Woods Wanderer

To treat Lyme Disease, I took two powerful antibiotics for a month. That seemed to do the trick, but the friendly microbes inside me became collateral damage in the process, so I ended up with a fungal infection. Treated that next. Declaring myself well again, I went for a short, easy hike in early September up Prospect Rock. That wiped me out. That’s when I realized I wasn’t out of the woods yet – not healthy enough to do the things I usually do, that is.

Then my wife Judy suddenly tested positive for Covid. A few days later, so did I. That kept me moping around the house for a week and a half. I was tired, yes, but mine seemed like a relatively mild case. So yesterday, when I tested negative, I went for a short, easy walk in the nearby town forest.

Even though I set a deliberately slow pace, creeping along the trail like an old man, I broke a sweat after going no more than half a mile. And my whole body ached. I enjoyed being in the lush, quiet forest all the same, putting one foot in front of another. I spooked a deer. That was a pleasant surprise. But the tick I pulled from my neck wasn’t. That only reminded me how I became so worn down in the first place.

Bugs, fungi, microbes, and viruses. There are more of these life-forms in the natural world than all the birds, flowers, furry animals, and other things that we love so much. A lot more. Truth is, they are more a part of what we are and how we live than any of us care to admit. In this regard, the world we inhabit is as horrifying as it is wonderful.

The splash of color that I saw in the trees at the small pond during my walk saddened me. Autumn is here already; summer is long gone. It feels like I’ve been cheated out of the best two months of it. And I’m still not really IN the woods yet. It’ll be a few more weeks before I’m back to my old hiking self. That’s no big deal in the greater scheme of things, I suppose. Life goes on.

Tags: Covid, fall color, hiking, life-forms, Lyme disease, microbes, nature

Sunlight became noticeably dimmer as the moon gradually obscured the sun. Temps dropped several degrees. I sat in the backyard with my wife, granddaughter and her partner, watching the event slowly unfold. ISO solar sunglasses enabled us to look directly at that object in the sky usually too bright to observe. The thinnest sliver of the sun was enough to maintain the normalcy of day.

When the moon completely blocked the sun from view, the world suddenly slipped into twilight. This came as something of a surprise, even though we’d been anticipating it for months, along with millions of other people. A muted ring of light appeared where the sun was supposed to be. A sunset glow along the horizon completely surrounded us. Birds fell silent, frogs started peeping from springtime pools nearby, and the mosquitoes came out. The forest beyond our grassy backyard took on the dank nighttime smell of early spring.

With my binoculars, I glassed the sun’s corona, surprised to see fiery solar protrusions reaching deep into space. But that was not nearly as surprising as the sudden flash of sunlight that appeared, bringing the total eclipse to an end. Then it was daylight again. The birds and everyone else went back about their business. Only the mosquitoes remained to confirm what we had experienced.

In the distance someone shot off fireworks when the total eclipse began. That rendered mundane what would have otherwise been a sacred event. And rightly so. Most people cannot tolerate the Unspeakable, especially when it is shoved into their face. They have to make light of it.

Two days later, it’s as if that remarkable celestial event never happened. Everything is back to normal, and that ghostly ring in the dark sky is only a memory, a photographic image. Still there are a few of us keenly aware that we live on a planet with an orbiting moon, circling a star in a cosmos too vast to comprehend. Call it nature and leave it at that.

Tags: celestial event, nature, solar eclipse, springtime, the unspeakable

Thanks to a little encouragement from my literary friends, I have just released a new poetry collection. Behold the Unspeakable features what I think are the best poems that I wrote over four decades, along with those penned during the past few years. There are selections from A Hungry Happiness in this collection, along with verse from Pagan Fishing and various chapbooks published in my youth that are way out of print. A lot of ground is covered here.

True to the title, some of these poems flirt with metaphysical matters. Most of them – not all – have something to do with the natural world and how it has made me the woods wanderer and head-scratcher that I am today. Clearly this is a work of a mad poet who has spent too much time in wild places. Readers beware!

This book is now available at Amazon.com. It can also be purchased at my website, woodthrushbooks.com. Check it out.

Tags: metaphysics, nature, poetry, wilderness

A dense fog has settled over the region during the past few days, accompanied by unseasonably warm temps and intermittent rain. “Gloomy” is how one weather forecaster describes it, and that’s how my wife Judy and many other people feel about it. Where is the snow that makes northern Vermont a winter wonderland this time of year? It hard to keep from thinking the worst.

I, on the other hand, look at it a different way. This thick mist matches my frame of mind these days. I gaze into the forest in my backyard and see familiar objects – namely trees – fade into the misty depths, becoming silhouettes then faded outlines of themselves, then nothing at all. What lies beyond what I can see? Only a blank gray wall.

This is exactly what happens whenever I contemplate Nature spelled with a capital “N.” I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Nature is chockfull of mystery. The three greatest mysteries recognized by most scientists are: the origin of the universe, the origin of life in the universe, and consciousness. All three address, either directly or indirectly, what we human beings are.

The universe supposedly emerged via the Big Bang from an infinitely dense singularity prior to all spacetime, whatever that means. Life emerged later, most likely, from a primal soup on this planet billions of years ago, near some volcanic vent. The level of consciousness that we humans currently enjoy can be traced back to artifacts and cave art created 30,000 to 60,000 years ago. The roots of it probably go back in time much farther than that. As to the consciousness of other animals and the extent to which consciousness pervades the universe, well, that’s anyone’s guess. All this underscores the fundamental mystery that is Nature: why anything exists at all, and why there is the semblance of order in the universe instead of absolute chaos. If none of this makes your head explode, then you are not really thinking about it.

I for one have had moments in my life when I have gazed deep into the unknown, beyond all perceivable objects or the mere suggestions of them, and apprehended What-Is. No, I have not comprehended Nature in its entirely, but I have in these fleeting, mystical moments apprehended it, just as everyone apprehends a dense fog. I have stood awestruck before what some people call mysterium tremendum – the Great Mystery. Such moments are common to those of us who go to the edge of scientific discovery and look beyond it, into the abyss of the unknown. This is how we humans go about making sense of ourselves and the world. This is where reason begins and ends.

As a natural philosopher, I have my speculations about What-Is. Thanks to my senses and cold, hard scientific facts, I have a rough idea what is going on here and elsewhere in the universe. Yet the unknowable still looms large like the dense fog that is lingering over the landscape these days. And I remain awestruck by it.

Tags: consciousness, facts, mysterium tremendum, mystery, mysticism, natural philosophy, nature, origin of life, origin of the universe, reason, science, speculations, the unknowable, the unknown

I’ve just released a new collection of short non-fiction pieces, Confronting the Unknowable: Essays on God, Nature and Being Human. This is, I believe, the best half of the 40-odd essays that I’ve written for an online platform called Medium.

I’ve been posting my work at Medium for the past two and a half years. Most of my old, nature-related essays and hiking narratives have been uploaded to my profile page there, while my newer material has appeared at one of five Medium-based publications: A Philosopher’s Stone, Illumination, Socrates Cafe, The Apeiron Blog, and The Philosophy Hub.

This is my first sustained effort to write for the general reader, or as close to that as I’ll ever get. Oddly enough, my more philosophical pieces have garnered more attention at Medium than my hiking narratives. That’s just the opposite of what I’ve experienced elsewhere. Go figure.

A few of these essays address topical issues like climate change and overpopulation, but most of them go deep into philosophical matters: God’s nature, life’s meaning, the great mystery that is nature, and what makes us human. Naturally, I have more questions than answers. Mine is an iconoclastic worldview to be sure.

Last winter I released a dense philosophical work called Nature and the Absolute. These essays address many of the same issues but are much easier to read, I must admit.

This book is now available at Amazon.com. It can also be purchased at my website, woodthrushbooks.com. Check it out.

Tags: essays, nature, philosophy

I am pleased to announce the release of my heavy-duty philosophical work, Nature and the Absolute. This is, for all practical purposes, the end result of fifty years of rumination on matters of ultimate concern: what we are, what the world is, What-Is.

The subject at hand is the nature of nature itself. That is, Nature spelled with a capital “N” – what is more commonly referred to as natural order. What exactly is that? How does it function and why? Where does it come from? I’m talking about the metaphysics of nature here, pondered by philosophers, theologians, and some scientists for thousands of years. I touch upon a good number of those worldviews in this book while trying to wrap my brain around the matter. Easier said than done.

Whenever I’m alone in the wild for an extended period of time, either tramping through the backcountry or staying put, I can’t help but marvel at the natural world. I wonder how it all came to be. God created it, some say. Others point to the evolutionary process hard at work. But neither one of those answers gets to the heart of the matter. When we utter the word “God,” what are we really saying? What exactly is the driving force behind this phenomenon that we call evolution? What is absolutely true about the universe at large? Oh yeah, I’ve gone deep into it.

For those of you who don’t want your comfortable worldview challenged, I suggest that you avoid reading this book. For those of you as hungry as I am to know what the hell is going on, fasten your seatbelts. This book is a wild ride, and I mean wild in the truest sense of the word.

You can get a copy by going to the Wood Thrush Books website. It is also available at Amazon.com.

Tags: metaphysics, natural order, natural philosophy, nature, ontology, philosophy

I am pleased to announce the release of Walt Franklin’s latest collection of essays, Learning the Terrain: Reflections on a Gentle Art, under the Wood Thrush Books imprint. Fly-fishing is the gentle art here, of course, and Franklin is quite adept at it. But this is more than just another fisherman telling tall tales. Franklin is a naturalist with a bamboo rod in hand, a poet wading clear mountain streams. Yes, there is a little poetry mixed into this prose, and a lot of prose that reads like poetry.

Along with plying waters of his home bioregion – upstate New York and north-central Pennsylvania – Franklin recounts excursions to classic trout rivers out west and catching salmon in the tributaries flowing into Lake Ontario. He also tries his hand at saltwater fishing. But it’s the moments when he tunes into the wildness all around him that edifies the reader. Franklin is at home in the natural world. This comes out loud and clear in his work.

After publishing five other books of his, I had resolved to move onto other nature writers. Then I read this collection and felt it had to be ushered into print. You can acquire a copy of this book by going to the Wood Thrush Books website. It is also available at Amazon.com. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

Tags: coastal fishing, ecology, flora and fauna, fly fishing, landscape, local lore, memoir, mountain streams, nature, outdoor/nature writing, salmon fishing, Western trout rivers

The origin and nature of life is a true mystery – perhaps the greatest mystery there is. My interest in the subject kicked into high gear after reading Erwin Schrodinger’s What Is Life? a little over a month ago. With the eyes of a quantum physicist, he sees the essential part of a living cell as an aperiodic crystal, versus the periodic crystals commonly found in inanimate matter. By this he means they are strange and complex structures that do not comply with the laws of physics. That’s a gross understatement, if ever there was one.

It has been a long winter so far. Subzero temps kept me indoors during most of January. I’ve had too much time to ponder life’s origin – waaay too much time, my wife Judy would say. I’ve read other books on the subject and must confess that I’m no wiser for it. After reading Schrodinger, I went through a college textbook on organic chemistry. Oh yeah, I’m in deep now.

Last summer I sat in dense woods watching wildlife go about their business and wondered how all this came to be. The next thing I know I’m studying the molecular structure of living cells. The quest for a true understanding of nature is a slippery slope, indeed.

This is what I know so far about life-forms: multicellular organisms exploded on the scene roughly 540 million years ago, once there was plenty of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere. Before that, bacteria and other single-celled organisms ruled the world. The first organisms, archaea, were heat-loving entities that lived in the extreme conditions on this planet 4 billion years ago. How they came into existence is anyone’s guess.

Even the simplest, single-cell organism is incredibly complex. It didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. There is randomness in the evolutionary process, certainly, but something had to get the ball rolling. Is there some kind of cosmic template for life? While contemplating that, my head explodes.

Hard to say just how far I’ll take this line of investigation, or where it will lead. I’m thinking I need a microscope and a good book on astrobiology. I’m thinking I need to learn more about the origin and nature of consciousness, as well. No doubt Judy’s thinking spring better get here soon.

Tags: evolution, life forms, nature, origins

There’s a limb stuck in the upper branches of a large tree in our back yard. It bugs Judy. She asked me if there’s any way to bring that stick down, but it’s too high up for me to reach with any tool I possess. I told her it will come down eventually, in its own time, but she doesn’t find that very consoling.

Strong winds blow, taking down limbs all over our yard. I gather them up periodically. The pile of dead wood grows until I burn the smaller pieces and have the larger ones hauled away. Entire trees have fallen in our woody neighborhood. We have one in our front yard that’s a good candidate to do so. I’d bet that tree falls sometime soon… while the limb hung up our backyard remains there.

Nowadays Judy and I jokingly refer to that limb as the existential stick because it reminds us how powerless we are in the face of natural reality. We know the stick will come down eventually, but we have no more control over that than we do over nature itself. What do we really know about nature? What do we really know about anything? Why do we exist? Why does anything exist? Hmm… that’s an awful lot to garner from a stick, isn’t it?

The existential stick bugs Judy more than it bugs me. It offends her photographer’s eye whenever she gazes out the window, and this little bit of chaos reminds her of nature’s unpredictability. I, on the other hand, only sigh heavily when I see that stick. I’m somewhat resigned to it. My entire life’s work is an attempt to make sense of nature – to render meaning where there may not be any. The joke might very well be on me.

It’s just a stick, some would say, ignore it. Others would hire someone to come with the proper equipment to remove that eyesore. Judy and I rather impatiently await the wind to bring it down. But even when it’s gone, nature will remain what it is and has always been, both inscrutable and beyond our control. Is that a bad thing?

Tags: control of nature, existence, meaning, nature, order and chaos, sticks

Last week I finished writing a ridiculously philosophical work, Nature and the Absolute. Don’t expect to see this book in print anytime soon. I like to give my books time to ferment before giving them the final edit then publishing them. But the heavy lifting is done for all practical purposes. This project has kept me quite busy during the past year and a half. And yes, it is ridiculously philosophical, which is to say I’ve gone as deep into metaphysical matters as it’s possible to go.

After finishing this book I went into the mountains, bushwhacking to a favorite place that will remain unnamed. Upon reaching that place, I put forth to the surrounding trees my reasons for writing such a ridiculously philosophical work. The trees, of course, were unimpressed. They are too busy being trees in engage in the kind of abstract thinking that creatures like me feel the need to do. But it felt good to voice my reasons for all nature to hear. Nature is, after all, what my latest, most ridiculously philosophical work is all about. Nature in the absolute sense of the word, that is. Nature spelled with a capital “N.”

For most of my life, I have shouted the question “Why?” into the universe, trying to understand What-Is. I have wandered and wondered and written over twenty books in my long and winding journey towards understanding natural order. I have read thousands of books and have pondered essence and existence to the point of absurdity. In the final analysis, when it comes to knowing the mind of God (which is what it all boils down to), all I can say it this: I don’t know. And that, I believe, is the most honest thing that I or any other thinking creature can say.

Oh sure, I have my wild speculations about What-Is and harbor all kinds of strong opinions about this, that, and everything else. But my admission of unknowing seemed to resonate with the surrounding trees, the roaring brook, the deep blue sky overhead, and all the rest of the natural world. I say this because, as a woods wanderer, my unknowing matches The Great Mystery that is nature. So stay tuned for the eventual release of my deepest probe into this matter. Then you’ll see for yourself just how ridiculously philosophical this book and my worldview really are.

Tags: hiking, knowing, nature, philosophical speculation, philosophy, the unknown, why, wondering, woods wandering, writing