Thoreau's Essay of Sept. 1860
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Located in the Grafton Ponds Natural Area Preserve of Newport News Park near the intersection of Ft. Eustis Blvd and Richneck Rd. Cacher must cross 2 shallow(usually dry) streams to reach cache.
The cache can be reached by parking at gate F4 at Newport News Park. This is at the intersection of Fort Eustis Boulevard and Richneck Road. (Currently there are 2 other caches located near here.) Please don’t block the gate. Do not park along Fort Eustis Boulevard. At the gate go NE following the faint trail and pick up the old mountain bike trail. It will get you to within 275 feet of GZ. Bushwhacking will be required from this point. The cache is located closer to gate F5. However, NN Park rangers do not recommend parking there as there is no place to turn around and in order to access the cache one has to climb over a broken down wire fence which is dangerous.
Henry David Thoreau is well known for his living with nature attitude in his book "Walden". Most people don’t know that he was an early advocate for natural forest succession and wrote an essay entitled "The Succession of Forest Trees" which he read to the Middlesex (Massachusetts) Agricultural Society in September, 1860. This is an excerpt from his essay:
"Occasionally, when treading the woods in the fall, you will hear a sound as if someone had broken a twig, and, looking up, see a jay pecking at an acorn, or you will see a flock of them at once about it, in the top of an oak, and hear them break off. They then fly to a suitable limb, and placing the acorn under one foot, hammer away at is busily, making a sound like a woodpecker's tapping, looking round from time to time to see if any foe is approaching, and soon reach the meat, and nibble at it, holding up their heads to swallow, while they hold the remainder very firmly with their claws. Nevertheless, it often drops to the ground before the bird has done with it. I can confirm what Wm. Bartram (8) wrote to Wilson, the Ornithologist,(9) that "The jay is one of the most useful agents in the economy of nature, for disseminating forest trees and other nuciferous and hard seeded vegetables on which they feed. Their chief employment during the autumnal season is foraging to supply their winter stores. In performing this necessary duty they drop abundance of seed in their flight over fields, hedges, and by fences, where they alight to deposit them in the post-holes, &c. It is remarkable what numbers of young trees rise up in field and pastures after a wet winter and spring. These birds alone are capable, in a few years' time, to replant all the cleared lands."
I have noticed that squirrels also frequently drop their nuts in open land, which will still further account for the oaks and walnuts which spring up in pastures, for, depend on it, every new tree comes from a seed. When I examine the little oaks, one or two years old, in such places, I invariably find the empty acorn from which they sprung."
You can observe natural forest succession in the area around the cache. There are hundreds of new young trees replacing the ones felled by Hurricane Isabel. Before that storm and the forestry salvage work in this area, plow furrows could be detected. Perhaps you can still feel them underfoot as you search for this cache
This cache has been approved by and registered with
the Newport News Department of Parks, Recreation &
Tourism. Registration # 0154
Congratulations to Zazth on the FTF.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Vfnory ivpgvz