Woods Wanderer

Today I went for the first walk of the season.  Nothing special, just a short walk along the wild, wooded section of the Rail Trail.  My dog, Matika, went with me, of course.  Due to work and other distractions, I haven’t been able to get outdoors for a week, so my leisurely amble along the groomed path seemed like a real treat.  Matika ran all over the place as she usually does when she’s been cooped up a while.  For her a week can be a long time.

The Autumnal Equinox took place yesterday, signaling the end of summer and the beginning of a cooler, quieter, more colorful season.  For most people, autumn begins right after Labor Day.  That’s about when the leaves start turning here in northern Vermont.  That’s also when the last really hot days are relegated to memory.  So the Equinox only underscores the obvious.  All the same, I like to get out and celebrate the event.  By this time of year, the red, gold and orange hues of the season are unmistakable.

Crickets chirped incessantly as I walked.  Perhaps they chirp all summer long, but I only seem to notice them in the fall.  Their high-pitched songs sound to me like urgent pleas to make the most of these precious days.  The days are getting shorter now.  Winter isn’t far away.

I didn’t so much walk as drift along the pathway with my hands in my pockets.  You know how it goes.  A pensive walk, a gradual moving forward despite static inclinations.  I took it all in as I walked: the last flowers blooming, the bleached-out ferns, the turning leaves, and the soft light that’s so typical this time of year.  And for moment there I started doing the math, trying to figure out how many times I’ve walked like this.  Then I let go of it.  Sometimes it’s better to ignore the human scale of things and simply enjoy the moment.  A nearby blue jay called out as if to second that motion.

I could have walked much longer than I did, but I turned around and returned to my car instead.  I have a long list of things to do today.  Most importantly, I have to get ready for what hope will be a long and productive writing season.  Tomorrow I return to a book project that I set aside several months ago.  Yeah, I’ve had my summer fun.  It’s autumn now.  It’s time to get back to work.

Tags: seasonal change, the passage of time, walking

I mowed my lawn last week, right before going back to Ohio to see my folks.  First time I’ve ever cut my grass in April, but it needed it.  The grass was already thick and high.  Spring has come early this year, or so it seemed until yesterday.

Back in Ohio, the spring season is in full swing.  The trees have leafed out, everything is green, and flowers are blooming everywhere.  I saw honeysuckle on the verge of opening – something that doesn’t happen in here in northern Vermont until late May.  It was like jumping ahead two or three weeks, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Three days ago, when I was still at my folks place, my wife called to tell me that a winter storm was raging in Vermont.  Judy said a foot of snow had accumulated.  I found that hard to believe.  But there was no denying the snow I saw on the summits of the Green Mountains as I drove back into the state.  By the time I reached home, there were several inches of it on the ground around me.  Melting fast, though.  After all, the air temperature was pushing 60 degrees.

This morning early, I went out to inspect the broken branch of our lilac bush and putter about the backyard looking for other storm damage.  I noticed red fragments of catkins – the flowers of our big, old maple tree – scattered across the remnant patches of snow.  Deep green grass framed the patches, sending mixed messages to my brain.  Happy grass, slowly filling in the barren spots.  How odd.

The other day I was reading a book about prehistoric man and how the climate stabilized about twelve thousand years ago, making it easy for our kind to resort to agriculture.  Before that, the climate changed radically from century to century, from year to year.  That made me wonder what kind of impact the weather would have on modern civilization if the climate suddenly destabilized. What would be able to grow?  All this is very hypothetical, of course.  The climate could never destabilize like that again, right?

Well, enough speculation already.  I have to go hang my laundry outside to dry.  After all, it’s a nice, warm day.  I think it’s warm enough to melt the brand new snow piles in my yard.  That would be good.  I need to cut my grass again.

Tags: backyard nature, climate change, seasonal change, springtime

It’s mundane, really, this crushed gravel trail passing through farmer’s fields and woodlots, following the ghosts of past trains.  With its absurdly gradual grade and perfectly manicured surface, it doesn’t seem right to even call it a trail.  This is more like a sidewalk devoid of concrete, cutting through the countryside.  This trail couldn’t be any less wild unless it went right through a city.  But there’s nowhere else I’d rather walk today.  After all, it’s completely exposed to late-winter sunlight so it has been stripped of snow for the most part.  And until the next snowstorm comes along, I can press my boots into its soft, gray mud and pretend that spring has already arrived.  The Rail Trail won’t tell me otherwise.

The Rail Trail is one of my guilty pleasures – an easy alternative to woods wandering, when I haven’t the time or the inclination to drive half an hour to the mountains.  My dog, Matika, doesn’t care.  Rail trail, park trail, or deep forest bushwhack, it’s all the same to her.  All she wants to do is stretch her legs and sniff around a bit.  And yes, I have days when that’s all I want to do, as well, assuming that sniffing and daydreaming are pretty much the same thing.

Remarkably enough, I often feel a sense of desolation on the Rail Trail – something similar to what I feel in deep woods.  Not all the time, mind you, but on days when no one else is around, when it is possible to look half a mile in any direction and see nothing but empty landscape.  Empty of other walkers, that is.  That’s room enough for my mind to wander about wildly even though the furrowed fields all around me are shouting cultivation.  This is prove positive, I suppose, that wildness is more a state of mind than anything else.

While walking, I hear the caw-caw of nearby crows.  I stop and look for them, looking around as if I’ve never been here before, or as if I’m about to see something I’ve never seen.  But everything in view is very familiar after years of walking this trail, and the only surprise is the feeling bubbling up from within:  everything’s going to be all right.  As long as I can keep walking, with the wind or against it, everything is all right.

Everyone should have a place like this, minutes from home, to stretch one’s legs without having to think about property rights or passing cars.  My dog appreciates it and so do I.  Truth be told, my sanity is more dependent upon the Rail Trail than it is the wildest landscape, especially during this in-between season when the forested hills aren’t quite as accessible as they’ll be in another month.  No, not wild by the strictest definition of the word, but wild enough.  This’ll do for now.

Tags: seasonal change, walking, wild mind

An hour before dawn, I start my day.  I step outside just long enough to feel the chill.  Thermometers are hovering around zero degrees Fahrenheit this morning.  It’s the first cold snap of the season.  I gaze deep into the clear night sky at the twinkling stars, identifying Ursa Major, Pegasus and other constellations for a minute or two, then go back in the house.  Today’s a good day to stay indoors appreciating what insulation, storm windows, and a good furnace can do.

Hard to believe that I was planting bulbs less than three weeks ago.  Now the ground is frozen solid.  Hard to believe I wore only a sweater during a long walk a month ago.  Now it would require thermals, gloves and a warm hat.  Is it mere coincidence that the darkest day of the year is almost upon us?  Of course not.  The Winter Solstice marks the beginning of winter as everyone knows.  This cold snap is only the first of many.

Days like this are what houses are for.  I like to think of myself as an outdoors kind of guy, but when the temps dip into the single digits, I lose all enthusiasm for being outside.  Every once in a while, I’ll venture into the woods when it’s this cold out just to keep my survival skills up to snuff.  But breaking ice from one’s beard loses its novelty once you’ve done it a few dozen times.

There’s no sense complaining about winter.  It comes around every year.  Besides, seasonal change is good.  I wouldn’t want to live in a place that’s warm and sunny all the time.  That would be so . . . boring.  Here in Vermont, I’m never bored.

Times like these, I wonder if Homo sapiens were meant to live this far north.  We emerged from the Earth’s equatorial regions after all.  But we’re a resourceful lot, aren’t we?  People live everywhere.  We even have outposts in the Antarctic.  Hell, we could live on the moon if we wanted to.  Zero is nothing.

I think I’ll go get a small tree today, drag it indoors, and set it up in my living room.  Yeah, something green to remind me of warmer times.  Then I’ll  put lights on it, mocking the darkness.  And maybe hang a few handmade ornaments from its branches, warming me in other ways.  Winter is just getting started, but that doesn’t mean we have to wallow in cold and darkness, gnashing our teeth.  There are plenty of ways to brace our selves for it.

Tags: seasonal change, the elements

I went for a short walk in the woods the other day, kicking up leaves all the way.  The trail was covered with them.  Beneath a partly cloudy sky on a windless afternoon, it was easy to ignore the chill in the air.  Comfortable in a sweater, I pretended that it was Indian Summer even though the time for that has passed.  I kicked up leaves and, for a moment or two, was a little boy again.  The rustling sound of the dried leaves took me back.

Matika terrorized the squirrels that were busy collecting nuts in the eleventh hour.  I called her off them at first then let her enjoy her predator fantasy.  She mopes around the house all day as I work, waiting for something to happen, so I let her have her fun when she can.  The expression on her face when she’s leaping through the forest duff makes me wish I were a dog.  Like the happiest old people I know, dogs never completely abandon the wild exuberance of youth.

Near the top of the hill, I stopped to admire my surroundings.  The late autumn forest has a charm to it that is difficult to describe.  Dark green conifers and ferns, the brown withering vegetation scattered across the forest floor, and moss-covered rocks that defy seasonal change – the late autumn forest is all this and something more, something that words can’t touch.  I catch only a glimpse of it when the sun slips behind the clouds then shines brightly again.  Call it a moment of shadowy transcendence and leave it at that.

A few maple leaves cling stubbornly to branches and I can’t help but wonder why they don’t just let go.  Then again, why don’t I?  I, too, am still clinging to the warm season, or is it the daylight that I don’t want to lose?  Hard to say.  I’ve had this conversation with myself many times and can’t figure out whether it’s the cold or the darkness that I don’t like about winter.  To stubborn leaves and certain woods wanderers, there’s no real difference between the two.

The mums in the planters around my house have lost their bloom.  Even they have succumbed to the hard frost.  Even the best artificial lights can’t change the fact that the growing season has ended in these northern latitudes.  It’ll be another five months before green shoots emerge on the forest floor again.  Once I accept that fact, I’ll be able to don my woolies and embrace winter.  But no, I don’t think I’ll do that right away.  For the time being, I think I’ll just kick up leaves like a little boy and dream about warmer, sunnier days.

Tags: moods, reflection, seasonal change, walking

Although some of the trees here in the valley are still aflame with late autumn brilliance, the mountain forests are largely denuded – a sea of brown/gray sticks waiting for snow.  I look up and see tangible proof of what my light-hungry psyche already suspects: the beginning of winter is weeks, not months, away.

There are more leaves on the ground than there are leaves still clinging to branches.  The tourists who stampeded into Vermont for peak color are long gone now, leaving natives behind to contemplate the long, cold season ahead.  A winterizing to-do list grows, yet there’s still gas in my lawnmower.  Once again, it seems, the changing season has taken me by surprise.

The hunters are all excited.  They gather up their gear like squirrels gathering nuts and will soon be chasing their quarry through the hills.  I am one of those left-behind people, hired years ago by avid hunter to keep his small motel running during the weeks he’s away.  My season is the season of wildflowers, dusty trails and brook trout, so I don’t mind babysitting a nearly empty motel between Halloween and Thanksgiving.  I watch TV when I’m not daydreaming of summer adventures.

My dog, Matika, is restless.  She gets a little ball-chasing exercise every day, but knows all too well that it’s been weeks since our last big woods adventure.  What can I say?  I’ve been busy working, entertaining visitors, and fighting off a virus.  I’ve been too busy writing about the wild to immerse myself in it, as sad as that may sound.  That’s the big joke of being a nature writer.  Your subject is outdoors but you do your work indoors.  My dog is not amused.

The sky is a gray sheet.  Geese honk in the distance, just in case I had any doubts about what time of year it is.  There’s a nip in the air now, forcing me to leave the house with a sweater or a light jacket when I run my errands.  But psychologically I’m still in shirtsleeves, and frequently I scrape the morning frost from my car windshield that way.  It’ll take a dusting of snow on the ground to change that.

Stick season is the in-between season, and that’s exactly how I feel these days, like so many others.  Time changes this weekend.  Our clocks will fall back an hour and dark evenings will soon be a way of life.  But I’m not ready for it.  I saw a wooly worm the other day and it looked ready for a long, hard winter.  Wild creatures, it seems, are always one step ahead of us – more in touch with the seasons than we could ever be.

Tags: moods, nature writing, seasonal change, Vermont

You aren’t supposed to talk about it.  You’re considered a pessimist if you do.  But when the leaves start to turn in early autumn, I can’t help but consider the fleeting nature of things, the passing of days, my own mortality.

Three weeks after leaving the trail, my right knee still complains.  My ankles are still shaky, as well.  My body just doesn’t spring back the way it used to.  In my 50s now, I suppose it’s unrealistic for me to expect that it would.  Still, these nagging joints are constant reminders of a fact I’d rather ignore: I’m not going to live forever.

Unlike me, my 4-year old German shepherd dog, Matika, is stronger now than she was when we hit the trail a month ago.  I toss a rubber ball, it bounces on the hard, dry ground, and she leaps into the air after it with unbridled joy.  I vicariously enjoy her blatant demonstrations of physical prowess.  But deep down inside, I know how temporary it all is.  I’ll have to be lucky to have her by my side on a hike ten years from now – real lucky.

Moving stone.  I helped my neighbor cart and shovel two tons of drainage stone this week, placing it around his mobile home in a foot-wide skirt.  It serves no purpose but he likes the look of it.  The job made me feel like Sisyphus but he was happy in the thick of the task, as if having something to do was reason enough to get up in the morning.  I suppose that, at 86 years of age, one takes one’s small pleasures wherever one finds them.

A literary friend of mine died recently.  I read about it in the newspaper.  We weren’t close, but we liked to get together on occasion to talk about nature, literature and politics over tea.   I’ve been meaning to call her.  Where did the time go?  I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.

Yes, the leaves are turning now.  I find the transition between summer and fall both sad and beautiful.  I want to go for a long walk in the woods soon, kicking up the brilliant red, yellow and orange leaves with each step, and smelling it – smelling the passing of days.  Strangely enough, I’m not nearly as afraid of it as I was as a young man.  Back then springtime was the only season I could really appreciate.  But things change.

Tags: awareness, reflection, seasonal change

Robins are what come to mind when most people think of birds returning in early spring, and sure enough they do, but assorted brown and black birds soon follow.  Sometimes these darker birds beat the robins to the punch.  It’s hard to say who actually reaches the North Country first.  All I know is that while looking around for a delightful, red-breasted songbird, I often spot a great flock of red-winged blackbirds gathered high in a naked tree, or a smaller gang of grackles on the ground.  When the dark birds arrive, they’re hard to miss.

I don’t know what the proper name is for a flock of grackles, but the word “gang” seems appropriate.  They act like gangsters when they arrive at the feeder, pushing aside the finches, sparrows and other small birds to make the food source their own.  Like gangsters, they ally themselves with similar birds, namely cowbirds and starlings.  They aren’t above raiding other birds’ nests for eggs, and will even take out a songbird on occasion.  They are, in fact, very opportunistic creatures, feeding on worms, insects, small reptiles, fruit, seeds – pretty much anything they can find.  Not what we generally associate with springtime.  Nothing like thrushes, vireos or sweet-singing warblers.  Yeah, these are the tough guys of the winged world.

Recently my wife, Judy, has been perturbed by the grackles voraciously eating the suet that she hung up for the cardinals, woodpeckers and other birds that have wintered over.  Every morning she looks out the kitchen window and sees a grackle picking away at the suet all by itself.  She insists that it’s the same fat grackle, day after day, but later in the morning I usually see a half dozen of them out there munching away.  I think they’re taking turns.  Either way, they’re eating us out of house and home.

Menacing or no, Judy and I agree that grackles are quite beautiful in their own right.  The iridescent blue sheen of their heads is quite remarkable, even by avian standards, and if you look closely you’ll even see a little purple or green there.  If they weren’t so common, birders and other aesthetes would probably hold them in high regard.  Maybe they secretly do.

For years I have been arguing that wild nature is both harsh and beautiful, and that the true wonder of the world is bound up in the tension between the two.  Yesterday I finished writing a set of philosophical essays emphasizing this point.  In general, I’ve encountered considerable resistance to this worldview – most people preferring to think that it’s a dog-eat-dog world, or that nature is fundamentally benign.  Meanwhile, the spring season slowly advances and those pesky grackles keep munching away.  Judy is making sure to get plenty of pictures of them.

Tags: seasonal change, signs of spring, songbirds, wild nature

Through binoculars I watched a robin singing the other day.  It was the first robin I’d seen or heard this year so it was quite a treat.  My neighbors must have thought I was crazy.  I stood in my back yard at sundown, in flip-flops and a t-shirt despite a chill in the air and the spongy, cold mud beneath my feet.  And in that moment I accepted the obvious:  Spring has come early to Vermont this year.

The birds are back, the remnant snow pile in my front yard has melted away, and the first green shoots of day lilies have broken ground.  More to the point, the sun has been burning brightly through a clear sky for days now, warming up the earth – a long, warm sun, rising an hour after I do in the morning and setting well after dinner.  Such a welcome surprise.  Until that robin appeared, I had been waiting for the next winter storm to bury me in snow.  Am glad to be wrong about that.

For several days running now, Matika and I have been going for long walks.  Judy joined us for one at the beginning of the week, just as the last of the snow was melting from the Rail Trail.  Second day out, I tramped through the woods until my shirt was drenched in sweat.  Atop Aldis Hill, I bent down and grabbed a handful of cold mud just to remind myself what the earth feels like.  It was a handful of joy, pure and simple.

Some folks don’t think it’s spring until the wildflowers bloom in May.  Others grumble until the air temperatures are in the 60s or 70s.  Still others wait impatiently for summer.  I relish each and every day of this, the earth’s great awakening, often leaving my house with binoculars in hand.  I pull on hiking boots whenever I can.  I love sinking into cold mud as I hike and don’t mind the rain when it comes.  Early spring is more gray and brown than green, but that’s all right by me.  My dog, Matika, agrees.  Rain or shine, it’s all good.  And every day another harbinger of spring comes, mocking the bleakness.

After winter’s long sigh, the spring breeze is a godsend.  I feel a sudden surge of happiness as a grackle pulls a worm from the ground.  I didn’t know they ate worms – either that or I forgot.  What other small surprises await me this season?  What other forgotten pleasures will I soon enjoy?

The pursuit of happiness is a fool’s game, I realize.  Happiness usually comes when we least expect it, in commonplace settings, mostly from inconsequential things.  But I’ll be on the lookout for it this spring all the same – the season of renewal rarely disappointing in that regard.  Yeah, it’s all good, if you are as partial to cold mud as I am.  This season is chock full of it.

Tags: moods, seasonal change, songbirds, springtime, walking

Hungry for a little color and vitality in the depths of winter, Judy went out and bought a bird feeder.  We hung it up, along with some suet, and soon added another feeder to the mix.  That was several weeks ago.  Since then, we have thoroughly enjoyed the avian circus playing out just beyond our kitchen window.  Some new species arrives every third day or so.  It’s been a good show and promises to get even more interesting as spring approaches.

Chickadees were the first to find our feeders, of course.  Sparrows, finches and juncos quickly followed.  Because of the suet, we’ve seen some larger birds as well: cardinals, blue jays and even a woodpecker.  That’s a lot of wildbird activity on a blustery, cold, snow-covered day.  Several times during the past few weeks, I’ve asked myself:  “Why didn’t we put up a feeder before now?”  No idea why.  All I know is that a bird identification book and a pair of binoculars rest permanently on our kitchen counter now, and we use them daily.  The newcomers have greatly enriched our lives.

Backyard naturalizing isn’t exactly high adventure, and birdwatching seems particularly genteel – the kind of thing one might expect from graying folks – but I engage in it now and then.  I have friends who are much more into it, who keep life lists, belong to birding organizations, and do bird counts.  I know one fellow who can hear a birdsong in the distance and tell you who’s singing it, nine times out of ten.  I’ve always envied him that.  But my interest in birds has never gone beyond the casual.  As for my wife, Judy, she’s relatively new to birdwatching.  She might really take to it this spring when the warblers return.  We’ll see.

The nice thing about birding is that anyone can do it.  Aside from a pair of binoculars and a bird book, no special gear is required.  And while hardcore birders take trips to faraway, exotic places, one can watch birds just about anywhere.  I first got into it while sitting in front of my bookstore during a slow year.  Yeah, they can be found in cities as well as forests and fields.  I once saw an owl in the middle of the road.  Go figure.

Okay, maybe putting up a feeder and watching birds flock to it is a sign of cabin fever – the desperate act of nature lovers in dire need of something vibrant in the end of winter.  I must admit, my eyes are hungry for green.  Judy’s eyes welcome any color other than brown, white, or gray.  We are both glad to have wildlife in our lives again.

Winter is long here in the North Country.  Some of our biggest snowstorms have come in mid-March.  And piles of the white stuff will linger another month, at least.  But the days are noticeably longer, water drips off roofs at midday, and the sap will start running soon.  Spring will come eventually.  It always does.  Until then our feeders will entertain us, no doubt.  Every day brings some small, new discovery – a great pleasure, always, even though it’s all for the birds.

Tags: backyard nature, seasonal change, songbirds