THE PROSPER VALLEY VIGNETTES:
Stories Beneath the Surface - Prosper Valley Soils

It was my fourth trip up Gilbert Hill in Woodstock and Pomfret—and I had finally remembered my shovel. I wanted to explore the soil atop the hill but questioned my sanity as I hauled the heavy shovel through the network of trails I had come to know— turn right here for stunning views of the valley where the Gulf Brook widens and flattens for its final stretch before convergence with the Ottauquechee; turn left there to explore a lichen-covered rock pile reminiscent of farmers past; and continue straight up to a beautiful sugar maple forest.

At first, I was a little shovelhappy and began digging holes in this hilltop forest with no real aim in mind. But, my enthusiasm was swiftly stymied by something I hadn't fully considered—digging is hard work! With each heave of the shovel, the clang of metal against rock reverberated in my ear. Some of the rocks were large and soundly-rooted while others were small and loose; but both types were keeping me from my vision of a deep, smooth-sided soil pit. The rocks shattering this vision were pieces of glacial till—the earth materials left behind by the glacier on its retreat northward 13,000 years ago. From the looks of the matrix around these rocks, the soil was being formed directly from the glacial till; it contained thousands of tiny specks of the mineral mica. I had seen this mineral all summer shining out, like a starlit sky, from many rocks I discovered in the Prosper Valley. Astonishingly, these minerals—originally eroded from long-gone mountains, then deposited as sediments on an ancient ocean bottom, next part of the Prosper Valley's bedrock, and subsequently part of the glacial till—are now in the soil! I wondered where they might show up next.

That's the exciting thing about soil—it is the interface between the non-living bedrock and surficial deposits that lie beneath and the living organisms existing above. As the "parent" rock—whether it be bedrock or glacial deposits—is broken down by water and tree roots, the soil incorporates the resulting minerals. At the same time, plants, animals and fungi above the soil surface contribute organic material to the soil. It is in this way that soil acts as the liaison between non-living minerals and living plants and animals.

Long past geological events, however, are not the only factors affecting the Prosper Valley's soil. Humans too have had a hand in determining soil quality in the time since the glacier's retreat. Once this summer, when I was walking through a shaded forest understory, I detected sunlight shining through the trees ahead. In the split second when my eyes were adjusting to the brightness—as I stepped from the shade into the light—I felt like I had teleported to some far off planet. The area around me was treeless and the only vegetation consisted of lichens, mosses and grasses. There were scattered bare rocks exposed at the surface. In exploring this strange place I determined that the only ground covers were hardy varieties that could tolerate poor soil—reindeer lichen, hair cap moss, and poverty grass. The rock beneath these plants was evidently contributing few nutrients to the soil. But what fascinated me more was the soil itself—it was surprisingly thin. My inquiry might have stopped there had I not found half a dozen other sites just like this in other parts of the Valley. Why was the soil so thin in these places? Why hadn't more soil developed in the 13,000 years since the glaciers had "bulldozed" through and removed everything off the bedrock surfaces? One answer, I believe, lies in something else that bulldozed these lands—Merino sheep! When European settlers first moved from Connecticut and Massachusetts to Vermont, they encountered a landscape roughly eighty percent forested. They first established subsistence farms but, with the rise of a market for wool, farmers began to raise sheep. These sheep required significant pasturelands; after a few decades, only twenty percent forest remained. The combination of major forest removal—amplified by sheep's practice of eating right down to the plant root—and millions of hooves tromping over Vermont's hills resulted in muddy waterways and bare hilltops. The sheep era was accompanied by the exodus of hundreds of thousands of tons of soil from Vermont's hills. Because soil development is a slow process, a visit to the places most decimated by sheep hooves feels like an interplanetary voyage.

I remember the day I stood atop Gilbert Hill, shovel in hand, questioning the destiny of the tiny, sparkling mica flakes that geologists have traced from ancient mountains to ancient seas, to the Prosper Valley bedrock and glacial till. They are the same minerals I now see sparkling from the soil across many Prosper Valley hilltops. In thinking about sheep hooves and soil erosion, I now have a pretty good idea where those mica minerals might be headed next—right back to the ocean to start the cycle all over again!