Winter Ecology Students Experience the North Woods

Winter Field Ecology "returned to its roots" over winter break, according to Professor Rick Lathrop, taking its annual excursion to the Dartmouth College Grant in northern New Hampshire for the first time since the course's inaugural visit in 1994.

A group of six Rutgers students, led by Lathrop and Teaching Assistant Josh Echols, had the 50-square mile tract of New Hampshire woods almost entirely to themselves to observe natural history, study winter adaptations of plants and animals, and experience the rigors of winter survival for humans. The students got to put some of those human rigors to practice, with a "taste of rural life" by the Dead Diamond River. The group lodged in a wood-heated cabin, where they split wood, hauled water, cooked their own meals, and used an outdoor privy. They tracked coyotes, moose, and partridge, and they had to the good fortune of observing a secretive pine marten.

"The cabin provided an excellent base of operations for extended forays up the Diamond Peaks, the forks of the Diamond and down to the Magalloway River," said Lathrop. Back at the base lodge, barred owls and coyotes serenaded the group at night.

January 2014