The field guide
What is out there, written down: what grows on the ridges and in the hollows, what calls after dark, what the ground is made of, and what happened here before it was a forest.
What grows here 8 guides · 121 species
- Trees
Green Ridge is an oak-hickory forest on the ridges and something wetter in the hollows, and the difference is legible if you know two or three things to look at. Each entry here is what to look at.
26 speciescc0 - Wildflowers
Most of these are out for a few weeks and gone. The months on each entry are the ones worth walking for, and the spring ephemerals on the north-facing slopes are done before the canopy closes over them.
25 speciesiNaturalist observer · cc0 - Shrubs
The understorey is what you actually walk through, and on the dry ridges here a great deal of it is one plant. These are the shrubs the guide covers and how to tell them apart.
9 speciesDouglas Goldman · cc-by-sa - Ferns
Ferns sort themselves by moisture and rock more sharply than anything else here, so a fern is often the fastest way to read what the ground under you is doing.
5 speciescc0 - Vines
Two of these will spoil a trip if you sit in them and three of them are invasive. Both are worth being able to name before you pitch a tent against a tree.
7 speciesKatja Schulz · cc-by - Insects
This is the group a camper meets most and knows least. Some of it is worth walking a mile to see and a little of it is worth checking your legs for.
31 speciesEven Dankowicz · cc-by - Snakes and amphibians
Maryland has two venomous snakes and this forest has both. Nearly everything else on this list is harmless, and the reason to be able to tell them apart is so that the harmless ones stop being alarming.
10 speciesNatalie Waddell-Rutter · cc-by - Mammals
Black bear are present in this forest and so is everything smaller. Storing food properly is the whole of what a camper needs to do about that, and it is worth doing on the first night rather than the second.
8 speciesAlina Martin · cc-by
The rest of the guide what you hear · the ground · what happened here
- What you hearNight sounds
A primitive site at Green Ridge is dark and it is not quiet. Almost all of this is small and none of it is coming for you, and knowing which is which is the difference between a bad night and a good one. One page rather than four: split by animal the human-made sounds are three entries, which is a stub.
67 soundsAdrienne van den Beemt · cc-by - The groundRock and landforms
The shape of this forest is the reason for everything else in it: which slope holds water, which ridge takes the morning, where the road has to switchback. It is also older than nearly anything else you can stand on.
11 featuresNASA (ISS astronaut photo) · Public domain - What happened hereHistory
This forest was clear-cut, then planted as the largest apple orchard in the eastern United States, then abandoned, then replanted. Almost none of what you walk through is old growth, and the evidence of all of it is still on the ground.
12 chaptersJesse Allen · Public domain
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