Day 271: The forest and I are growing old together. As my strength and stamina begin to wane, the woods are becoming more deeply tangled. Limbs and trees fall, thickets thicken, ground cover covers more ground. The trailless route to Cephalanthera has always involved climbing over, under, around and through an infinite variety of obstacles, and each year brings more. I emerged from this morning's foray with a head count of four very young stems and multiple new bruises, dings and gouges in my anatomy. Was it worth it? Need you ask? Also worthy of mention is the fact that in an area where they are normally abundant, very few specimens of Corallorhiza were in evidence. I counted a mere three occurrences of maculata, and all at the "seed pod production" phase of their phenology. My suspicion is that the mycoheterotrophs in this particular pocket ecology are suffering from a stressor of some sort, possibly that late-spring snow event which could have disrupted their timing. In any event, I will have to make a second excursion to Cephalanthera in two weeks or so, so I'd better start steeling myself for another round of crawling under fallen trees, over logs, around impasses and through devil's-club, the demanding rite of physical passage which takes you to the Phantom's secret lair.
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