I went on a really nice hike today. The group I am normally with treats hiking as pure exercise, but I like to give the area between my ears a workout as well, and today I definitely got some of that. Of course we talked about different types of trees, and I think I can distinguish between a few different types of pines better now. We saw coyote scat (grey in color if you are looking for it), and talked about how they are becoming the top of food chain in the eastern forests. We talked about reforestation on the east coast and the economic reasons for it. We looked at a beaver dam, and discussed our guide's war with them on the land he owns. We saw areas where deer had been foraging, and we learned to recognize the signs of it.

When you live out in the country, you have as many neighbors as you do in the city. They are just bit harder to understand at times, and occasionally you may eat one or two of them.

The nature preserve we were on was once a farm. We saw the stone walls of a mid-19th century homestead, and we talked about how they were built. One of the things that struck me was the effort that must been required to clear an acre of land in order to be able to plant crops on it. Each tree not only had to be cut down, its root system had to be pulled out too. If you figure each tree taking up a 10 foot by 10 foot area giving 100 square feet for each tree, and then using the figure 43,560 square feet for the size of an acre, thats about 435 trees that had to be cleared for each acre, all using hand tools and a couple of horses. Man, our ancestors worked hard.