Woods Wanderer

I like to think of myself as a one-of-a-kind writer, whose quirky ideas are utterly new and different.  But I too have my influences.  Emerson and Thoreau are foremost among a hundred writers who have left their mark on me.  Among my contemporaries Gary Snyder looms large, and for good reason.  His book, The Practice of the Wild, came at a time when I was defining myself as a writer/thinker. When it comes to articulating the wild and our relationship to it, I am more indebted to him than I care to admit.

Recently my wife gave me a copy of The Etiquette of Freedom as an early birthday present.  This book is accompanied by a DVD that’s also called “The Practice of the Wild,” even though it’s a conversation between Gary Snyder and Jim Harrison on various subjects, along with a succinct portrayal of Snyder’s life and work.   To those interested in Zen Buddhism, beat poetry and their influence on the counterculture of the 60s, this film is insightful.  To those who want to better understand the roots of Environmentalism, it’s a must-see.  But it struck me in a different way.

Snyder is 80 years old now.  Even though he’s remarkably fit for his age, with a sharp mind to boot, it’s clear that the bulk of his work is behind him.  We assume that our contemporaries will always be with us, and we eagerly await their next books, never considering the possibility that this flow of ideas might end.  What happens when it does?

When I was a young man, I saw myself as God’s gift to the literary world.  But every great book I’ve read since then has humbled me a bit.  And I’ve read a lot of them through the years.  Time marches on and those we idolize soon become history.  This winter two of my favorite nature writers, John Hay and John Haines, passed away.  The generation previous to my own is retiring, fading into the background, checking out.  Can those in my generation fill their shoes?  More to the point, can I be a voice for the wild the way someone like Snyder has been?  My gut says no.

Snyder made it clear in the film that when he uses the word “nature” he means the entire universe, not just the outdoors.  My sentiment exactly.  And when he later said: “Life in the wild is not just eating berries in the sunlight.  I like to imagine a depth ecology that would go to the dark side of nature,” he was talking dirty to me.  This is my domain – the wild that I have come to know firsthand.  So maybe, just maybe, I have something to contribute to the conversation.  That said I’m hoping he will write just one more book before, as he put it so eloquently, “walking the ghost trail in the stars.”

Tags: Gary Snyder, nature writing, The Practice of the Wild, the wild

A sunny day with temps in the high 30s.  Good day to head for the hills, so that’s what I do after a few hours of desk work.  “Is that a robin?” I ask myself, catching the shadowy shape of one on a rooftop while loading gear into my car.  On second look, it’s gone.  Maybe I was just imagining it.  Too early for migrating birds.  After all, there’s still a foot of heavy snow on the ground.

Stepping out of my car at the trailhead, I immediately hear the rush of water.  I walk over and, sure enough, there’s Preston Brook open and running fast towards the lowlands.  That puts a smile on my face.  I strap snowshoes to my rucksack and shoulder the load.  A trail of hard-packed snow points up Honey Hollow Road – closed for the season to all vehicles.  Then I begin what should be my last winter hike, going deeper into the mountains.

For nearly an hour I trudge steadily uphill, putting one foot in front of the other.  My dog Matika dashes from one sniffing spot to the next.  The woods are full of good smells this time of year.  Hares, squirrels and other forest creatures are awakening and moving about.

When the road levels out a bit, I fasten the snowshoes to my boots and leave the trail.  Matika runs across a thick crust of snow.  I sink no more than an inch into it, pleasantly surprised by this ease of movement.  Good thing.  Soon I’m following the trace of an old skidder trail next to a deeply cut ravine, descending rapidly towards the brook.  It’s a bushwhack now, just me, my dog and the trackless wild.

A smile breaks across my face when I spot the brook again.  It is rock-strewn and running hard, but still wide open and as clear as any mountain stream gets on a cloudless day.  The sun burns bright through naked trees, warming my face.  I’m hatless and in shirtsleeves now, yet still breaking a sweat.  Matika catches a scent then so do I.  It’s the nearly forgotten smell of the earth just beginning to thaw out.  Several days before the equinox, it is almost but not quite spring.  I caress exposed ferns and moss growing on the side of a huge boulder before following the brook farther downhill.

Matika cavorts about the woods, delirious with the freedom of the hills.  I tramp along as if living a dream.  The warm season is about to unfold in all its muddy, wet, bug-ridden glory.  And that’s a prospect that makes me happier than words can say.

Tags: Green Mountains, hiking with dogs, mountain stream, seasonal change, signs of spring, snowshoeing, the wild

A big winter storm struck northern Vermont two days ago, dumping two feet of snow.  That’s the third largest dump on record for these parts, making this the third snowiest winter.  Or something like that.  I spent the better part of yesterday shoveling and roof raking, and that was after the plow guy had cleared my driveway twice.  Yeah, a lot of white stuff.

Right now it’s sunny outside, about twelve hours before the next storm strikes.  I should grab my snowshoes and take advantage of this break in the weather.  But that’s not where my heart lies.  Last night I dreamed of a mountain stream teeming with large, wild trout.  And this morning, well, let’s just say the view out my window doesn’t match the fantasy.

Stepping outdoors for a moment to start up my wife’s car, I hear a cardinal singing loudly from atop a leafless maple.  He’s thinking the same thing I’m thinking.  And the warm morning sun assures us both that spring can’t be that far away.  But all this snow . . . egads!

Judy and I have a late-winter ritual: when the snow is deep outside, we cook and eat the last of the trout that I brought home the previous summer.  Granted, I’m mostly a catch-and-release fisherman these days, but I make sure to bring home a few of them just for this occasion.  We ate the trout a couple weeks ago.  And that’s just about the time I started yearning for the warm season.

This morning I opened the newspaper and learned that the writer/naturalist John Hay just died.  This news sent me to my bookshelves right away.  I cracked open The Immortal Wilderness where I had it bookmarked and reread this:  “Behind the world so recklessly and uncertainly claimed by politics and economics lie the magic and inexorable laws of the wilderness, known to every life.  The flower is wiser than the machine.”  My sentiments exactly.  So now I’m dreaming of wildflowers as well as trout.  Right now I don’t give a damn about the government’s budgetary problems, the health care debacle, or the price of oil.  I just want to see a brook trout and a purple trillium again.

Is this cabin fever talking?  You bet it is.  But there’s no sense stewing in it.  So I’ll strap on my snowshoes and make the best of the situation.  My dog Matika is ready to roll.  Unlike me, she lives in the moment.  She will romp in the snow as if it’s the first powder of the season.  And I will follow, somewhat reluctantly, dreaming of spring.

Tags: brook trout, cabin fever, John Hay, snow, Vermont, wildflowers

Eighteen months ago I leaned against a big rock, making one last entry in my field journal.  I was exhausted from a punishing hike across north-central Maine on a section of the Appalachian Trail known as the 100 Mile Wilderness.  Judy came along and took this picture of me.  Not very flattering, but telling in more ways than one.

I remember feeling both a deep sense of satisfaction in that moment, and tremendous sadness.  These are predicable sentiments at journey’s end.  But I also remember thinking that the easy part was behind me.  Now the hard part – the telling of the tale – lay directly ahead.  Or maybe it’s the other way around.

This morning I reworked to completion the final chapter of the Maine hiking narrative, thus finishing the journey in another sense.  The physical effort of hiking and the mental effort of writing are behind me now, and all that remains is publication.  That’s always anticlimactic.  So now the trek truly is finished.  Once again, I feel both satisfaction and sadness.

I don’t really know whether I hike in order to write or vice versa.  The two are so much a part of me that I can’t untangle them any more.  What I do know is that I love to hike as much as I love to write, and that journey’s end – actual or literary – always leaves a void in my life.  No doubt there’s another book in my future, along with another trail.  But there are times, like now, when it seems like a crazy way to live.

At midday I went for a walk along the Rail Trail despite a biting cold.  The trail had been groomed for snowmobiles so I walked in the tracks of those fast-moving machines.  Occasionally I stepped aside to let one of them zip past.  And it seemed like the perfect metaphor for the literary life – especially one steeped in wildness.  I plod along at a snail’s pace while the rest of the world races by.  How very Thoreau-like of me.  Am I the lucky one or a pathetic creature?  I know what Thoreau would say, but I am not he.

I’m still on the greatest journey of them all and have, as the old poet said, “miles to go before I sleep.”  That means I’ll be an old man before I can answer that question with anything approaching certainty.  Even then, I might not be able to sort it all out.  Perhaps it isn’t for me to say.

Tags: 100 Mile Wilderness, Appalachian Trail, hiking, nature writing, the writing life, Thoreau

The bright February sun burns through a cloudless sky as I don a pair of Yaktrax and start hiking around Indian Brook Reservoir.  The last time I was here, a couple weeks ago, I needed snowshoes to negotiate the deep powder.  Now it’s a different story.  Now the trail is hard-packed snow, covered with ice in places.  Traction is what is needed today, and traction is what the rubber-and-steel-coil contraptions that I’ve slipped onto my boots provide.

When I let my dog out to pee this morning, a blast of single-digit air greeted me.  But the February sun has been burning bright since then, so now the temps are in the high twenties.  When I’m standing in the open, it feels much warmer.  I welcome the change.

The day is relatively long in late February – a few minutes shy of eleven hours at these latitudes.  Gone are the short days of December and its distant, indifferent sun.  Now the dazzling yellow orb overhead is both forceful and inviting.  A few hours of it on a day like this and snow piles whither.  At least half of the snow covering the ground has melted away already, and in a few places here and there the ground actually shows itself.  Surely the sap of maple trees is starting to flow.  One doesn’t need to be a syrup producer to sense that.

My dog Matika is busy sniffing.  There are fresh tracks everywhere, crisscrossing the trail.  Many of the smaller woodland creatures are scurrying about now, looking for food to get them through the rest of winter.  There are more dog and people tracks, as well.  Yeah, everyone is restless.

Beneath a stand of mature hemlocks, I pluck small, half-buried cones from the snow.  I gather up a dozen and squirrel them away in a side pocket of my jacket.  When I get home, I’ll pile the cones on my desk where the indoor heat will open them.  And there they will stay until the first real signs of spring appear.  This little ritual keeps me going this time of year, when ice clings stubbornly to roof edges and snow is still everywhere.  I am heartened by the tiny cones, and the bright light that’s slowly melting away these last few cold, winter days.  It won’t be long now.

Tags: light, moods, nature in winter, seasonal change, winter

When I was in the Alaskan bush, I took something like a hundred and forty pictures.  Most of them were either not that interesting or of such poor quality that they’re not worth showing.  But I do have half a dozen gems, like the photo shown here.

I added eight more to those – pictures worth a thousand words, as they say – then had them all digitized.  One became the cover of my Alaska narrative, Arguing with the Wind, in its latest incarnation.  The rest can be found at a photo website called smugmug.com.  Check them out.

Those of you who have access to my wife’s Facebook page already know about these pics.  I’m simply making them available to everyone else – publishing them, you could say.  I do not do this lightly.  It’s bad enough that I bare my soul with my written words.  Is it really necessary to do so with my images as well?

Alaska is one of those places that you either love or hate.  I never got over my brief sojourn there, and to great extent it made me the philosophizing, woods-wandering wordsmith I am today.  Once the wild gets in your system it stays there.  So I offer no further excuses for who/what I am.

Check out these photos and see if you can relate.  If so, then you are in more trouble than you realize, for the wild and the world that most of people inhabit are two entirely different things.  Which do you prefer?  Careful now.  Think long and hard before you answer that question.

Tags: Alaska, photos, the wild

Last weekend half a foot of heavy, wet snow fell, compacting the deep powder already on the ground.  I spent the better part of two days shoveling it, then shoveled a few more inches of lighter stuff that followed until the piles around my driveway were six feet high.  All the while I daydreamed about snowshoeing.  I knew the conditions in the woods would be ideal.

Yesterday I drove to Indian Brook Reservoir with snowshoes at hand and an excited dog pacing in the back seat of my car.  We hit the trail around noon.  The temps had climbed into the high teens by then.  I tramped a well-beaten path for the first half mile, then veered away from it following a side trail that hadn’t been traveled in a while.  There I left a nice, tidy set of tracks across the snow.  I stopped frequently to look back and admire my work.

Returning to the main trail, the going was much easier.  Matika ran up and down the trail like a dog possessed, while I ambled along admiring the heavily laden branches all around me.  Several trees had fallen since I had last visited the reservoir, making the trail through the woods more interesting than usual – all twists and turns.  A strong wind brewed up, shaking the boughs overhead.  Snow came showering down.

There is something about laying tracks through snowy woods that soothes the soul.  Given a choice, I would take hiking a muddy trail over ‘shoeing a snow covered one every time, but I’m always glad to be immersed in Vermont’s “winter wonderland” when cabin fever forces me to it.  Snowshoeing is clean, quiet, and incredibly calming.

Nature in winter is subdued, yet it is still nature.  It is good to be reminded of that, especially late in the season when people start complaining about winter as if it’s some kind of scourge.  In February the light returns, illuminating the white world, putting to rest the darkest thoughts.  Then melt water drips from icicles and I sense that spring isn’t that far away.  More importantly, I understand that the seasons cycle around with dramatic flair at these northern latitudes as they have for centuries.  And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Here in Vermont, we’ve already received our average winter allotment of 80 inches.  From now until spring, the rest is extra.  And while the snow shoveler in me dreads the prospect, I look forward to more white woods wanderings.  The heavier and deeper the snow gets the better.  My snowshoes are parked next to the door and there they will stay until it all melts away.

Tags: natural cycles, nature in winter, snowshoeing, Vermont

Over a foot of snow fell on northern Vermont yesterday – the tail end of the big storm that rocked half the country.  I spent a good part of the day shoveling it, and there was still plenty more to tackle this morning.

After three more hours of shoveling, you’d think I’d seen enough snow.  But the sky broke open around midday, temps climbed into the high teens and, well, I had a hankering to go snowshoeing.  So that’s what I did.

Vermonters aren’t easily shaken by the white stuff.  Most of the driveways that I passed on the way to the trailhead had been plowed out, and everyone was pretty much going about their business as usual.  If you can’t handle a little snow, then you shouldn’t live in Vermont.  So I’ve learned to adapt.  I take to the woods with my trusty pair of Green Mountain Bear Paws whenever the snow gets knee deep or better.

I started out on a well-groomed snowmobile trail so I really didn’t need the snowshoes at first.  But half a mile into the walk, I got a powerful urge to cut fresh tracks across the pristine snow.  Every snowshoeing fool knows that urge well.  I stepped off trail and felt the difference immediately.  My heart was pounding hard five minutes into it.  My dog Matika was delighted by the detour. She leapt through the powder, leaving chest-deep holes in her wake.

Eventually we stumbled upon a fresh deer trail and the going was a little easier.  Until we veered away from it.  When the deer trail headed for a marsh, we opted for higher ground.  We followed a small ridge taking us back the way we came.  And forty minutes after leaving the snowmobile trail, we tagged it again.  A short but sweet excursion.  Just enough clear my head.

Back home now, the sun is setting in a cloudless sky.  Wow.   I haven’t done a damned thing all day – nothing that qualifies as productive work, that is.  But snow days are like that.  When a big dump comes, you can either complain about it or embrace it.  Today I chose the latter and thoroughly enjoyed the diversion.  What the heck, I’ll get back to work tomorrow.

Tags: attitude, snow, snowshoeing, Vermont

Monday morning we awoke to frigid temperatures here in the North Country.  Thermometers registered seventeen below zero in Saint Albans, and even colder in outlying towns.  That’s the coldest it has been in years.  That’s cold enough for spit to freeze seconds after hitting the ground.  Furnaces worked overtime, everyone bundled up, and some cars wouldn’t start.  No one went anywhere they didn’t have to go.

The cold snap lasted three days.  Now we’re back to normal temps – back to days with 20-25 degree highs, that is.  Yet people complain.  It’s midwinter, the snow is piled high and sub-freezing temps continue unabated.

I’m just about to start complaining myself, then I look out my kitchen window.  A few feet away from the warmth that I enjoy, a dozen birds are fighting for survival.  Literally.

Sparrows, finches, juncos and chickadees – they all take what they can from the bird feeders dangling from the naked branches of an old lilac bush before some other bird beaks them away.  Others vie for the seeds that have fallen to the ground.  Still others peck at the suet.

They all look fat and healthy, but looks can be deceiving.  Their feathers are puffed up, providing maximum insulation against the cold.  Most of their kind flew south for the winter, but these few decided to winter over.  Why?  Judy and I put up our feeders late last month, long after the migration ended.  What would become of these birds if there weren’t any feeders?  I shudder to think.

Like most people who spend their hard-earned money feeding wild birds, we enjoy seeing some sign of life out our kitchen window.  We especially enjoy the bright red cardinals and charming woodpeckers, but any bird will do.  Seeing them makes winter seem temporary.  The snow will melt and the grass will green again, no doubt.  It’s just a matter of time.

That said, I can’t help but wonder how a winged creature weighing only a few ounces can survive the punishing cold, day after day for months on end.  It seems highly unlikely that any of them will make it through.    Yet somehow most of them do.

Some wild animals can survive the worst conditions – conditions that would make the healthiest of domestic creatures keel over in a matter of days.  I can’t help but admire scrappy birds even while watching them fight over crumbs.  Then I turn away from the window, sip my hot tea, and return to my indoor work happy that I’m not one of them.  As long as my furnace keeps working and my cupboards are full, I’ve got it made.

Tags: backyard nature, nature in winter, songbirds, survival, winter

A friend of mine urged me to visit Salon.com and read an article about how the government has created a climate of fear since 9/11.  I did just that and, quite frankly, I was underwhelmed.  Like most of what passes for journalism these days, the article was only about half true.

Fear is alive and well in America nowadays, but that’s largely due to the fact that we have created the ideal environment for it.  We live in a culture of fear, and all of us are culpable to some extent: patriots, pundits, fundamentalists, environmentalists, artists, scientists, government workers, businessmen, teachers, radicals and conservatives alike.  All of us are on the verge of panic on any given day, and neither politicians nor the media can resist playing on that.  Why should they?

Some nut shoots up the place and suddenly he has the rapt attention of the entire nation.  Why shouldn’t the media, the government or anyone else with a vested interest exploit the situation?  What’s to stop them?

When I was in the wilds of Southeast Alaska years back, I stumbled upon the remains of a moose.  I found a little hair, blood and tissue, but mostly just bones scattered across the gravel riverbank.  I squatted down in the middle of the mess and tried to wrap my brain around what had happened here.  Moose don’t die of old age in the open like this, I told myself.  They crawl into the dense alder bush to do it.  So this one must have been surprised by a brown bear, a pack of wolves, or something.  Suddenly it occurred to me that I could meet a similar fate before the end of the day.  Then I felt what can only be described as absolute dread.  Sometimes one has good reason to be afraid.  Some threats are immediate and very real.

What are the chances of either you or me being hit by lightning?  That’s not nearly as likely as one of us being horribly mangled or killed in an auto accident.  I’ve never seen a terrorist or mad gunman in action, but I’ve arrived early onto the scene of a horrific auto accident several times.  And yet, like most people, I keep on driving my car as if it could never happen to me.

Some things are worth being afraid of.  Others are not.  But in a culture of fear, legitimate fears are ignored while other less significant threats are blown completely out of proportion.  Why?  Because there’s money to be made by it.  Because we’ll go to any lengths to prevent or avoid the threats that we believe can be prevented or avoided.  Yet who refuses to get into their car?

Snoop around on the Internet and you’ll find that many more Americans die in auto accidents each year than have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars combined.  And every year there are many more auto deaths than murders in this country.  Think about that the next time you strap yourself into your car and head for the highway.  Then ask your self why you don’t fear your car at least as much as you fear the random bomb or bullet.

Tags: Alaska, death, fear, media hype, politics, rationalization, reality