Woods Wanderer

After dropping off my wife Judy at her friend Gina’s house in Stowe, I drove to a nearby trailhead.  I would hike in a mile or so, sit by a brook and scribble my thoughts in a journal for a while, then hike back out.  We’d all meet at a cafe a few hours later.  That was the plan, anyhow.

I passed a dozen other hikers on the trail during the first mile.  Had to collar Matika several times to keep her from bullying other dogs.  Not fun.  But the crowd dissipated during the second mile.  By then I was hitting my stride.  The day couldn’t have been better for hiking: cool, crisp and sunny with nary a bug in sight.  So I kept going.

By mile three, I had stripped down to a t-shirt despite the cool temps and was plowing through a green and gold forest that seemed to go on forever.  I conferred with Matika and she agreed that we should keep going.  Why stop now?  The dryleaf smell of high autumn urged me onward and upward.  The road-grade climb was easy enough, and the dull ache in my legs felt good.  I could always sit and write at home later when it was cold, rainy and overcast.  No doubt those days lie somewhere ahead.

The fourth mile slipped away.  By the time I hit mile five, I realized that I was committed to doing the entire eight-mile loop.  Fine by me.  I was hiking now just to do it, just to move, breathe heavily and sweat on a beautiful day.  I was hiking for the sheer joy of it.  Say what you will about the ever-elusive nature of happiness, about how hard it is to stay upbeat in a world like ours.  But for one long afternoon on a leaf-covered trail cutting through the Green Mountains, with birches, beeches and maples dazzling me with their autumnal displays, I was as happy as anyone dares to be.  Hell, I didn’t even mind the phone call that came from my concerned wife, right before I exited the woods.

That evening, my dog sprawled across the living room floor unmoved and I popped ibuprofen while Judy recounted the pleasant hours that she and Gina spent at the arts and crafts fair.  I was happy for her.  But there was no doubt in my mind that Matika and I got the better end of the deal.

Tags: fall foliage, Green Mountains, happiness, hiking, hiking with dogs, Vermont

People talk about peak foliage as if there’s a week, a day, or an hour when the autumn colors are their most brilliant, when they can’t get any better.  I’ve been listening to this kind of talk for over thirty years, and I’m more certain now than ever that it’s absolute nonsense.

I suspect that the people who invented peak foliage are also the ones trying to convince the world that the colors in New England can’t be beat.  Okay, I admit, the fall foliage is beautiful here – especially in Vermont in early October.  It’s as good or better than anything I’ve seen elsewhere, thanks to the climate, the soils, or whatever.  But peak color?  C’mon now.  That’s taking the advertisement a bit too far.

Fact is, each species of tree has its own way of turning, and each individual tree follows its own timetable.  Much depends upon latitude, elevation, terrain, whether the tree in question is healthy or stressed, and whether the tree is rooted in wet or dry ground.  Add to these factors the variances of weather from year to year, from week to week, from day to day even, and that magic moment of peak color is anyone’s guess.

At best peak foliage is only a rough estimation of when the autumnal colors should be optimal, based upon the law of averages.  At worse, it’s just an excuse to keep from fully enjoying what is right before ones eyes.  A tourist chasing leafy rainbows is a sad thing to witness, especially when so much natural beauty is overlooked along the way.  Better off to completely disregard the color change and take each day at face value.  In that regard nature rarely disappoints, here in New England or anywhere else, in autumn or any other season.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love to see the color in the trees when the green washes out.  I love the brilliant reds and oranges of maple trees, the bright yellows of birches and beeches, and even the more muted reddish-brown color of oaks later on. I love to watch the leaves rain down with a strong gust of wind, then settle on the ground inches deep in places.  This is one of the reasons I live in this part of the country.  The seasonal change is dramatic here, with nature always providing something new and interesting to see.  But don’t ask me if the fall colors have reached their peak yet.  I’ll say that you just missed it, that it happened five minutes ago.

Tags: expectations, fall foliage, perception, seasonal change, Vermont

Sometimes I head to the mountains to escape my thoughts.  Other times I take my intellectual baggage with me.  The other day was a good example of the latter.

Even as the rush of the mountain stream filled my ears, and the intoxicating smell of autumn leaves tickled my nose, I brooded over a comment made by a world-renowned physicist a week or two earlier.  He had said that a Creator was not necessary, that the universe could have arisen spontaneously from nothing.  I immediately scoffed at the notion, but it ate away at me regardless.

Order or chaos – it all comes down to that, doesn’t it?  Either the universe is organized according to certain immutable laws, or all events are essentially random.  Recent cosmological discoveries point to a Big Bang occurring 13.7 billion years ago, to a singular event giving birth to the universe as we know it, thereby ruling out the possibility that things are now as they have always been.  But that leaves the non-religious thinker no choice but to embrace utter randomness.  And that’s a tough pill to swallow.

Order or chaos?  While fly fishing a mountain stream, I see plenty of both.  All around me there are downed trees, rotting wood, and the quiet tumult of growth and decay, yet the leaves overhead are turning gold, completing a cycle set in motion many centuries ago.  Rocks are strewn about haphazardly, as are twigs and branches, yet the stream itself follows the inexorable tug of gravity.  Is wild nature ordered or chaotic?  A good argument can be made either way.

A small brown trout rose to my showy fly, an Ausable Wulff, then all was quiet for a while.  When I spotted a cloud of tiny, slate gray mayflies hovering over the water, I changed to another fly – one called a Blue-winged Olive – that better matched the hatch.  I was betting that the hungry mouths beneath the water’s surface would know the difference.  This bet didn’t escape the philosopher in me.  I was betting on natural order and was not disappointed.  Several trout splashed to the surface, chasing my tiny gray fly.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have the eyes to see my offering on the water so I missed the strikes, leaving all matters philosophical unresolved.

Shortly thereafter, I resorted to my showy A. Wulff, which is much easier to see.  I soon hooked and landed a ten-inch brook trout.  It didn’t make any sense, really.  You’d think a big, old brookie would know better than to rise to something that looks as out of place as an A. Wulff.  Clearly Mother Nature was making fun of me, mocking my assumptions.  Or maybe we just don’t have enough information to really know what’s going on around us.  I laughed long and hard at that, while returning the trout to the drink.  There’s always a rationalization, isn’t there?

Tags: brook trout, cosmology, fly fishing, mountain stream, order and chaos, philosophy, random universe, wild nature

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

A week after hiking the AT with my friend John, what stays with me is the dreamy nature of Vermont’s Piedmont – that sparsely populated stretch of hilly country between the main spine of the Green Mountains and the Connecticut River.

Some would call it the better part of Vermont, far away from the hustle and bustle of the much more urban Champlain Valley where I live and work.  Some think of it as Real Vermont, still largely untainted by “flatlander” influences.  Its wooded foothills and pastoral valleys have their charm, no doubt.  As a deep woods wanderer, the Vermont’s Piedmont isn’t my turf.  Not really.  But I’ve definitely come to appreciate it.

“Excuse me,” I said to the cow standing in my way, right in the middle of the trail.  Fact is, I was walking a high pasture through which the AT was passing.  No, not my deep woods wandering at all.  Yet quite charming in its own way.  Yeah, this is picture postcard Vermont.

On a cool, overcast September afternoon these foothills have a quality that is hard to describe.  A cricket chirped incessantly while John and I took an extended break after a long, gradual climb.  Otherwise, all was quiet.  The ridges we saw from the open field seemed to go on forever.  Houses were visible from every lookout.  Sometimes we could see a highway in the valley below, a ski area carved from a hillside, or some other kind of development.  All the same a piercing silence persisted, as if the passage of time meant very little here.  Perhaps it doesn’t.

My muscles no longer ache and the blisters on my feet have healed.  All my backpacking gear is cleaned and put away.  Yesterday I went for a long walk on the Rail Trail with my dog.  It felt like the turning of a page.  Soon I’ll slip into familiar mountains here in the northern part of the state and groove with the wild the way I usually do.  But that walk across Vermont’s foothills will linger in the recesses of my mind quite some time, I’m sure.  That curious blend of field and forest seems like the best of all possible worlds, as if the Green Mountain State is actually capable of living up to the advertisements in tourist brochures.  Imagine that.

Tags: Appalachian Trail, hiils and valleys, hiking, Vermont

John Woodyard and I traded emails back and forth all summer long, putting together a plan to hike a section of the Appalachian Trail here in Vermont.  Last Sunday morning, we met at the motel in Rutland where he had spent the night after a long drive from Ohio.  Then we parked one of our cars at Sherburne Pass, drove to Norwich, and started walking.

We hiked over the many ridges and foothills between the Connecticut River and the main spine of the Green Mountains.  We hiked forty miles in four days – not a particularly challenging hike for John but a real workout for me.  Then I drove him to another trailhead where he commenced the second leg of his hike while I went home exhausted.

Forty in four was all I could handle.  I knew that from the very beginning.  I’m soft and fat from too many years in front of a computer screen and not enough exercise.  John also works on a computer, but he jogs on a regular basis so he’s in better shape than me.  We’re both in our mid-fifties.  John has been biting off big chunks of the Appalachian Trail for a couple years now and could possibly hike the whole damned thing by the time he reaches retirement age.  I have no desire to do that.  All the same, I’ll probably accompany him on several of his New England outings.  I enjoy hiking with a friend every once in a while.  For me it’s a different way of being in the woods: more social, less pensive.  And different can be good.

Trail pounding isn’t my preferred way of being in the woods.  I’d rather wander around aimlessly for a while then land in some remote place to sit and groove on the wild.  I thoroughly enjoy this comfortable philosopher-in-the-woods routine.  But sometimes hiking hard is just what the doctor ordered.  Burn that fat, build some muscle, and stave off the inevitable decline of old age a while longer.  Besides, it’s good to step outside of the comfort zone on occasion.  Different can be very good.

Then there’s friendship, which has its own value.  John and I have known each other since Boy Scouts.  We’ve been hiking together for decades – sometimes with multi-year gaps between hikes.  It’s all too easy to lose touch with old friends.  The years pass quickly and everyone is so busy.  Trail pounding is hard, but maintaining friendships is harder.

No, hiking hard isn’t my first choice, but any way of being in the woods is a good way.  As different as John and I are – the contemplative writer/philosopher and the go-getting electrical engineer – this is a point upon which we thoroughly agree.  Sometimes it’s best to put everything else aside and get into the woods any way you can.

Tags: Appalachian Trail, backpacking, friendship, section hiking, Vermont

Early morning walk on a hot and humid day.  A short hike, actually, up the local hill.  Just enough to break a sweat, get a few bug bites, and cough out the last of a head cold.  My dog, Matika, runs ahead and sniffs around.  She’s happy to be on the trail again, if only for an hour.  So am I.  It’s been a while.

Next week I’ll be footloose on the Appalachian Trail, doing some serious trail pounding.  But for now, this’ll do.  All I need is a little down time in the woods before going to work – a chance to reconnect with the wild before immersing myself in the world of commerce.  Yeah, this’ll do.

Already reddish orange maple leaves litter the trail.  Wood asters and jewelweed are in full bloom – summer’s last hurrah.  Temps in the high 80s this week.  This comes as something of a surprise.  Not that I’m complaining.  Probably the last of the summer heat.  The warm season doesn’t last long here in the North Country.

The trail underfoot is dry.  On the west side of the hill, forest shadows abound.  On the east, bright yellow sunlight cuts through the trees.  No one out here yet.  Just me, my dog, and my thoughts.

Thoughts?  Yeah, I turn pensive in the fall.  And while the leaf season hasn’t really started yet, it’s not too early to exercise the gray matter left largely unused since last spring.  One look at wood asters triggers it.  Not sure why.

Seasons change, the years slip by, and my body gradually loses its resilience.  But not my mind.  In fact, I’m a better thinker now than I was twenty years ago.  Not as fast or sharp, yet better.  I have more to think about – more dots to connect.  The big picture is easier to see now.  Much easier.

Thoreau once wrote in his journals that thinking seems to make people sad.  I think I know why.  Because all deep thought begins with an acute realization that nothing last forever.  And most of our energies are misdirected.  If the average person fully realized how short life is, he/she would spend more time going for morning walks and less time driving in circles, trying to get things done.  That’s how it strikes me, anyhow.

No matter.  Every walk, long or short, eventually comes to an end.  I step out of the woods a little sooner than expected and unconsciously pull out my car keys.  Enough fooling around already.  It’s time to go to work.

Tags: contemplation, growing older, Thoreau, walking

Once a year, Judy and I gather together our grandchildren for a four-day “summer camp.”  No parents allowed.  Every gathering has a different theme.  This year it was all about the jungle so there were lots of apes, frogs, insects and other wild animals in the mix.  Imagination turned our back yard into a rain forest, and there was no shortage of fun.

Brightly colored orangutans dangled from strings stretched across doorways.  We watched part of a documentary about the rain forest canopy to see the real ones in action.  We painted lizards, opened a coconut, made tribal masks, swung from a rope like Tarzan in the movies, and hung out in the tree house that I built for the occasion.  The kids loved the tree house.  It spoke to them in ways that I, as an adult, just barely understand.

With a theme like the jungle, there are plenty of teachable moments, but for the most part it was all about goofing around.  While I was pretending to be a wild man living in the tree house, the kids stole my mascot, Peewee – a monkey carved from a coconut.  And somehow that became the driving symbol for this year’s frolic.

Peewee is silly looking and silly is good.  I was all excited a couple weeks earlier when I found Peewee in a store.  Judy thought I’d gone crazy when I showed it to her but somehow I knew the kids would love it.  Perhaps I’m more of a kid than I’m willing to admit.  Despite all the gravely serious philosophical rumination that I do when I’m alone, either at home or in deep woods, I still gravitate to silliness.  That’s for the best, I think.  It’s not healthy being serious all the time.

Kids like to jump, run, laugh, play, imagine and generally goof around.  Judy and I did our best to keep up, but we were exhausted by the last day and glad to see it all come to an end.  Now back in adult mode, a couple days after reordering the chaos, we sink into melancholy.  We miss the kids even while thoroughly enjoying the peace and quiet.  We look at the pictures taken during the gathering, amazed by how much we missed, and speculate about what we’ll do differently next year.  One thing’s for certain, though.  No matter what the theme is, silliness will abound.

Tags: backyard nature, children and nature, summer fun

The slight rustle of leaves catches my ear.  I know that sound well, so I stop and look around.  At first I see nothing.  Then looking closer, I spot a garter snake slithering beneath the ferns.

Like most wild creatures, the snake is well camouflaged in its natural environment.  But that doesn’t change the fact that I almost missed it.  For every snake I see while I’m hiking along the trail, I miss ten.  Perhaps a hundred.

While wandering through the woods, I am happy enough stretching my legs, breathing heavy and breaking a good sweat.  The green infinity soothes my eyes.  The forest quiet calms my frazzled, urban nerves.  A whiff of something dank yet vaguely sweet makes me smile.  That’s the smell of the forest itself.  And I traipse along in a daydream of sorts, only half paying attention to the world around me, enjoying the mental vacation.

Should I be paying more attention?  Should I break through that deceptive veil of forest sameness and see the myriad creatures occupying it?  Should I stop and admire the occasional flower, or is it enough just being footloose and free for the day, clearing my head?  Those who love wild nature scowl at the obliviousness of day-trippers like me.  Yet I wonder how much time they spend each day in front of a computer screen.  Isn’t it enough just being here now, detached from the cyberworld?

I shudder to think how many things I fail to see as I go about my daily affairs.  Then again, you can’t see it all.  I have lounged next to a quiet pond for a full day just trying to take it all in.  But that’s impossible.  Even in the quietest place, there is too much going on.  So what can we do but see what we can see and leave the rest unseen.

The trick, of course, is not to miss too much.  Lost in my thoughts, I often miss the better part of days . . . weeks . . . dare I say months?

Life slithers past while we’re busy daydreaming.  That’s enough to give pause to even the most hardened, non-Thoreauvian soul.  What is it that we’re so busy thinking about?  Whenever I spot a snake on the forest floor, I silently congratulate myself for having seen it, resolving to pay better attention from now on.  But the daydreams always return – a virtual reality that plays in my head without end.

Thank god for the occasional rustle of leaves.

Tags: awareness, hiking, nature, the passage of time

About a hundred days after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, it became clear that the cap on the leaking wellhead would hold.  Millions of barrels of oil had spilled into the Gulf of Mexico by then, but at least we could breathe easy again, knowing that the mess wouldn’t get any bigger.

Various officials have assured us that most of the oil has been burned, collected, or otherwise disbursed, so what the heck. . .  No sense crying over spilled oil, right?

Everyone is tired of hearing about it.  Consequently, the media is slowly relegating this story to the back burners.  Soon it will slip from view altogether.  Everything but the litigation, that is.  And then it’ll be business as usual, until the next big environmental disaster captures the headlines.

Meanwhile, greenies like me traipse off to the woods to escape the madness of civilization.  How do we reach the trailheads?  By car, of course.  My car runs on fossil fuels.  How about yours?  I figure it takes a gallon of gas to reach the nearest trailhead and another to get home.  That’s about 4 or 5 gallons of crude oil.

Short of buying an electric car or living off the grid (neither one of which I can afford), I have little choice.  The socially responsible thing to do would be to carpool, but I’m not that social.  So I’ll either drive to the trailhead or stay home and hike Aldis Hill again.

How many decades have we been on this merry-go-round?  Too many.  And there’s no end in sight.  Oh sure, I could tell you about the many promising clean tech companies I’ve discovered during my research, but since I’ve lost half of my nest-egg investing in them, I probably shouldn’t go there.  Fact is, the much-touted alternatives to fossil fuels aren’t really valued.  Not yet.  I figure it’ll take a few dozen more world-class disasters before they are.  Looks like H. sapiens isn’t as sharp a thinker as he/she used to be.  Or maybe all the political rhetoric is clouding the matter.

We can blame the BP executives for their gross negligence, Transocean for operating the rig, or Haliburton for the nebulous role it played.  We can blame the government in general for their slow and ineffectual response, or blame Obama in particular for endorsing offshore drilling last year.  We can blame those who drive gas guzzlers, the greedy guys on Wall Street who trade in black gold, or OPEC for controlling the global flow of oil, thereby forcing us to desperate measures.  The list goes on.  But Pogo said it best, I think:  “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

As long as we keep pumping gas into our cars, we are screwed.

Tags: change, clean tech, geopolitics, green economy, the environment