Woods Wanderer

Yesterday I drove to New Hampshire to scout the trailheads and exit points of the Cohos Trail in anticipation of hiking it next year. I took my dog Matika with me even though the trip was more about driving than hiking. She didn’t complain.

With temps in the 40s, snow in the higher elevations, and all the leaves on the ground, it felt more like November than October in the White Mountains.  No matter.  I was able to get a good feel for the landscape.  There is plenty of rugged, remote country north of the ever-popular Presidential Range. I look forward to immersing myself in it.

Halfway through my scouting trip, I grabbed my rucksack and headed south along a yellow-blazed trail hugging South Pond for a short while.  Both Matika and I needed to stretch our legs and South Pond seemed like a good place to do that. The recreation area where I parked the car was completely abandoned and the shoreline trail looked very inviting.  I’m sure South Pond will look completely different to me when I’m trekking through here with a full load on my back, finishing a leg of the CT next year. The terrain always looks different when I’m making tracks.

After finding the exit point at Dixville Notch, thus completing my scouting trip, I marveled at how new the Cohos Trail is.  Aside from the yellow blazes, one wouldn’t know that such a trail even exists.  It’s definitely a work in progress, and not for those who like to plod mindlessly along a well-beaten path. But northern New Hampshire seethes wildness, which is why I am drawn to it.  And soon enough I’ll be following those yellow blazes for days on end.

Tags: Cohos Trail, New Hampshire, White Mountains, wildness

On a balmy, partly cloudy day, while driving around the Champlain Islands admiring autumnal color with my wife Judy, I detoured to Isle La Motte to check out a rare geological phenomenon called Chazy Reef.  It’s the stony remnant of a coral reef that existed 480 million years ago, transported to Lake Champlain by the movements of Earth’s tectonic plates. Well aware of it for many years, I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

I parked the car at the entrance to Fisk Quarry, where more practical folk once cut and removed stones for buildings. It is now a preserve and national landmark – one of two in the area. Judy stayed in the car, more interested in the here/now than fossils. I understand. Like gazing at the stars, any venture into the depths of natural history is an exercise in imagination. What one sees is only a rough sketch of what once was.

At first I saw nothing as I walked around the preserve. After all, I have only a layman’s understanding of geology. Then I spotted a swirl embedded in solid rock. Then another, and another. The skeptic in me assumed that someone had carved them, but a closer look dismissed that notion. I knelt down and touched those ghostly apparitions, half expecting them to disappear when I did so. My fingers traced the fossils as if reading braille. Then I got it.  That is, I sensed an order to things in a world that so often appears to be utterly random and chaotic.

Truth is I have always been something of a pantheist. I don’t particularly like that label, but it comes closest to describing what I feel during those precious moments when I see the hand of God in nature, when the yawning chasm between mathematics and mysticism suddenly vanishes and I understand, on some level, how everything connects.

The swirls I saw in the rock, the vague outlines of marine creatures that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, remind me of the swirls of hurricanes and galaxies. There are forces at work in the universe that press our ability to reason to its limit. And when confronted by the Real, all I can do is genuflect. Nature, it seems, is wilder than our wildest imagination.

Tags: Chazy Reef, fossils, Lake Champlain, natural religion, pantheism

I am pleased to announce that Walt Franklin’s fine collection of fly-fishing essays, River’s Edge, has been reprinted. I first published this book under the Wood Thrush Books imprint back in 2008, but now it is available at Amazon.com as well as the WTB website. And it will stay that way indefinitely.

River’s Edge is primarily about the joy of fishing for trout on thirty streams, both large and small, in northern Pennsylvania and upstate New York. But Franklin also does an excellent job seasoning detailed descriptions of his outings with cultural observations, natural history, and streamside ecology. There is plenty of fly-fishing lore thrown in for good measure.

Franklin and I have been friends ever since we encountered each other’s writing back in the early 90s and started corresponding. Through the years we’ve gotten together many times to hike, fish, drink beer, and talk literature. I’ve learned a lot about fly-fishing from Walt. In fact, it was he who taught me the mysterious ways of aquatic flies when I first took up the sport.

In addition to fishing narratives, Franklin also writes travel essays and nature-related verse. To promote these books, I have added a new section at the Wood Thrush Books website: Other Books by Walt Franklin. Check it out. I will soon have these books in stock. In the meantime, you can sample River’s Edge by going to Amazon.com and clicking on the “Look inside” button. Or you can visit his blog site, Rivertop Rambles.  If you’re the least bit interested in fly-fishing, you won’t be disappointed.

Tags: fly fishing, nature essays, River's Edge, trout fishing, Walt Franklin