade, I crushed the berry heads in a pitcher of cold water and let them sit for 15 minutes. Hot water releases a bitter chemical from the fruit, so it's important to use cold water. I then added sugar to taste. I had more berry clusters than I needed (12 to 15 seems to be sufficient for the pitcher I have), so I saved the rest. I'll add the sumac we collected this morning to this leftover sumac. I plan to make a sumac concentrate that I can freeze. Later I can add water and enjoy sumac-ade out of season. I can also add some sumac juice to various jams and jellies -- perhaps elderberry or crab apple.

The bag of sumac we collected this morning.
There are two varieties of edible sumac growing here:
smooth sumac and staghorn sumac. Both have showy
red berry clusters that point up. Poison sumac
(which gives you a rash)  has many
distinguishing characteristics, among them its white berries
that often point downward.

Yesterday's was our third pitcher of sumac-ade this year. Well, that's not counting the bark-flavored drink I made from unripe berries that looked so beautifully red that I had to try them, anyway (see my July 9 post). The first ripe sumac I found this year was on one of the Boston Harbor Islands, where we took a friend from Missouri during his recent 2-week stay. The island was covered with blackberries and sumac, but we didn't have any containers with us. We ate berries on the spot and stuffed my eldest son's backpack with as many sumac berry clusters as it would fit. The sumac back home wasn't ripe yet at the time.

Just a week later, I did find ripe sumac under some power lines while I was checking on the hazelnuts also growing there. Sumac is on the Massachusetts list of invasive plants, so if you want to do your part to stop the spread of this weed, drink lots of sumac-ade (but don't put the seeds in your compost). As for hopniss and arrowhead, which are native plants and not invasive, just be sure to leave a few tubers behind when you dig. They'll take advantage of the reduced competition and produce a large crop the following year.

Oh, Nuts!

American hazelnut bush growing alongside our bike trail.

Hickory leaf. Now that I'm thinking straight,
I can see that this is obviously different
from a butternut leaf.

I have disappointing news: I didn't find a butternut tree. As you know if you read my last post, I've been searching for one. On a recent hike a nut tree practically smacked me in the eye with one of its branches, and after letting my imagination run away with me for several minutes, I imagined that the small, four-part husks might grow up to look like butternuts. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that the leaves really weren't quite right. They had three large, well-developed leaflets at the end and two smaller ones a little distance closer to the beginning of the leaf. This wasn't nearly enough leaflets for a butternut leaf, which would have 11 to 17 leaflets. The color of these leaves was also a little darker than that of the walnut leaves I'd seen (walnut trees and butternut trees closely resemble one another), and the leaves were a little heftier and glossier. Then there was that vexing nut, which was just not nearly as large as I'd expect it to be by this time. I had to admit that I probably hadn't found a butternut.

Young butternut tree growing in my garden.

A recent foraging walk with Russ Cohen (who also led a walk I attended in the spring; see my May 9 post) confirmed what I already knew to be the case. He showed us a real butternut tree, which looked so much like a walnut tree that at first I thought it was one. Alas, this tree didn't seem to be producing any nuts. The walk took place on a nearby organic farm that is amenable to foraging, so if there had been nuts, I probably could have gathered some this fall. Alas, I will have to keep searching for a productive wild butternut tree -- or wait about 20 years for the ones I planted in my garden this year to reach nut-bearing maturity.

I found more hickories
along our local bike trail.

I ordered my trees from a mail-order catalog, and by now their leaves are sufficiently well developed to serve as yet another confirmation that the leaves on my mystery nut tree were not butternut leaves. So what kind of leaves were they? I described my find to Russ, and right away he guessed hickory. Not a shagbark hickory, which is the most desirable kind of hickory (I can definitely recognize the distinctive shagbark). There are many kinds of hickory trees, though, and all of the nuts have these four-parted husks like the ones I described. I have since looked up hickory trees in my reference books, and the three large terminal leaflets also fit the bill.

American hazelnuts in husk.

I have found a nut that is much more abundant than butternuts, though. Last year a friend told me there were hazelnuts (or filberts) in the powerline corridor near her house. I went to check it out, and I did find the bushes, but the wildlife had already snagged all the nuts. This year I'm determined to get some of them for myself, so I have been checking on the nuts regularly to gauge their ripeness. I break open the light-green husk and check the color of the nut underneath. I'm looking for a golden brown, but so far I've only found a cream color.

There are two kinds of hazelnuts in America: beaked and American. The ones I've found are American hazels, and the bushes are one of the most abundant in eastern North America. In addition to finding many bushes under the powerlines my friend pointed me to, I also noticed a large thicket along our local bike trail.

Elderberry bushes loaded with unripe fruit.

 The power lines yielded another exciting discovery: elderberries. I saw my first elderberry bush (which didn't have berries on it at the time) in the spring on the aforementioned walk with Russ Cohen. This was the first time I'd seen the berries outside of a photograph, and even though they weren't ripe, their red stems and the way they were starting to droop off the bushes helped me to recognize them right away. Elderberries are known for their immune-boosting properties (they have lots of vitamin C), and you can buy supplements to help with lowering cholesterol, improving vision, and curing a cough, among other things. You don't need to purchase the supplements, though, if you can find the berries and make juice yourself. Elderberries apparently don't taste that great right off the bush, but they make good wine, jelly, and pie (mixed with other fruits). The flowers are also edible, aromatic, and delicious, but if you pick the flowers, the plant won't be able to make fruit, so foragers should exercise caution here. Every part of the elder except the ripe fruit and the flowers is toxic, and a different variety that produces red (rather than blue or black) berries is toxic unless cooked. Samuel Thayer reports that most who taste red elderberries find them disgusting, mostly because the flavor doesn't meet expectations based on the bright red color. They reportedly taste something like bland, slightly bitter tomatoes.

Elderberries and leaf.

There is some conservation concern about elderberries because restaurants are getting interested for commercial purposes. Nonetheless, picking berries for personal consumption shouldn't be a concern, and I look forward to trying some in another month or so. For more pictures of elderberries and for pictures of the flowers, plus additional information about identifying the plant, visit Wildman Steve Brill's site.

Riper elderberries, but still not ripe.

The butternut tree at the organic farm where I went on the foraging walk led by Russ Cohen. This picture didn't turn out that great, but you get the idea.