Woods Wanderer

With the Autumnal Equinox fast approaching, I go for a walk in the woods to celebrate seasonal change. Yesterday’s high was 85, but this morning I’m wearing a flannel shirt and barely breaking a sweat. My long-haired German shepherd isn’t even panting. We both welcome the chill.

It’s been a hot, dry summer here in northern Vermont with near-drought conditions. The run of 90-degree days back in July reminded me of my childhood in Ohio. Some of the flowers my wife and I planted in the spring have burned up. I’ve watered them more than usual but hesitate to do too much of that since the water comes from a well. No, I can’t say I’m sad to see the warm season coming to an end.

There are patches of color in the forest understory but more brown in the leaves than usual. Overall the early fall foliage looks a little bleached out.  That could change dramatically during the next couple weeks. While more summer-like heat remains in the forecast, temps can drop fast like they did last night. This time of year is full of surprises.

During my walk, I spot the yellowish-brown leaves of false solomon’s seal. Seems like I was watching the spring wildflowers bloom a short while ago. Yet here we are now on the other side of the growing season. With each passing year, it feels like summer goes by a little faster despite the number of hot days. But that’s only how I perceive things in my advanced years. Nature has a different sense of time – one I can’t even imagine.

Sunlight suddenly breaks through the canopy, illuminating the still mostly green forest. I was in a funk earlier this week, but now each step I take forward feels like affirmation that life is worth living. So it goes during every woods walk regardless of the season. The days are getting shorter but that’s okay. The natural cycles are a good thing. I celebrate them, reveling in the present.

Tags: autumnal equinox, drought, heat, seasonal change, time, walking

An overnight rain soaked the area overnight, and for some strange reason I felt an urge to go for a walk in this wet world. After taking care of a little business in the morning, I did just that. I had my dog Matika in tow, of course.

We went for a short walk in the nearby town forest because that’s all my old dog can handle these days. Moving at her incredibly slow pace and stopping frequently, it was a contemplative walk. I barely broke a sweat, but my thoughts clipped right along at a good pace.

I inhaled the rich, dank smell of the soaked forest. My eyes feasted on its vibrant green foliage. A gentle wind rocked the treetops, shaking raindrops from them. I walked between the raindrops, it seemed, barely getting wet.

While meandering about I thought about work, family, friends, the future, the past, other tramps in the woods, life, death, other deep philosophical matters, and the most inane things. There was no real pattern to it all, much like dreaming while still awake. But the white bloom of wood asters drew me back into the here and now, as did the incessant chirp of crickets.

On the drive home, I paid close attention to patches of leaves turning here and there – mostly rust and gold. The change is just beginning. The cool, damp air rushing into the car window gave me a bit of a chill. I made a short list in my head of all the things that still needed to be done before day’s end, then I let out a great big sigh. Life, it seems, is what happens while we’re busy doing things.

Tags: awareness, contemplation, daydreaming, seasonal change, walking

A flock of turkeys wandered into my back yard yesterday morning. About a dozen of them fed along the edge between the mowed grass and where I have let my yard go wild. My wife Judy also saw the birds, as did our dog Matika who barked at them once. They weren’t much impressed by that.

Later on, as Matika was in the other room sleeping, I spotted a turkey trotting right along the edge of the patio, about 15 feet from the door. Several others followed. Clearly these turkeys have no concept of the difference between a wild landscape and a domesticated one. Either that or they simply don’t care.

A barred owl swooped across the yard the other day, landing on top of my car. When Judy and I poked our heads out the door to get a good look at it, the owl flew to the next door neighbor’s roof. We have heard owls nearly every night since then. I usually associate owls with the wild, but two miles from town my home hardly qualifies as a wild place even though it does back up against a good patch of woods. Evidently, owls aren’t as skittish around people as I thought they were. Either that or they find the hunting around here too good to pass up.

Deer passing through, spiders making webs in the siding of my house, hummingbirds at the planters, toads in the grass, and the occasional garter snake slithering into the garage – my turf is overrun with creatures that simply do not acknowledge the boundary between what is cultivated and what is wild. The other night I saw a bat flying in circles overhead, no doubt feasting on mosquitoes. Better than citronella candles to be sure.

Along the edge between the grass and the wild part of my back yard, I have planted a few domestic bushes and flowers that also happen to grow naturally in the wild. I have pulled out grass, dandelions and other undesirables there, as well, making room for the ferns and other wild plants that I prefer. “Unnatural selection,” I call it. Judy calls it “cultivating the wildness,” in a somewhat humorous reference to a book of mine. Yeah, I’ve muddled matters in my back yard to say the least.

For a while now, I’ve been pondering wildness and being human, trying to get a bead on exactly what it is that separates us from the rest of nature. It’s not an easy task. And the creatures wandering into my back yard don’t make the matter any easier. Perhaps the difference between what is wild and what is not wild is not nearly as distinct as we like to think it is. Perhaps it is just a matter of degree.

Tags: domestication, gardening, owls, turkeys, wild plants, wildlife, wildness

Judy and I wanted to go backpacking but Matika is in bad shape these days. After agonizing about what she could or could not handle, we decided to risk it, walking our old, nearly lame dog into the woods less than a mile.

The three of us crept along, following the path of least resistance through the trees and across broken ground. We soon reached a sweet spot on a favorite brook and, thankfully, Matika was no worse for wear. There we put up our tent and hung out for a while.

Judy badly needed the forest time. When she told me that 5 years have passed since she last spent a night in the woods, I could hardly believe it. The biggest obstacle has been her hip pain, so we acquired a “luxury” Therma-rest pad to take care of that. It worked quite well.

The brook was surprisingly low, even for August, but our camp was so close to it that we could enjoy the soothing sound of water rushing over rocks all the same. Off trail and tucked into the woods, we had the place all to ourselves.

Judy started decompressing right away – reading, napping, and just sitting next to a brook that washed away all concerns. I puttered about camp – tending a small fire, boiling up tea, or simply grooving on the wild as I usually do. Matika chewed up a lot of sticks.

Our second day in the woods was perfect with lots of sunshine breaking through the forest canopy, temps in the high 70s, and few bugs. We lounged about all day. That evening, as clouds moved in, we secured our camp against rain. Sure enough it came in the middle of the night, making our world a pretty damp one when we crawled out of the tent the next day. No matter. We took our sweet time eating breakfast then packing up.

Matika slipped in front of us a few times during the hike out, sniffing around then smiling her big wolfish smile. Yeah, it was a good outing for all three of us.

Tags: hiking with dogs, mountain steam, remote camping, woods retreat

Once again I accompanied my old buddy John Woodyard in his decades-long quest to hike the Appalachian Trail one section at a time. A couple years ago we hiked together in southern Vermont. Before that, I joined him on the 40-mile section of the AT between the Connecticut River and Sherburne Pass. This time we started at Route 25 in New Hampshire and hiked south to the Connecticut River.

It was a tough hike with plenty of elevation change. Originally we had planned to do it in 4 days, but soon found out that we needed more time. With a bad right knee making it hard to train, John wasn’t in as good a shape as he usually is. As for me, well, I’ve never been a strong hiker, and my sedentary bookselling lifestyle isn’t helping matters. Whatever. We shouldered our backpacks and did the 46 miles in 5 days. Not bad for a couple of 60-somethings.

While we were on the trail, about a hundred northbound thru-hikers in great shape blew past us with little effort – a few of them being our age. That psyched us out. We kept telling ourselves that for every thru-hiker whizzing by, another ten had left the trail between here and Georgia. Still we huffed and puffed uphill, grimaced at our joint pains going downhill, and sweated all day long wondering why we had let our bodies go. It’s hard, sometimes, to keep from comparing yourself to others.

The weather was great for the most part. The bugs weren’t bad, and the wild, forested landscape was just as beautiful as ever. I thoroughly enjoyed being out there hiking hard for a change, and I’m sure John also enjoyed the trek. But it would have been an even more enjoyable outing if we had been in better shape. Ah, well…

John will be back, I’m sure. He has hiked three-fourths of the AT so far, and is not the kind of guy to be satisfied with that. He still has the better part of New Hampshire’s White Mountains to do, along with most of the Berkshires is western Massachusetts. So he’ll be asking me to join him for another leg, no doubt. I’d better be ready.

Tags: Appalachian Trail, backpacking, New Hampshire, section hiking

Five years after the release of The Allure of Deep Woods, I now have a second Adirondack book in print: The Great Wild Silence.  It consists of a dozen short narratives and essays about backpacking in the Adirondacks, along with one rather long narrative about my 5-day sojourn in the West Canada Lakes Wilderness last year.

The Great Wild Silence is the juxtaposition of movement and staying put, of hiking and abstract thought. The main narrative in this collection, “Deep Forest Ruminations,” is a series of meditations on nature and our place in it, braided with observations and routine activities while camped alone at a backcountry lake – just me and my dog Matika, I should say. That’s the second half of the book. The first half sets the stage, recounting various excursions in the Adirondacks over the past 25 years, both alone and with others. Some of the latter pieces first appeared in the ADK publication Adirondac and other periodicals but haven’t been seen since. I’ve extracted others from previous collections of mine. It’s a curious mix to be sure.

If you’re as enamored with the Adirondacks as I am, then you’ll probably enjoy this book. You can order it at my website: woodthrushbooks.com, or you can find it at Amazon.com. Be forewarned, though: there’s a lot of philosophical speculation in this book. It isn’t just about walking in the woods.

Tags: Adirondacks, backpacking, nature, nature essays, philosophy, wilderness, wildness

After months of not feeling so great, Judy finally came to me and said she wanted to go into the woods. In particular, she wanted to spend a little time sitting on a mountain brook with no one else around – just her, me, and our dog Matika. No problem, I told her, so we headed out yesterday late morning for a place that fit the bill.

It was a short, easy hike to the brook, mainly because Matika can’t handle much. Old dog on her last leg. The slightest obstacle, like a downed tree, is a major challenge to her these days.

When we reached the brook, Judy found a nice spot on a large rock to sit and groove on both flowing water and the surrounding forest. She took off her shoes and dipped her feet into a crystal clear pool. It was colder than expected – a pleasant sensation on a warm day in July.

Matika rested on a gravel bar next to the brook. I sat a few feet away, propped against another large rock. The stream rushed by incessantly, clearing our heads of all urban workaday noise. A slight breeze wafted up the brook occasionally, rustling the leaves in the green canopy overhead ever so gently. We eased into dreamtime.

When leaving the brook, we were surprised by how hot the afternoon had become, and by how much time had passed. Before reaching the car, Judy said she wanted to get into the woods again soon. Next weekend if at all possible. We’re both looking forward to the backwoods retreat we have planned next month. That can’t come fast enough, even though each of these long days of summer should be cherished.

Tags: forest, mountain stream, summer, woods retreat

Walking in the woods on a cool, early summer day, I take note of the trees around me. Some are relatively young, thin, and pushing straight up towards the sky. Others are strong, solid, well established, with limbs branching into the canopy. Still others are bent over, partially sheared away, or on the ground. But what catches my eye are the gnarly ones at least a hundred years old, maybe two hundred, with twisting limbs and thick bark. They are few and far between, and for every one still standing there are remnants of a dozen others scattered across the forest floor.

The bulges and scars in the trunks of those old fellows tell an incredible story of survival, as do the tortured branches reaching every which way. It is the architecture of the wild – proof positive that some life forms do not give up easy. Throw decades of heat, drought, frigid temps, heavy snowfall, torrential downpours, bacteria, fungus and insects at them, and they still keep going. Every one of them is a testament to the efficacy of wild nature, to the relentless urge of all organic things to live and grow. God only knows why.

Look around and you’ll see some trees losing the struggle to survive and slowly dying. Last week I hired a fellow to drop and remove a nearly dead one still standing in my yard – one too close to the house for comfort. I suspect another might be on the way in another year or two. Meanwhile the rest of the trees on my lot sway in the wind as if they don’t have a care in the world. It’s baffling, really, the way some trees stand up to the stresses of daily life and others succumb.

Dead saplings are not uncommon in the forest – most losing the race to sunlight. And yet the occasional mature birch, maple or oak grows only thicker and tougher with time, sometimes losing a huge limb or two yet still persisting. What moral can be taken from this? No, it’s best if we don’t go there, trying to uncover the secrets of their woody success. It’s best if we don’t even look at old trees that way, but simply admire them for what they are: bastions of life force, beating all odds, both relentless and remarkable.

Tags: forest ecology, life force, old growth, trees

For the past year and a half, I have been pondering human nature and its relationship to wildness. I have read dozens of books on the subject, and have approached the matter from various angles: philosophical, anthropological, biological, historical and naturalistic. The more I look into the matter, though, the more befuddled I become, often getting bogged down in the morass of morality where the vast majority of people plant their flags then forget about the matter. It has been a daunting undertaking to say the least.

Wildness, I am certain, is the key to understanding who/what we are, for we are creatures as natural as any other. But there’s a fundamental problem here, and that is the rise of civilization a little over 5,000 years ago. What happened to us then?

To some people being civilized is what makes us fully human. That has been a convenient excuse, anyhow, for the subjugation of more primitive peoples through the millennia – those with less sophisticated means of conducting war that is to say. But I don’t abide by that prejudice. In fact, I suspect that more primitive peoples, living closer to the earth, are much more in touch with their humanity than those of us living indoor, urban lives, staring at our electronic devices, largely removed from nature.

It is now widely accepted in scientific circles that anatomically modern humans have been around over 100,000 years. That is, people who look pretty much like humans living today. About 50,000 years ago, our species underwent a great cultural transformation that resulted in behaviorally modern humans. That is, people who think, behave and interact with each other much the same way we do. Up until 10,000 years ago, we were all hunter/gatherers with an intimate understanding of the flora and fauna around us. In that regard, our being agriculturalists and urbanites – the two pillars of civilization – is a relatively new development with little bearing upon our basic humanity, if any at all.

I don’t believe for a second that pre-civilized life was some kind of Eden where human beings lived in peace with each other, always prosperous, healthy and happy, and in complete harmony with nature. The human bone and skull fragments our archeologists have dug up pretty much rule out all that. But there is something about those living closer to the earth that undercuts the arrogant and grossly misleading presumptions that we highly civilized folk have about ourselves and the world.

Soon I will try to write about this subject, if I can muster the humility, honesty and courage to do so. But I don’t think the resulting book will be very popular, even by the modest standards of my somewhat dubious literary career. Generally speaking, those of us firmly ensconced in today’s complex, industrialized and digital world do not respect our distant ancestors, or the remnant bands of hunter/gatherers who still live as they did. Our collective arrogance in that regard is profound. We civilized folk think we have it all going on.

Tags: being human, civilization, human nature, hunter/gatherers, nature, prehistory, wildness

After three days building shelves to expand my book biz, I figured it was time to treat myself. So I loaded Matika into the car and headed for a patch of nearby woods for an easy hike.

It was more of a walk, really, since I had my old dog in tow. I don’t break a sweat any more when I’m with her. That’s okay. I’ve started hiking without her whenever I want to get some real exercise. But this morning it was all about the two of us just being in the woods together, grooving on the wild.

We’re in the cusp between spring and summer now. The dames rocket flowering in ditches along the highway are proof of that, as is the sudden appearance of Canada mayflower and dewberry in the woods. “Days of heaven” is what I call this time of year, because it doesn’t get any better than this: ideal temps, vernal green, flowers blooming, and all the delights of summer directly ahead.

I love a woodsy walk. I love the play of shadow and light in the cool, green understory, along with the rich smell of forest growth and decay, and the sound of leaves rustling in the canopy overhead. I stopped by a beaver pond long enough to listen to veerys, thrushes, and other songbirds while basking in the joy of simply being alive. Oh sure, I have my concerns – doesn’t everyone? – but they didn’t phase me in that moment. And that’s the great thing about a walk in the woods. One draws quiet strength from it.

Matika was panting heavily by the time we finished our walk. All the same, I know she enjoyed being in the woods as much as I did. It doesn’t take much to make her happy. It doesn’t take much to make me happy, either. A patch of nearby woods does the trick.

Tags: forest, happiness, walking, walking with dogs