What spectacular fall color Mother Nature produced this year. All the maples looked as if they were on fire, and oaks, usually so drab and brown, were shimmering copper. Now that the trees have lost their brilliant hues, there's little color left in the woods but massive tangles of bittersweet and the soft cinnamon of the tamaracks.
This unusual tree is the only conifer that is deciduous, not evergreen. You may call it a larch or possibly a hackamatack, but I never knew it by any name until the year daughter Bridget turned 16 and got her driver's license. That summer, driving on a back road in Falls Village, Bridget swerved to avoid a little bird, then looked back (NOT via the rear-view mirror) to see if she'd hurt it. The car knocked down three guide posts, sheared 20 feet of dirt bank and landed in a tamarack tree.
By some miracle Bridget remained unharmed except for her two front teeth, but the description of what had happened made me get in the car (the other one that was still drivable) and go view the scene of the accident. It was my first close look at a tamarack tree. After that I got pretty good at distinguishing these unique conifers, the only needled tree native to North America that drops its foliage each fall.
Tamarack needles grow like small shaving brushes along the branches, and are soft and delicate compared to those of spruce or fir. They may be hard to tell apart from their evergreen cousins in their summer greenery, but once other deciduous trees have been stripped naked of their colorful leaves, their needles lose their chlorophyll and become as conspicuous as polo-coated preppies at a nudist colony. The tufts of needles open out so that each branch looks like a tiny modern hayrake.
By November they've turned that soft warm brown so the woods look as if they were inhabited by a bunch of furry teddy bears. By December the needles have all dropped and the black skeletons left bare give the impression of having been charred in a fire, looking totally dead.
Although tamaracks are most commonly found in swampy areas, they can live equally well on a dry hillside. They grow very fast, as much as three feet a year. Along with sumacs and poverty birches, they are often the first trees to appear in open land and are called nurse trees as they prepare the way for trees that need shade as seedlings.
Do you remember the open meadow on the right just beyond the Mad River dry damn as you head down into Winsted on Route #44? I watched it year by year as its occupants came and went. First there were weeds and blackberries, then the sumacs arrived, followed by a few poplars. Then the tamaracks took over, a whole forest of teddy bears. They nursed the white pine seedlings which have now grown up and are squeezing out the tamarack. By the time you read this column the tamaracks will probably have dropped their needles and will begin to look like skeletons ravished by fire.
Searching for more facts on tamaracks to fill out this column, I ran across an article written by Hank's grandfather in 1926 for Antiques Magazine. The article described a variety of products made from tamarack. The wood is apparently very hard and almost impervious to water, so it is used in ship-building and for dock pilings, as well as flooring.
Have a happy Thanksgiving. Hank and I are taking the train down to New Orleans for a mini-vacation. Tam has promised not to have turducken, a New Orleans specialty consisting of a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken that she served the last time we came for the holiday.
