Chronicles of Quabbin - Gate 16

I spent the morning crusading around the Gate 16 area of Quabbin, intending to harvest some wild cranberries for a special Thanksgiving treat. I first tromped around in the unmarked woods, trusting my sense of direction to guide me through the brush and over the piney ridges, and luckily this brought me right to the dirt road as I intended. I then followed the roads to the shore. On my way to the cranberry patch that I discovered last year, I followed this trail of a fairly large moose. That stump marks the main cranberry patch.It turns out that the cranberries did not yield any of their customary fruit this year, but their foliage certainly was ripe! The whole shore was a carpet of crimson groundcover. There was no evidence of moose browsing cranberries, so I can't blame that great beast for their absenceThe trek was still worthwhile, since the stump affords a commanding view of the western limb of Quabbin. Here is the prospect looking southward, an 18-mile vista from Shutesbury to Belchertown.I then ventured southward along the shore, following what was once Prescott Road that led from Shutesbury Center to the now non-existent town of Prescott (left tree-line in the previous photo). People often lament the famous four towns that are now gone, but we mustn't forget that even parts of the existing towns, like Shutesbury, were partly evacuated. To remind us, we have old meadows like this one with stately old sugar maples, obviously planted as street trees in some forgotten era.Yet another novel relic of human presence is the ubiquitous New England stonewall, which takes on a new character at Quabbin as the hydrology changes in the landscape. Often you'll find streams running straight through a wall or under a cellarhole. Here, one stonewall continues straight out of the woods and down into the depths of the reservoir.Sandy beaches have developed on the shores of this fairly new lake, and our ever-opportunistic native species mobilize to occupy every available niche. At this one peninsula by the submerged stone wall, a community of pitch pines cropped up in the nutrient-poor sandy soil. Here you can see the great divide where the white pines end in the background and the pitch pines begin.

I also saw half a dozen loons, one of which was "looning" at me rather loudly, and I scared off several flocks of common mergansers, which I photographed on film. High coyote and deer activity was evident, as usual. No moose sightings this time, though moose activity is markedly higher than a year ago. Numerous small waterfalls were gurgling down the hillsides. At the base of one set of falls I noticed a pungent musty odor (bobcat?) and later found a small bear-like track by the stream (cub?). Once the snow sets in, I can do some proper tracking to determine just what's lurking where, but until then, days like this will more than suffice.