Woods Wanderer

A couple days ago, as I was raking in my yard, I felt a powerful urge to hear spring peepers. It’s that time of year. No doubt they are starting to mate. So yesterday I set my rake aside, pulled on my hiking boots, and headed for a section of the Rail Trail that cuts through wetlands and woods.

Clouds gathered overhead as I stepped out of my car and meandered up the trail. No matter. I was wearing a light jacket and hat. Let it rain. With temps in the 50s, I was comfortable enough. A few sparrows flitted through nearby bushes. A red-winged blackbird called out. Then I heard a solitary peeper singing from the wetlands through which I passed. Or thought I did. Maybe it was just my imagination.

A little over a mile back, I reached the ephemeral pools where I’ve heard those little frogs singing in years past. Sure enough, a few cried out. Their shrill, high-pitched mating calls were music to my ears. This is the sound of eternal renewal, I thought as I sat down and listened to them. Once again, wild nature is awakening from its long winter slumber. Soon there will be wildflowers breaking through the bleached forest duff.

During the walk back to the car, I looked into the smaller ephemeral pools along the edge of the trail. I spotted a cluster of frog eggs just beneath the surface in one of them. I moved in close to snap a picture.

Just then an inhabitant of the pool surfaced, staring right at me as if to say: “Who goes there? What are your intentions?” I managed to snap a photo of that creature before it slipped out of sight.

Then the clouds darkened and a light rain commenced. Suddenly a few peepers called out from the sprawling wetland on the other side of the trail. A few more joined the chorus, drowning out the sound of falling rain.

I took my time finishing the walk, enjoying the stark beauty of early spring along the way. I heard a few more peepers in the wetlands where I thought I first heard one, but they fell silent as I walked by. No matter. All is right with the world when the frogs are doing what they are meant to do.

Tags: early spring, ephemeral pools, spring peepers, walking, woods and wetlands

I’m pleased to announce that The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson is back in print. I reprinted selections from Thoreau’s journal, A Natural Wisdom, last fall. Here’s the other book I put together sampling my two favorite nature writers of the 19th century.

When Emerson published his slender volume Nature in 1836, he set in motion Transcendentalism – a uniquely American literary movement deeply rooted in the natural world. Henry David Thoreau was part of that movement. The poet Walt Whitman, along with John Muir, John Burroughs and most other American nature writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, were influenced directly or indirectly by it. Excerpts from that book have been reprinted here, along with selections from Emerson’s journals and other nature-related writings.

After having this book published by Heron Dance then North Atlantic Books, it feels good to see it as a Wood Thrush Books title again. This time I have included a Sources section that shows exactly where I found each of Emerson’s insights. Let there be no doubt that these are his words verbatim.

While comparing Emerson and Thoreau is like comparing apples and oranges, I must admit that I find Emerson to be the deeper thinker. Perhaps that is why I gravitate to his work time and again. He has been written off as a quaint Yankee philosopher of yesteryear, I think, but when he wrote about the natural world, he spoke to all of us who see the divine in it.

Like most of what I’ve published, this book is available at both Amazon.com and the Wood Thrush Books website. Check it out.

Tags: natural philosophy, nature, nature writing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Transcendentalism