Woods Wanderer

After parking my car where Preston Brook spills into the Winooski River Valley, I hike the narrow dirt road up a steep grade into Honey Hollow.  There’s a dusting of snow on the ground and flurries in the air, but I’m dead set upon finding springtime here on this early April day.  I follow a deer trail down to the brook once I’m above the gorge.  The trail empties into a small clearing a short while later, where a hungry deer have foraged beneath a lone apple tree.  From there it’s an easy bushwhack along the stream, back to the base of Camel’s Hump – my favorite Green Mountain.  I set a steady pace to keep from wearing out too quickly.

I’m looking for signs of eternal renewal but my dog, Matika, doesn’t care.  Any day in the woods is a good one to her.  She leaps over a feeder stream, does a 180, then leaps over it again for the sheer joy of leaping.  She scratches here and there, sniffs, and runs about wildly.  She couldn’t be happier.  As for me, well, I’m halfway between being in my body and in my head – between sensual awareness and philosophical abstraction.  I hope to tip the balance towards the sensual before day’s end.

Preston Brook roars as spring runoff cascades through the rocks.  It is a bank-full tumult of whitewater racing out of the mountains, teasing me with mere glimpses of its clear, green pools.  This stream won’t be fishable for another month, but already my thoughts have turned towards the speckled trout lurking in dark corners just beneath the surface.  Icicles dangle from the moss-covered trees that have fallen across the torrent.  I look for a stonefly shuck amid the rocks along the stream’s edge but don’t find one there.  Soon, very soon.

Beneath my feet, the ground is soft, spongy, and covered with forest detritus.  In wetter places, I sink up to my ankles in mud.  While stepping over blowdown, I notice tiny, club-shaped reproductive organs arising from a patch of moss – a sure sign that the growing season has commenced.  The Christmas ferns, polypody, and evergreen woodferns pressed to the ground by winter are starting to rebound.  Deep green clubmoss pokes through patches of snow, making me think of a different era when the growing season was very short, indeed. And for a split second I feel Neolithic – fresh from the Ice Age.

Coltsfoot appears suddenly before me on a mudslide.  I am shocked by its tight curl of yellow petals on the verge of opening.  Already?  A bit later I spot a robin on the branch of a young maple tree – something common in the lowlands this time of year but rare here in the mountains.  Looking around, I notice the hemlocks adding welcome color to an otherwise brown and gray forest.  I thank them for it.  My eyes hunger for green.

Miles deep in the hollow, I take a seat next to the brook and rest.  Matika has a cup of kibbles for lunch while I eat a handful of nuts, a granola bar and a few pretzels.  Before long I’m chilled by my own sweat, so I pack up then tag the narrow dirt road for a long walk out.  I daydream along the muddy lane, recollecting other walks here in years past – many, many walks.  Growing older isn’t so bad.  My vault of pleasant memories overflows.

Through a break in the trees, I see Bone Mountain in the distance looking very cold and gray.  No matter.  A gust of warm wind blowing up from the Winooski River Valley reminds me what time of year it is.  I pass a dozen green shoots of wild lilies breaking through the earth.  Then I smile.  Yeah, it’s that time of year and I can feel a vital part of me thawing.  And before I get back to my car, I’m already planning my next outing.  This time of year, I can’t get enough of it.

Tags: awareness, Green Mountains, hiking, signs of spring

Thunderstorms have been ravaging the area for days, making it hard to get out. So when a window of fair weather emerged this morning, I took advantage of it. I loaded my dog, Matika, into the car and headed for the Rail Trail just a few miles north of town.

The well-groomed gravel path underfoot made it easy to stretch my legs. I worked up a sweat in no time. Yeah, I was making tracks and loving it, but just couldn’t stay on the trail. The cool, shady forest on either side of the path was calling my name. So I trespassed. I ignored the signs telling me to stay away and then, when no one was looking, followed a game trail into the dense woods.

Matika kept charging ahead of me and I kept calling her back. That made it hard to be quiet – my preferred mode of travel whenever I trespass. I spotted someone’s homestead through the trees and changed course. I heard the buzz of a chainsaw, then I veered away. When I saw light breaking through the forest directly ahead, I turned back towards the Rail Trail. I’d had enough. Sometimes a bushwhack is full of pleasant surprises. Other times it’s a bust.

There are a lot more “No Trespassing” signs in the countryside today than there were twenty-five years ago when I moved to Vermont. As more and more people flock here from the crowded cities along the Eastern Seaboard, more land gets posted. This is only natural, I suppose. But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to accept. Soon a guy like me won’t be able to legally wander anywhere except on town, state or federal land. In other words, the freedom of the hills is in heavy retreat before precious property rights. Hunters have known this for years, but now even woodswalkers are starting to feel the pinch. It’s a turn of events that would greatly trouble Thoreau if he were alive today.

Up the Rail Trail a short way, I came to a large wetland and watched for wildlife for a while. A few bullfrogs croaked from the cattails and thrushes sang from the woods behind me. Otherwise the place was quiet. Matika plunged into a pool of muddy water just for the hell of it. I enjoyed the evening primrose, bladder campion, St. Johnswort and other wildflowers growing along the path as I walked back to the car. The sky filled with clouds. We reached the car before they opened up. It was good getting out, but the unwelcoming signs put a damper on things. Oh well. Next time I’ll go someplace wilder.

Tags: hiking, Vermont

I have a confession to make: I do phantom trail work. Only once, a dozen years ago, did I join other people from the local chapter of the Green Mountain Club and clear a five-mile section of Vermont’s Long Trail of brush, downed trees and other forest debris. Since then I’ve been soloing it. It’s a habit developed more out of compulsion than a sense of duty. I don’t premeditate it, I just do it on occasion as I’m hiking.

I’ve opened up water bars plugged with leaf litter. I’ve kicked fallen limbs off the trail and man-hauled more than one dropped tree out of the way – small ones, of course. Every once in a while, usually while hiking in the rain, I dig a new water bar, thus diverting water that’s eroding the trail. I’ve cleaned up more fire pits and broken down more abandoned campfire circles than I care to recall. I’ve picked up and hauled away my own weight in trash over the years. Why? I dunno. Because someone has to do it. Because I’m an old Boy Scout. Because I know that no hiking club has enough manpower to do everything that needs to be done when it comes to trail maintenance.

Certainly the thing to do, if you’re the least bit interested in helping out, is to contact your local hiking club and get on an organized trail maintenance outing. That way your efforts will go where they are needed the most. Besides, you’ll meet some nice people in the process – others like you who care about the woods. But if you’re a loner like me, why not kick a stick aside every once in a while?

Last May, I hiked a section of the Long Trail shortly after the snow melted. I was out there just a tad earlier than I should have been and left a few deep, long-lasting bootprints where the trail was still very soft and muddy. Partly out of penance for my thoughtlessness, I cleared that section of debris.

I don’t feel comfortable bragging about the good deeds I’ve done on the trail then advising others to follow suit. Personally, I find that kind of self-righteousness nauseating. And it’s usually disingenuous. But I can’t help but think that the world would be a better place if more people would just help out on the sly, in the woods or elsewhere, when no one’s looking.

I don’t believe in an otherworldly heaven where we are rewarded for our good works after we die. But I do believe that we can experience something like heaven right here and now, especially in the wild. Often when I pick up a piece of trash along the trail, I daydream about some young pilgrim wandering through the woods, right behind me perhaps, experiencing a sense of deep-forest heaven for the very first time. I like to think the absence of obstacles or trailside trash will help that pilgrim stay in the mode just a little bit longer.

Humankind has enormous problems to contend with. Mass extinction, global warming, overpopulation, genocide, gross resource mismanagement – the list of serious concerns is long. I’m not so foolish as to think that a little trail maintenance will make any difference in the greater scheme of things. But it can’t hurt. And you never know who will be on the trail behind you. Maybe it’ll be a five-year-old who deserves to see the wild in a pristine state or as close to that as possible. Maybe the next Gandhi. You never know.

Tags: hiking, Long Trail

French Hill is only four miles away from my doorstep. With gas over $4 a gallon, I’ve been going there on a more regular basis. The main spine of the Green Mountains is thirty miles away so a trip to it now costs as much as a movie ticket. That’s food for thought.

French Hill isn’t much of a hill, really. It’s a long, broad ridge just east of my home town. It’s roughly two square miles of undeveloped woods, destined to become a town forest someday. Not exactly wilderness, but when cash for gas is tight, it’ll do. A couple days ago, I entered it by the main logging road, then bushwhacked along a due north compass bearing, occassionally catching a glimpse of the beaver pond located in the heart of those woods. Eventually I tagged a trail and followed it northeast. My dog, Matika, led the way – her nose close to the ground, sniffing fresh deer tracks. The warm, still air made us both easy prey for deer flies.

While swatting away flies, I thought about how actions taken by those living on the other side of the planet were now changing my behavior. The increasing demand for energy in China, India and other emerging economies has driven the price of oil over $100 a barrel during the past year, so now here I am, hiking closer to home more often than not. Although I’m a passionate advocate of Yankee individualism, I can’t ignore the reality of globalism – a force that has become increasingly more powerful since the end of the Cold War and the birth of the Internet. To what extent will it redefine me? To what extent will it redefine all of humankind?

The opponents to globalism come in a variety of flavors: Luddites, environmentalists, trade unionists, nationalists, small businessmen, religious fundamentalists, indigenous peoples, local farmers, leftists, reactionaries and so on. One would be hard-pressed to find anything these groups have in common other than their fear of homogenization and multinational corporations taking over the world. But I’m convinced that stopping globalism is akin to keeping the sun from rising in the morning. It’s a force greater than any nation, group, business or individual, and it’s going to change us all whether we like it or not.

After passing through an open meadow, I noticed that the half dozen deer flies buzzing around Matika’s head had thickened into a small cloud of them. Because my long-haired German shepherd heats up faster than I do, she was getting the worst of these critters. So more for her sake than mine, I cut the exploratory hike short. I turned southward and looped back to the car. I’d stretched my legs for a few miles, touched base with the wild, and that was enough for the time being.

During the short drive home, I resolved to head for the mountains soon, expensive gas or no. All the same, that won’t change the global situation, or make it any easier to ignore what’s going on around me. Now more than ever, I feel a sense of responsibility to do whatever small part I can to direct the forces of globalism, inasmuch as they can be directed, so that they do more good than harm. Tall order, I realize, but the alternative isn’t acceptable. I’m not one to look backwards and pine for the good old days. Bring on the future whatever it may be.

Tags: globalism, hiking, Vermont