Woods Wanderer

Critics here in Vermont say that the huge wind turbines atop our beloved Green Mountains are not just an eyesore, they kill birds and disrupt the forest ecology as well. Solar power is viable as long as the sun is shining, but it’s expensive, isn’t it? Biofuels threaten our food supply. Hydro power screws up our streams. Coal and oil are both dirty, of course. Natural gas is clean, as fossil fuels go, but fracking pollutes the ground water. Nuclear power is both clean and cheap… until the plants leak and it’s time to shut them down. Burning wood is great until you run out of trees. So what does that leave? Tidal power? Hydrogen? Cold fusion?

Have to get our power from somewhere. There are seven billion people on the planet and counting. The demand for power is growing much faster in industrializing countries like India and China than it is in the highly consumptive West. In the near future, humanity will need more power, not less. So where are we going to get it?

Climate change is the sword of Damocles hanging over us. The more we mess with Mother Nature, the more she messes with us. It’s just a matter of time before all hell breaks loose. Can we avoid global catastrophe? Collectively we seem to lack the political will to do so. Besides, denial runs strong and deep among those who immediately benefit from the status quo, and they cast just enough doubt on the subject to keep the rest of us complacent.  More to the point, it’s hard for the average person to think beyond what he or she is paying at the gas pump.

So what are we to do? Gnash our teeth and say we’re all doomed? Protest our least favorite energy source? Blame those whose economies are stronger than ours? Simply ignore the situation?

Clearly we have plenty of choices, there’s just no perfect solution. The big question is this: Do we have moral courage enough to make the best possible choices for our great grandchildren? I’ll leave that for you to ponder, dear reader, and keep my cynicism to myself.

Tags: choices, climate change, environmentalism, global warming, globalism, human nature, renewable energy, social change, the environment, the human condition

Just before dawn, I open the back door for my dog then follow her out.  I laugh as she chases a pair of rabbits to the fence.  The grass is cool to my bare feet but not cold.  The robins sing joyfully their early morning song, as if the sun rising was a long awaited event.  Matika grins from ear to ear.  Perhaps she is as excited as I am by the unfurling of leaves in the trees, and the long promise of the warm season that comes with it.

In an hour I’ll mobilize for work, but right now I’m grooving on the quiet wonder of wild nature right here in my back yard.  This would be a good day to hike in the mountains, I tell myself.  That’s out of the question, of course.  Duty calls.  All you 9-to-5 working stiffs out there know the feeling well, I’m sure.  But it’s new to me.  I just started working full time, you see.  For eighteen years I had only a part-time job.

I’ve had a good run.  I worked, then hiked, then wrote, then hiked some more, then wrote some more.  It was good while it lasted.  But all good things must end, right?  They do unless you strike it rich, and that hasn’t been my fate.  My dream of being able to support myself by writing alone turned out to be just that – a dream.  Perhaps if I had been a journalist, or a novelist working in some popular genre, or hip enough to catch the eye of the established literati I could have made a go at it.  But writing about the wild doesn’t get you there – not the way I do it, anyhow.  So here I am looking at a new day.  That’s okay.  I’ve been true to myself.  And thanks to my infinitely patient wife, Judy, I’ve had a very good run.

The fresh verdure thickening in the trees is more beautiful than I remember it.  That’s the way things always are at a new beginning.  We forget the charm of springtime during the winter months.  We forget the magnificence of daybreak no matter how many times we’ve seen it before.  Every day is some kind of miracle.  Okay, maybe that’s not true, but things certainly seem that way whenever I’m standing barefoot in my back yard at daybreak and listening to songbirds.  I could curse the gods, longing for that which I do not have, but I’m not going there today.  No, not today.

Tags: backyard nature, choices, springtime, the writing life, wild beauty

After running errands in Burlington, I went to Indian Brook Reservoir to exercise my dog and stretch my legs.  It was already late afternoon by the time I reached the trailhead.  The dark gray sky overhead made it seem even later in the day than it was.  No matter.  With less than an hour of light left, Matika and I headed down the trail.

Deer hunting season is in full swing now.  My wife had insisted that I take blaze orange with me, at least for the dog.  Good thing I did.  Without it I wouldn’t have risked taking Matika into those twilight woods.  Should have had some blaze orange on myself as well.   I made my dog stay close at hand, more for my protection than for hers.

Mine was the only car in the parking lot.  Matika and I were the only creatures afoot – the only visible ones, anyhow.  A rare thing, indeed, on an otherwise busy trail.  I reveled in this unexpected solitude, until the last bit of daylight piercing through the clouds faded away.  That’s when I started thinking I should get back to the car.  By then Matika and I were a mile into the woods.

With the air temperature well above 50 degrees, it felt more like September than November.  But the defoliated trees and the shortness of the day told the real story.  Everywhere I looked: stark and uninviting woods.  The slippery mud underfoot made for slow going.  By the time I reached the feeder stream at the far end of the reservoir, the forest was dark.

Having hiked this trail many times before, I navigated it more by memory than sight.  That’s the big advantage of experience.  You come to know what to expect.  Without even seeing them, I knew where all the treacherous spots in that trail were.  I also knew that hurrying out of the dark forest would only increase my chances of falling down, so I took my time.  And I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the walk.  Life’s better when it has an edge to it.  Just a little, that is.  Just enough to vanquish petty concerns.

Daylight had completely vanished by the time my dog and I reached the parking lot.  Matika didn’t care and neither did I.  We were both happy to have hiked while we could.  We shared the liter of water that I had on hand, then climbed into the car.  I drove home by headlights, making sure to call my wife so that she wouldn’t worry.  Next time I’ll make sure to hike earlier in the day.  But darkness often comes sooner than expected this time of year.  Whatever.  I take my small pleasures when I can.

Tags: choices, expectations, forest solitude, happiness, hiking with dogs

Sometimes I step into the woods to commune with nature and renew my spirit.  Other times I do it for the exercise.  I don’t like to run but I do like to hike.  So when it’s time to give my flabby, fifty-something body a workout, I grab my pack and head for the nearest mountain.

Make no mistake about it.  Hiking up a fair-sized mountain will give you just as much of a workout as a good run.  It takes longer, that’s all.

I don’t know how many times I’ve hiked up Jay Peak.  I climb it at least once a year just to see what kind of shape I’m in. The hike is 1.7 miles one way; a roughly 1600-foot rise from trailhead to summit.  I can usually get up it in an hour and twenty minutes.  My fastest time is an hour and ten.  It took an hour and a half this time around.  Nothing says “You’re out of shape” to me like those simple numbers.

Most people hike mountains for the exercise, the view, and the sense of accomplishment that bagging a peak brings.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like the view as much as the next guy.  And yes, of course, standing on a summit makes my day.  But as I get older, I do it more for the exercise than anything else.  I charge up mountains as if desperately escaping the Grim Reaper.  I figure that I’ll live to be a hundred if I climb enough mountains, all medical surprises notwithstanding.  Okay, maybe 90 or 85.

It’s more a matter of quality of life than quantity, really.  I don’t want to spend my old age bedridden or plugged to a machine if I can avoid it.  And I know I won’t be able to afford all those marvelous pills out there.  At any rate, I figure that hiking now is cheaper than taking pills later on.  Besides, it’s much more fun.

We all make choices.  Too many people choose by default – not looking ahead, not considering the consequences, or simply not dealing with it.  I have an inner tube of fat around my mid-section proving that I too have made many choices by default, opting for a cookie instead of a carrot, an hour in front of the tv or computer instead of an hour sweating.  We all make bad choices at one point or another.  But there comes a moment when physical reality smacks you up the side of the head.  Then you make a choice, consciously or otherwise, to either change your ways or stay the course.

My moment of realization came halfway up Jay a couple days ago, when I was week-legged, sweating profusely, and gasping for air.  Time to lose the inner tube, I told myself.  So there will probably be more mountains in my future.  Either that or I’ll become Jabba the Hut.

Tags: choices, Green Mountains, hiking, physical exercise