Woods Wanderer

Yesterday I visited a favorite mountain stream, taking a break from work and all other concerns. My dog Matika accompanied me, of course. First stop: a small gorge on the stream, where whitewater squeezed between rock walls on its way down to the already swollen Winooksi River.

Patches of ice clung to the rock walls of the gorge and nearby ferns were still pressed to the ground by snow that had just recently melted. Here in the mountains, the spring season is just beginning.

Above the gorge I meandered upstream following the semblance of a trail cut by deer, as small piles of scat indicated. Eventually I lost even that, finding my own way across the forest floor. I slipped between the trees without any sense of urgency, happy just to be in the woods – a slow bushwhack to nowhere.

As I walked, my thoughts wandered. Or to be more accurate, my thoughts gave way to a series of impressions: the fresh green verdure coaxed from the earth by warmer temps, the rusted remnants of early settlers, and ephemeral rivulets of snowmelt everywhere.

“Walking is not a sport,” Frederic Gros states outright at the beginning of his book, A Philosophy of Walking, though many people treat it that way. Walking slow and solitary, through the woods or in the city, opens the mind to introspection. Many thinkers have had their most profound ideas while walking. I know that is certainly the case with me. I do my best thinking while on the move towards nowhere in particular, slow and steady, with no trail underfoot.  After a while, it becomes a sort of mobile meditation.

A mile or so beyond the gorge, I found a nice spot to sit next to a feeder stream for a while. There my thoughts became more focused even as my eyes still wandered. Matika sat next to me chewing a stick. Time passed. When finally rain clouds gathered overhead, I got up and finished my walk, heading back towards my car. And that,my friends, is what I call a good day in the woods.

Tags: bushwhacking, contemplation, mountain stream, spring, walking

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked out the window this morning. I ran out the door, straight the skeletal remains of last year’s flower garden, and there it was: a tiny patch of early spring irises in bloom. I reached down to touch them, doubting Thomas that I am. Sure enough, they are real.

It really is springtime. The first flowers of the season prove it and, wouldn’t you know it, they popped up right under my nose here at home. Robins, starlings and other migrating birds have been announcing the season for quite some time now, but it hasn’t really sunk in. It takes a flower to chase the last wintry thoughts from my head.

My dog Matika and I hiked around Indian Brook Reservoir yesterday as temps rose into the 70s for the first time this year. The trail was mostly cold mud with the occasional patch of dirty ice. A barred owl hooted in the middle of the afternoon, adding yet another surreal layer to the surprising experience of hiking soft earth in shirtsleeves. I came home and opened the windows, still expecting it to snow again. After all, it snowed just last week.

The green shoots of the day lilies in my front yard have been pushing up with such persistence that I felt inclined to mulch them this afternoon. Every year I undergo this rite of passage from the colder season to the warm one. This year I’ve gotten to it a little later than usual, still traumatized by winter. But lilies don’t care how cold or snowy it was. They live in the Now.

“So that’s it,” I said to myself while slowly picking up debris in my yard, gingerly stepping around the spongy wet patches still saturated with snowmelt. Then I put away my snow shovels. There’s no point in dwelling upon the past.

Tags: early irises, seasonal change, signs of spring

Early spring. A few patches of ice and snow still linger on the forest floor, and the ground is still frozen beneath a few inches of cold mud. No matter. My dog Matika and I are on the move at the beginning of yet another warm season. With temps just barely above freezing, I use the word “warm” loosely here, of course.

To those of us who revel in eternal renewal, it is quite clear what is happening. Slowly but surely, the natural world is awakening from its long winter sleep. The forest and fields are still brown for the most part, but the robins have returned, the squirrels are busy, and streams are roiling with snowmelt. The first flowers are still weeks away, but I am encouraged by the give of soft earth underfoot.

I amble down the trail following my younger self. A year older and slightly less agile, I marvel at this wild world full of growth and decay. Already the buds of trees are swelling. Already pine cones are chewed to pieces. Of the thousands of acorns beneath my boots a few are already on their way to becoming great oaks, while the bones of newly fallen trees litter the forest floor. Nature is cold and cruel, yet it is also warm and embracing. It changes faces with the seasons. Now begins a more ambient season.

Eternal renewal. With each passing year, I travel farther away from a supernatural god and closer to a natural one. Wild places fill me with awe. I see in them a power that trumps all human ambition – the endless, dynamic interplay of elemental forces and the countless forms that they take. I am in love with the world even as it slowly saps my strength, pushing me ever closer to my inevitable demise. Why? Because the wild and I are one in the same, because there is a part of me that will never die – the part of me that is nature. I worship it with every breath I take. Nature exists! All is not chaos.

Tags: eternal renewal, pantheism, seasonal change, springtime, the cycle of life