Woods Wanderer

A cardinal sings its heart out from a nearby tree.  The ground out my back door is barren, muddy and soft.  The first light arrives before breakfast and lasts until dinnertime.  Something wild is stirring within me now, but it’s way too early for spring.  Here in the North Country, we know better.  We know there’s at least one more deep freeze in store for us, along with several more winter storms.  This is March, after all, not April.

Oh sure, this freeze-and-thaw routine is good sugarin’ weather, but the sap can run for well over a month before the first bud on a maple tree opens.  You might find the first purple fingers of skunk cabbage punching through the snow along the edges of wetlands, ponds and waterways, but don’t go looking for any other wildflowers just yet.  You might see a robin on an exposed patch of grass, but it’s wintering over – not a migrant.  No, don’t start thinking spring just yet.  We’re still on the frosty side of the vernal equinox.

There are lots of tracks in the snow now.  The wild animals are stirring.  Won’t be long before they’re prowling around our trashcans.  Thought I smelled a skunk the other day, but maybe that was just wishful thinking.  Yeah, you know you’re in a bad place when you start longing for skunks.  What can I say?  Not everyone living this far north is into winter.  I’m tired of pretending that I like cold and snow just because I live in Vermont.

The wild stirs deep within.  I’m trying to ignore it.  I have a lot of work to do and can’t go gallivanting into the woods just yet.  All the same, a trail is calling my name.  My dog stares at me.  “Do you hear it?” she asks with her eyes.  Damned dog.  If I listened to her, I’d never get any work done.

I’ve been productive lately.  My head is full of ideas.  Oh sure, I’m getting soft and fat sitting here in front of this computer screen typing away, but I’m getting things done!  So forget those wild urges.  There are still piles of dirty snow out my window and the sky is endlessly overcast.  March is an excellent month for finishing projects started last fall.  Besides, it’s way too early for spring.

“Do you hear it?” my dog asks again.  I tell her that I’m trying to ignore it.  But something tells me I’ll be walking a trail later on today.  The sun blazing through a crack in the clouds will change everything.  Then I’ll pull on my boots and slip out the door.  Better get some work done this morning while I can.

Tags: nature in winter, signs of spring, the wild, Vermont

Civilization is indoor plumbing, a dependable food supply, health care, waste management and the social contract among other things, not to mention a host of amenities. Civilization is good for so many reasons that I am reluctant to speak ill of it, even when I’m feeling the wildest of urges.  Then comes tax time and suddenly I’m face-to-face with the absolute madness of it.  Those of you who do your own taxes and can’t use the EZ form know exactly what I’m talking about.  There are 101 ways that civil society can drive one to distraction, but none quite as effectively tax preparation.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not against paying income taxes.  I leave that complaint to those who think they can fund a well-oiled government by other means.  I’m against the madness of the tax code in general, that has turned tax preparation into a cottage industry in this country.  But an inordinately complex and downright absurd tax code is exactly what you get when you let a bunch of lawyers and other congressmen fight over the rules of it for a hundred years.  Good thing I studied advanced mathematics back in college.  Unfortunately, I studied logic as well.

The madness of civilization isn’t limited to tax code.  Far from it.  There is also airport security, civil litigation, lobbying, insurance, plea bargaining, internet fraud, financial derivatives, bundled mortgages, gridlock, an emergency-room health care system and the war on terror, whatever that means.  I could go on but there’s no need.  You know what I’m talking about.  The madness of civilization are all those vexing aspects of modern living that we’ve simply come to accept. . . until they affect us personally.  Then we tear our hair out.

Emerson, Thoreau and those other Romantic thinkers of the 19th Century turned to wild nature for escape from the hustle and bustle of industrializing society, but that seems like a rather quaint notion to those of us living today.  We are buried in corporate and governmental bureaucracy, menaced constantly by false advertisements, mind-numbing paperwork, irrational rules, conflicting facts and doublespeak.  Nowadays, we turn to the wild out of sheer desperation.  Without it, there is no way to achieve balance – no way to know what is real and what is not.

When I was on the Appalachian Trail last summer, I noticed a direct correlation between the overall well being of those I encountered and how long they had been in the woods.  The long-distance hikers were the happiest.  What’s wrong with this picture?  What is it about modern living that makes torrential downpours, blood-sucking insects, mud, sweat and the many other miseries of wilderness travel look good?  All nature-lovers marvel at the beauty and wonder of wildness, but it’s what they don’t say that gets my attention.  Clearly, the madness affects us all.

An aerodynamics expert once told me that the best airplane designs are the most elegant ones, meaning that truly advanced technologies are marked by their simple beauty.  Systems grow more and more cumbersome until finally a quantum leap occurs and suddenly they’re user-friendly.  Computer software design in the 80s and 90s is a good example of this.  The same can be said about social systems, I think.  And with this in mind, we ought rightly to turn to wild nature for guidance.  Otherwise humankind is doomed to live out the rest of its days in a rat maze entirely of its own making.

Tags: civilization, modern times, reason, systems, the human condition, wild nature

Several inches of hard-packed snow lay beneath an inch of fluffy stuff, making conditions good for hiking, so I left my snowshoes behind when I went to Honey Hollow last week.  With a rucksack loaded full of essentials and my dog, Matika, at my side, I started up the narrow lane.  The lane was closed for winter but someone had groomed it for skiers or snowmobiles.  No matter.  I had it all to myself that chilly, overcast day.

Half a mile up the wintry lane, I left it for a trail leading down towards Preston Brook.  Matika and I followed the trail until it emptied into a small yard harboring an ancient wild apple tree.  There we picked up a set of deer tracks running parallel to the brook.  A light snow fell as man and dog disappeared into the woods.

I traced those deer tracks for a half hour or so, as my canine companion cavorted all over the place.  Happy dog, sniffing and running.  Man plodding along.  The brook murmured beneath the ice, peeking out occasionally from broken seams.  Patches of hemlock green adorned the otherwise naked forest.  The snow blanketing the ground muffled all sound.  I passed a fresh, rectangular hole drilled into a nearby dead tree, but no woodpecker came into sight.  No birds at all, in fact.  Intense quiet.

I unrolled my foam pad atop a snow-covered boulder next to the brook, and sat down on it.  Short lunch break at midday.  Matika ate a cup of kibble from a hole I dug in the snow then lined with plastic.  I nibbled an energy bar left over from a backpacking trip last summer, dreaming of warmer days.  Although shrouded by ice and snow, I recognized a deep pool in the brook about twenty yards downstream and imagined casting my line in there again as I have many times in the past.  Hmm…  Opening day of trout season still two months away…

Sometimes I come out here to ponder the mysteries of the universe.  Other times I come out just to sit quietly by the brook, letting its gentle murmur wash away all my thoughts.  The chill of my own sweat got to me, though, before either thought or no-thought could occur.  I packed up my rucksack and headed farther upstream.  The surrounding mountains were calling my name.

At some point early in the afternoon, I gave up my aimless wandering and returned to the lane.  Then it was an easy walk out, crisscrossing the tracks of animals just as restless as me.  The snow flurries, which had stopped at midday, started up again.  I reached my car much faster than expected.  And I ran the car heater full blast during the long drive home.

It was good to get out and stretch my legs, but I’m really looking forward to spring.  Hungrier for it now than I’ve been in years.  Not sure why.

Tags: bushwhacking, Green Mountains, hiking alone, mountain stream, nature in winter

I’m not a big fan of winter.  I envy those with winter sports to keep them outside all day.  When I go for a winter walk, it rarely lasts more than an hour or two.  I have snowshoes but only strap them on when conditions demand it.  I’d rather just walk, and dream of early spring when the cold mud underfoot yields to my step.  Truth is, I’m just biding my time, waiting for warmer days.

Before crawling out of bed this morning, I felt it: the urge to wander aimlessly through the forest.  Some days the urge is greater than it is other days.  This morning it is especially strong so I’ll head for the hills as soon as possible.  Snowshoes or no, I’ll bolt as soon as I’ve taken care of any pressing business.  Or maybe I’ll say to hell with work and just bolt.

Some people call it cabin fever; I think of it more as a wild urge.  The mind can be a wild place and I’m comfortable living in my abstractions most of the time, especially during the colder months.  But there comes a time when even the wildest thoughts are not enough.  At such times the short walk I take during my midday errand running seems more like a prisoner’s daily hour in the yard than a bona fide outing.  Then I know it’s time to bolt.

The mind can be just as wild as the body.  Most people don’t get that.  They think wildness involves lawlessness, irrational behavior or sexuality.  Sometimes it does, but there’s much more to thinking wild than that.  I call it creative thought, at the risk of confusing it with purely artistic urges.  But I digress.  There are times when wild thoughts simply do not suffice.  There are times when the body must be as free as the mind.

So enough blather already.  A wild urge isn’t placated by abstraction.  I call myself a woods wanderer because, when push comes to shove, that’s what I have to do to keep from going crazy.  Words fail me.  I’ve gotta go.

Tags: cabin fever, walking, wild mind

Last week I finished reading a book called The History of Nature and drew surprising insight from it.  I found the obscure tome in the science section of a used bookstore a few years ago.  The book was published in 1949 so you can imagine how out of date the science in it is.  But the last few chapters – “The Soul,” “Man: Outer History” and “Man: Inner History” – looked interesting.  I bought the book and read it despite its age.

The book was written by C. F. von Weizsacker, a German nuclear physicist.  Von Weizsacker was the first to identify nuclear reactions as the energy source for the sun and stars, so he was no slouch when it came to science.  The first three-quarters of The History of Nature is a good review of what humankind had learned about Earth and the cosmos by 1949.  But this heavyweight scientist wasn’t much of a philosopher, as the last quarter of the book clearly illustrates.

This comes as no surprise.  Few heavyweight scientists are heavyweight philosophers, as well.  In this age of specialization, we don’t even expect it.  As C. P. Snow pointed out a half century ago, science and the humanities have developed into two separate cultures.  Therein lies the problem.  The more we compartmentalize knowledge, the harder it is for any of us to see the big picture.  I give von Weizsacker credit for attempting, at least, to bring all knowledge together in a synoptic view of things.  Most thinkers don’t even try.

That said, what struck me about von Weizsacker’s worldview was the inconsistency of it.  “Body and soul are not two substances but one,” he states outright, suggesting a worldview one that would expect from a Platonic thinker, a Rationalist from the Enlightenment, or a Buddhist.  Then he blathered on about the rise of free thought over instinct, good and evil, and the virtues of the Christian love, as if this kind of dualism wasn’t at odds with his original body/soul statement.  Fuzzy thinking at best.

As I finished this book, it suddenly occurred to me that Humanism, preached by religious and secular thinkers alike in the middle of the 20th Century, is now antiquated.  The contradictions of it have simply become too glaring.  That we, Homo sapiens, are qualitatively different from the rest of nature is something any informed person living today must find very hard to swallow.  What basis is there in science for this kind of thinking?  At what point did we abandon our animal selves?  When exactly did we divorce nature and become human – when we turned to agriculture and started building towns, or when we started burying our dead and painting on cave walls?  How about when we fashioned the first tool?  When Lucy walked upright across the savanna, was that the beginning our separation?

No, I don’t see it.  I don’t see human nature apart from Nature.  Nor do I see human progress as the gradual removal of our selves from the physical environment.  Certainly, our ability to think abstractly – to love, hate and reason – is an integral part of our humanity, but so is eating, sleeping, dreaming, bleeding and sex, to name but a few of our more down-to-earth attributes.

If we are serious about being fully human, then we must cultivate our affinity with wild nature instead of alienating ourselves from it.  Besides, the wild is as much within us as it is out there.  Like all things in nature, we are evolving, but the words “progress” and “human” do not go together very well.  For better or worse, a human being will always be an animal to some extent.  And I for one revel in that fact.

Tags: being human, nature, philosophy, science

I was waiting in line at the grocery store earlier today, trying to figure out how Octo-mom got her bikini body, when suddenly it occurred to me that I’m not spending enough time outdoors.  My excuse is that I’m hard at work on my literary projects during the winter, but the truth is I’d rather spend my time reading and pondering the mysteries of the universe whenever I’m not working.  But grocery store tabloids don’t lead to any deep thoughts, so I dropped off my groceries at home and headed for Kill Kare State Park to stretch my legs.

My dog, Matika, was all for going to Kill Kare.  She hopped around excitedly in the back seat of the car while we drove there.   Then again, she thought going out yesterday in the freezing rain was a good idea.  No, her judgment isn’t to be trusted.

Kill Kare is a spit of public land jutting into Lake Champlain.  Dogs aren’t allowed in the park during the summer, but in the winter nobody cares.  From a large field right next to the lake, I tossed a ball for Matika to chase while I walked around taking in the scenery.

The lake was iced over as far as I could see.  Shafts of light breaking through gray clouds illuminated Adirondack foothills a dozen miles away.  A steady breeze rippled the open leads of water close to shore.  Several ice fishermen were standing over their holes a hundred yards away, dreaming of perch.  A couple days of above-freezing temps had melted off all the snow, revealing nearly transparent ice no more than six inches thick.  Wouldn’t catch me out there on a bet.

It didn’t take long for the wind blowing across the lake ice to cut through my four layers of clothing.  Didn’t look like the fishermen were catching anything, yet no one moved from their hole.  They all seemed oblivious to the wind.  I stuck around long enough to wear out my dog then headed for the car.  Snow flurries were swirling around my head by the time I reached it.

While finishing my walk, I daydreamed about the choppy, green-gray lake water of early spring and the warmer weather beyond.  Then I realized that today’s the meteorological middle of winter here in Vermont, or thereabouts.  That means we’re halfway through the cold season, so balmy days are still months away.  The lake will remain iced over a while longer still.  Ice fishermen will have ample opportunity to catch perch.  Wish I shared their enthusiasm for the sport, but I’m going indoors to ponder the imponderables instead.  Winter is, after all, a good season for pondering.

Tags: nature in winter, Vermont, walking

I went out at dusk yesterday to throw the ball for my dog, Matika, in the back yard.  While I was out there, a bunch of crows flew overhead, then a bunch more.  Then a great, dark stream of them flew past – hundreds of them, then hundreds more.  Their passing took five minutes.  I stood there awestruck by the avian display.  I’ve seen crows countless times, but never so many.

Where are they going?  Why are there so many of them?  What keeps so many birds alive in the middle of winter?  I like to think of myself as something of a naturalist, but even in my own back yard I am often stumped by the wild.

Black birds against a mottled gray sky.  A murder of crows in the dead of winter.  In Hitchcock’s movie, The Birds, crows play a particularly menacing roll, attacking school children. If all those crows landed in my yard, I’d step inside, certainly.  Yesterday over a thousand crows flew overhead in the fading twilight.  Occasionally one would let out a halfhearted caw, but for the most part they were silent.  As silent as the grave.

A flock of crows is called a murder because some farmers say they’ll gang up and kill a dying cow.  I find this hard to believe, but I’ve often seen them feeding on roadkill so I know they’re big carrion eaters.  Hence their association with death, especially in European culture.  I’ve also seen a crow being mobbed by a songbird after attacking its nest.  Yeah, they’re opportunistic as well – proof positive that Nature can be very cruel.

When I was sojourned in Alaska, I learned to appreciate the ways of ravens, those close cousins to crows.  Crows, ravens, jays and other corvids are intelligent creatures.  They know how to survive, that’s for sure.  In the Alaskan bush, I watched ravens carefully and took their lessons to heart.  Consequently, I developed a certain affinity with them.  But crows are still just crows to me.  Nature’s clean up crew at best.

My bird book tells me that crows gather by the thousands when they roost in trees at night.  That explains what I saw.  No doubt they have a roosting site nearby.  But in the depths of winter, I can’t help but sense something ominous about the presence of so many crows.  Black undertakers in a white landscape, they make me long for spring, anyhow.  I miss my green world.

Tags: backyard nature, birdwatching, crows, nature in winter

I’ve never been a big fan of winter, and after shoveling the white stuff for a few days, I begin to hate it.  But it’s unhealthy to live in a place like Vermont and stay home from the first snow flurry of the season to the last.  So even now, in the middle of winter when all I want to do is hibernate, I make it a point to get into the woods when I can.

A Nor’easter struck a week ago.  For all you who don’t live in New England, that means lots of precipitation straight from the ocean.  In this case, it came in the form of snow falling for three days in a row.  Between one and three feet of it, depending upon where it was measured.  Good if you like to ski; not so good if you have to shovel your own driveway.  I fall into the latter category.  But once I finished pushing back the white stuff, I grabbed my snowshoes and headed for the hills.

There’s a wild area on French Hill, not far from home.  I go there whenever time is tight but I need to get out.  I went there a few days ago and cut tracks across the trackless snow until I reached a snowshoe trail that someone else had cut a week earlier.  Even with fresh snow, I still found it easier to follow that trail than to cut new tracks.  Fortunately, it led to where I wanted to go: a beaver pond less than a mile from the road.

My dog, Matika, loves the snow.  I’m not sure why.  I think it holds smells better than dirt does.  At any rate, she likes to frolic in the snow, occasionally burying her snout in it to investigate some hidden treasure.  She looks silly with her face all frosted but she doesn’t seem to care.

First thing I notice whenever I’m alone in the woods after a big snowstorm is how incredibly quiet it is.  An ominous quiet, that is.  Robert Frost nailed it with his poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” of course.  But standing  in a cold, white forest, it’s easy for me to believe that I just discovered the terrible beauty that wild nature becomes in deep winter.  Trees heavily laden with snow are both magnificent and surreal.  As they droop towards me, I keep thinking that maybe I shouldn’t be alone out here.

The beaver pond was frozen over – a black-and-white photograph brought to life.  Starkly beautiful.  The gray clouds overhead thickened and a flurry commenced.  Matika wanted to keep going deeper into the woods, but I thought it best to turn around.  By the time I reached the car, my own sweat had chilled me.  But it was good to get out.  And whatever gripe I had earlier in the day was forgotten by the time I got back home.

Tags: moods, nature in winter, snowshoeing, wild nature

There are plenty of people trying to make the world a better place – philanthropists, activists, idealists, and the occasional self-proclaimed philosopher like me.  Sometimes we actually accomplish good things.  Sometimes our intentions are good but the consequences of our ideas or actions only make things worse.  Usually we attract a great deal of attention to ourselves while we are busy saving the world.  And when the accolades are doled out, most of us accept any praise bestowed upon us as if we really do deserve it.  After all, we’ve been working so tirelessly for so long.  Heaven forbid that our efforts should go unnoticed.

Polly Beebe-Bove passed away Christmas Eve.  You probably don’t know who she was.  I don’t think she ever made the news.  But she definitely left her mark in this world.  She left her mark on my wife, Judy, directing her towards a church-sponsored silent retreat to resolve matters both spiritual and temporal.  She left her mark on me, encouraging me to keep at the difficult task of recounting a life-altering experience in Alaska.  She left her mark on many others, I’m sure.  She made the world a better place in small, quiet, self-effacing ways.  Polly made the world a better place in ways too incidental for anyone to notice, when no one was looking.  Guerilla goodness, I call it, and only now in her absence do we feel the full impact of her labors.

Polly was no saint.  She wasn’t an easy person to live with.  Talk with her children and you soon learn that.  And she had her demons.  Don’t we all.  But to Judy and me she was always encouraging, supportive, kind, and non-judgmental.  Now we are left wondering if we can work in a similar vein.  Judy is more optimistic about this than I am.  To save the world is easy; to selflessly aid others in their moment of need is not, especially if no one is looking.  Try it sometime.  Guerilla goodness.  It takes a great deal more effort than one might think.

There are times when all nature appears cruel and self-interested, and human beings are no exception.  History is filthy with it.  To a non-Christian like me, the teachings of that Nazarene two thousand years ago seem sadly unrealistic.  Then someone like Polly comes along and I begin to wonder what we humans are truly capable of doing.  Even from the grave, Polly’s unsinkable optimism snipes at my longstanding cynicism.  Just knowing someone like her makes me think that maybe, just maybe, there’s hope for humanity.  We haven’t completely defeated ourselves yet.

Tags: being human

I found a field mouse in the basement the other day – an uninvited guest.  Its sudden appearance inside my home, the ultimate expression of domestication, is proof positive that the wild cannot be completely eradicated.  I find no small consolation in this.  I absolutely dread the possibility of living in a world without wildness, so I’d like to let that mouse stay.   But I’ll be putting out traps soon.   After all, I have to protect my investment.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between humankind and nature, about the difference between what is wild and what is not.  We use the terms “wild” and “civilized” as if they were opposites, as if one cancels out the other, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true.  Our relationship to the wild is much more complicated than that.  I believe that a part of the wild rests deep within us all, and that the wildness within cannot be completely eradicated any more than the weeds in our yard or the pests creeping into our houses.  All the same, it can be pushed back to the point where any discussion regarding it is moot.

When all that’s left of the wild is the occasional intruder in the basement, we will be living in a world without wildness.  When all nature is under our thumb, one way or other, then the wild won’t be worth thinking about.  When what we call nature is reduced to gardens, woodlots and preserves, and we have the means to genetically alter everything at will, then the wildness within us will be lost as well.  Then wilderness will be a theme park – a mere caricature of what it once was – and we will be only shells of our former selves.

I find it impossible to adequately define concepts like “wild” and “civilization” no matter how much I try.  These are terms fraught with ambiguities.  But this much I do know:  without a place to roam freely, we are merely cogs in a grand, meaningless, self-perpetuating system.  Aldo Leopold got right to the heart of the matter when he said:  “Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”   In an era of flying drones, GPS navigation, infrared cameras, and electronic tracking devices, this question is hardly an academic one.  Computer chips are showing up everywhere.  Soon it will be impossible to completely disappear into the wild no matter how hard we try.  Good news for fighting terrorism or finding lost hikers, but bad news for preserving the wildness essential to us all.

I fear the scientist with his radio collar more than the greedy developer with his bulldozer.  It doesn’t require a great deal of creativity to imagine a team of technicians descending upon a woods wanderer and tagging him or her like any other wild animal.  And why not?  The wild cannot be properly managed if there are gaping holes in the database.  So yeah, I’ll trap that mouse in my basement, but not without deep reservation.  Some part of the wild must be cultivated within me.  Some part of the wild must be allowed even in my own home.  Otherwise, civilization is all for nothing.

Tags: backyard nature, being human, civilization, the wild, wild nature