Woods Wanderer

The morning after doing a reading and book-signing event in Saratoga Springs, I drove over to Saratoga National Park. Thanks to the government shutdown, brought to us by those bumbling fools in Congress, the park was closed. That made it irresistible to me, unrepentant trespasser that I am.

I followed the Wilkinson Trail through the battlefield, kicking up heavy dew along the way. Crickets chirped incessantly. The sun rose steadily into a partly cloudy sky, illuminating the brilliant orange, gold and rust-colored foliage. Deer watched me intently from the edge of the trees. A woodpecker knocked in the distance. Otherwise all was quiet and still.

Upon reaching the Breymann Redoubt, a slight rise in the rolling landscape where a field gun stood, I felt the distinct presence of ghosts – of those who fought and died for ideas so revolutionary that they seem as impossible today as they did 236 years ago. Here the tide turned.

In a document written by those idealists a year earlier, they had claimed: “All men are created equal… endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And in October of 1777, on this knoll, they defeated an army of the most powerful nation on earth to make their point.

There are people living today who think it was all about taxes. Either they just don’t get it, or they’re too damned selfish to accept what “We the People” really means. As fiercely self-reliant as I may be as a woods wanderer, I know where my freedom comes from and how tenuous it is these days.

As I finished my walk, a park ranger came along and informed me that I had to leave. I gave him no trouble, not wanting to make his job any harder than it already was. I could tell from our brief exchange of words, though, that he was no happier than me about the recent turn of events in Washington. Clearly “We the People” are not being served well by our elected officials. It’s a sorry state of affairs to be sure.

Tags: American Revolution, freedom, government shutdown, trespassing, woods wandering

On a perfect day in early October, it seemed a crime to stay indoors. After running errands in Burlington yesterday, I drove out to Indian Brook Reservoir for a midday walk. I had my dog, Matika with me, of course.

I didn’t realize how tightly wound I was until I put a half mile of trail behind me. By then the dryleaf smell of the woods, the incessant, high-pitched trill of crickets, and the multicolored foliage had worked their magic. My nerves unraveled.

As I walked around the far end of the reservoir, I started daydreaming. Or was it just my overactive mind sorting things out and settling down? Whatever. The result was the same. By the time I had passed the beaver ponds and was heading back towards the parking lot, I felt strangely calm. Didn’t even mind the many people and dogs encountered along the way.

I often write about the healing power of deep woods and the perspective gained by sustained exposure to the wild, but one doesn’t have to go to such great lengths to benefit from nature. Sometimes an hour walk in a park on the edge of town will do.

Time obsession is the great plague of our culture. We scramble to make the most of our time. We multi-task. We cram our days full of activities. There is never enough time. And when finally we do relax, we usually do so with some intoxicant and/or electronic media. But it is never quite enough. Only fresh air and a little sweat does the trick, really. Amazing how easy it is to forget that.

Tags: fall foliage, relaxation, reverie, time, walking

There comes a time when nothing here in the developed lowlands can cure what ails me, when I must load a few essentials into my backpack and head for the hills. It doesn’t have to be a vast wilderness area. Any pocket of wild woods will do.

I go alone. No one but my dog Matika accompanies me, that is. She makes good company in the woods because she’s not human.

I hike for several hours, sweating away much of my frustration with what passes for civilization. Then I start looking for a good place to camp. By the time I am comfortably ensconced in the woods, it is getting on towards evening. I build a fire to cook dinner. Afterward, as the sun is setting, I slip into campfire meditation.

Flames dance inside a small circle of stones at my feet. I feed thumb-sized sticks into the fire to keep it going. Placement is essential otherwise the pan-sized fire will quickly burn out. I pay careful attention. Eventually random thoughts give way to something else, to a deep calm, to clarity.

Hours pass. The moon rises, an owl hoots in the distance, the nearby feeder stream gurgles, and all is right with the world. When I start running low on wood, I let the fire burn down to embers. Then I put it out. But in the morning I do it all over again – this time with a pen and field journal in hand. Campfire meditation becomes campfire philosophy. And that’s pretty much what I’m all about.

Tags: campfire, clarity, meditation, philosophy, rumination, the woods

September is a great month for hiking. The bugs are down, the air is cool, and there aren’t as many people in the woods. Yet there’s something ominous about the natural world this time of year – something that gets my attention before I’m distracted by the brilliant display of autumnal color.

I see it in the blue and white asters that grow along the trail. I feel it in a chilling gust of wind. I smell it – a whiff of fungus, aged foliage and dry earth filling my nostrils. The long, languid days of summer are behind us. And while it’ll be a month or two before the first snow flies here in the Champlain Valley, there’s no doubt that the growing season is coming to an end.

These days a walk through the woods is a walk through shadows and light. The canopy overhead is thick, but sunbeams still get through. More to the point, the day is noticeably short, bookended by what seems like longer periods of twilight. And an overcast day that I would have shrugged off in midsummer really affects me now.

None of this is cause for alarm. Autumn is a good time to be outdoors and it is just now beginning. But I find myself more pensive during my walks this time of year. While the fruits of the land are being harvested, I take stock. I ruminate. I ponder matters at length now – matters that seemed too heavy to even consider when the thermometer was pushing 90 degrees. My mind these days is also a curious blend of shadows and light.

No cause for alarm at all. My frame of mind is merely changing with the season. The best months for thinking lie directly ahead. For a guy like me, who wonders as much as he wanders, that’s a good thing.

Tags: hiking, light, rumination, seasonal change

Yesterday, while I was out promoting my Adirondack book, a fellow asked me what my next adventure would be. I told him that I wanted to do the Cohos Trail in northern New Hampshire. Would I be hiking it alone? he inquired. No, I told him, my dog Matika will be accompanying me. He looked at me like I was crazy.

I have a few friends whose company I enjoy on the trail, and I like going out with my wife Judy every once in a while, but Matika is my #1 hiking companion. She’s my #1 fishing companion, too. In fact, during the past seven years, she has been with me on nearly every outing. Usually I mention her sniffing around in the background. Occasionally I write about her at length. Sometimes I don’t mention her at all. But she is almost always there.

Matika is a long-haired German shepherd that Judy and I rescued from an animal shelter in 2006. Her origin is hazy but we know the breed. We had another dog like her several years earlier. When we rescued her, the vet told us she was about a year old. In dog years, that makes her about my age now. If we’re going to do another trek together, we’d better do it soon.

Matika is smart, quite attentive, and gentle. She’s a good dog. She’s bossy with other dogs, though – a trait I haven’t been able to correct. She loves people. I can’t help but feel she’d make a good companion to a good number of dog handlers. But it’s my good fortune (and Judy’s) to have her in my life.

Matika loves the woods as much as I do. She also likes her soft bed and other creature comforts so I had my doubts about her penchant for wildness at first. But that doubt vanished when she hiked the 100 Mile Wilderness with me. After that trek, I’ve called her Wilderness Dog. And for the most part she has lived up to the name.

We’ve walked many brooks, bushwhacked, and hiked countless miles together. We’ve been overheated, bug-bitten, cold, rain-soaked, and muddy together more often than I care to recall. She’s slept with me beneath the tarp so many times that it would seem strange now to sleep under it without her. Matika is not my pet. Nor am I her master. She’s my canine companion, and there is no one who understands my wildness better, my wife notwithstanding.

Who is going with me on the Cohos Trail?  Wilderness Dog, of course. And that seems perfectly natural to me.

Tags: canine companion, hiking with dogs, Matika, wildness

Every summer Judy and I have all six of our grandkids for four or five days. No parents allowed. We play, go fishing and swimming, do crafts, camp in the back yard, watch movies, and eat all the wrong food. It’s a lot of work, but there’s no better way to get to know them.

Now that the youngest ones are able to hike, we’ve started taking the kids into the woods. Now it feels like they’re getting to know me. The forest is my element. Walking with them in the tracks of wild animals, teaching them how to navigate trails while pointing out the wonders along the way, well, it doesn’t get any better than that. Not for me, anyhow.

This year we went for a short hike along the Long Trail – my old stomping ground. We split into two groups. The more restless ones speed-hiked with me to Prospect Rock, while Judy meandered along the trail with the rest. Judy’s group grooved on mushrooms and everything else they found along the way. My group enjoyed physical exertion and a good view from the ledge. We got back together for a picnic lunch beneath the footbridge spanning the Lamoille River. There the kids found crayfish and some interesting rocks. Yes, rocks: quartz, mica and the rest. Even in the digital age, kids find rocks fascinating.

After lunch, while finishing the hike at a much slower pace, we checked out a cave, collected hardened sap from a wounded tree, and gathered more rocks. Jewelweed growing in wet places caught their attention so I showed them how to capture the tiny, almond-like seeds that shoot out of their pods when they’re touched. It was a lot of fun. They were surprised by how good the seeds tasted. Then I showed them how to use the plant’s juices as a salve for mosquito bites and other itchy skin. They were impressed by that. And I couldn’t have been happier.

Tags: hiking with children, Long Trail, wild nature

As I go around talking about the deep woods and all it has to offer, I often think about those who can’t reach it. One has to be ambulatory and in relatively good shape to hike several miles into a wilderness area. But there are ways that even people who use a wheelchair can access the wild.

Everything at John Dillon Park is handicap accessible – the shelters, trails, picnic areas, fishing access and kayak dock. Located on land owned by International Paper, halfway between Tupper Lake and Long Lake in the Adirondacks, this is one of the nicest parks I’ve ever seen. And the folks at Paul Smith College do a great job managing it.

I stayed overnight here while promoting my book last week. I was amazed by the place. At the end of a two-mile dirt road, John Dillon Park rests on the shores of Grampus Lake. Here anyone can experience the wonder and beauty of the northern forest. With free firewood, storage bins for food and trash, composting toilets, and potable water, it is primitive camping at its best.

At first I was hesitant to stay here, not wanting to take a shelter away from someone who could put it to better use. But this small, private park, only seven years old, is underutilized. So check out the John Dillon Park website and spread the word.

Tags: Adirondacks, handicap accessible, hiking, John Dillon Park, primitive camping, the wild

A few days ago I went to a favorite brook to do a little fly fishing. Trout season had opened three and a half months earlier. I hadn’t been out yet. An outing was long overdue.

My dog Matika was with me, of course. When I grabbed her leash, she knew it was going to be a good day.

It mattered little whether or not I’d actually catch fish. Like Matika, I just wanted to sniff around. Yeah, the smell of the forest and the sound of cool, clear water tumbling through it is reason enough to be on a stream.

A mountain brook in late summer charms a guy like me in a way that is difficult to describe. My mind empties as I scramble from one promising riffle to another, stalking the wild trout, until suddenly I am face-to-face with unspeakable beauty: a flume, overhanging cliff, waterfall, or some deep, quiet pool that I must show my wife Judy someday. Then a hungry mouth splashes towards my fly, yanking me out of my reverie.

I’m not a very good fisherman. The rising trout usually catches me by surprise. I am easily distracted by the call of a thrush in the distance, the rustle of a forest creature in the nearby understory, or a wildflower blooming along the rocky bank where only moss should grow.

Two small trout landed in my lap despite my best efforts, not because of them. Then I meandered up the brook a while longer, rod in hand but no longer fishing, in search of god-only-knows-what. Deep within lies some vague desire to walk the brook for no reason at all. Sometimes I give into it.

I quit the stream around midday, hiking through the forest to the nearest road then daydreaming back towards the car. No doubt other motorists were cursing me as I slowly made my way home. Under the influence of the wild, I shouldn’t have been on the road.

Tags: fly fishing, mountain brook, reverie, summer, the wild, trout fishing

I stepped away from my desk this morning to go for a hike.  It wasn’t a long hike – just long enough to remember who/what I am.

The moment I slipped into the woods I felt a tremendous sense of relief, as if a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders.  It’s always this way.  I am a denizen of the forest, first and foremost. Not so much a trekker, naturalist or adventurer as a simple woods wanderer. I wander, then wonder, then sit down to write about it all.

The other day a newspaper writer asked me to send a photo of myself to to accompany a short news release about my new book. She wanted a shot of me backpacking through the woods – an action shot, I suppose, or something where I look the part. I sent her  a photo of me sitting against a rock at trail’s end, instead. Lost in thought and scribbling in my journal, with by my dog Matika by my side. Yeah, that’s who I am.

A big part of book promotion, or any kind of promotion for that matter, is branding the work and its creator. In our culture of media hype, this cannot be avoided. That said, it is important to remain true to oneself, otherwise one can quickly become lost. The forest keeps me oriented. I can’t imagine trying to make sense of the world without it.

My dog knows who I am. She was with me during that grueling hike across the 100 Mile Wilderness. She has been with me on countless excursions since then. If she could be my publicist and speak for me, I’d be all set.

My wife Judy also knows who I am. After all, she’s the one who took that photo of me at trail’s end. She caught me by surprise that day, before I struck an inauthentic and self-conscious pose. Spouses are good at that.

Tags: hiking, identity, media hype, nature writing, the forest

My brother Greg drove all the way from Ohio to visit Judy and me, and to reacquaint himself with Vermont. He lived here for several years so he knows well what this part of the country has to offer. Seeing waterfalls and mountains, and doing a little antique hunting were on his to do list, but when temperatures climbed into the 90s, a cool stream grew more appealing. We grabbed a picnic lunch and headed for one yesterday.

Judy had to work so she couldn’t go. My dog Matika had nothing on her calendar, though. She was happy to escape the hot, stuffy house for a day. As soon as we reached the Brewster River, I tossed a tennis ball in the water and she went after it with a vengeance. Matika’s not a big one for playing in the water, but she likes both playing ball and staying cool. I kept throwing the ball. She kept going in after it.

The Brewster River is more of a mountain stream than a river, actually. Its clear, cool water flows out of Smugglers Notch, making it a good place to be during a midsummer heat wave. The dozen cars in the parking lot convinced us that we weren’t the only ones who had figured this out. No matter. We hiked in flip-flops up the trail following the stream until we found a nice pool to call our own. We didn’t have to go far.

I gravitated to a small, sandy beach in the shade next to the pool. Greg went directly to the two-foot waterfall feeding the pool to groove on fast-moving water. We both got sufficiently wet then lounged on big flat rocks, completely chilled out. Yeah, this is the thing to do in Vermont on a hot summer day. Hard to beat. Leave the more sophisticated entertainments for another day.

Tags: mountain stream, summer, Vermont