Fish Lake<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today we left in the morning to drive to Fish Lake. We have never been and Lily and I were so excited to check it out. On the way down, we listened to an amazing podcast I found about the Pando Forest. Usually Lily is the one finding amazing stuff to listen to in the car (her last hit was Hemmingway stories to listen to in Florida). I was glad I could contribute on this front for once! On the podcast we learned that at fish lake, the Aspens and Conifers fight against each other for survival. Lately, the Aspens haven\u2019t been doing so well for 3 reasons. 1. Human activity like roads, campgrounds etc is a nuisance to the aspens. 2. The killing off of natural predators like bears and wolves a hundred years ago has lead to a surplus population of mule-dear that is eating all the baby aspen and 3, the lack of fires in the last hundred years (when humans have been diligent and capable of stopping forest fires), has hurt the aspen, because aspen thrive in fire. They have a relatively wet bark (that is even a bit green and can photosynthesize) so they don\u2019t burn well, and when they do burn, the shoot up tons of new baby trees in the area that was burned, and because of their interconnected root systems, they can send nourishment to those new trees, even bringing them water from miles away, passing water through the roots. Speaking of interconnected roots, the Pando Aspen forest (which we drove through and camped in) is the largest and oldest living organism on the earth (could be 50,000 years old). It\u2019s the largest living organism because all the trees in the forest are clones and for the most part connected by the same root system. Pando is dying because of the reasons mentioned above. We also learned that aspen leaves quake (making a beautiful rustling sound) because their stems are flat instead of round. Here is the sound of aspens from our hike later in the day: <\/p>\n\n\n\n