Woods Wanderer

Judy loves hummingbirds but it has been years since she last saw one.  Two summers ago, she purchased a hummingbird feeder and hung it from the lilac bush a few feet from our kitchen window.  That allowed me a close-up glimpse of one once but Judy wasn’t so lucky.  So for the third year in a row she hung the feeder, hoping for the best.  I knew better than to encourage or discourage her.

Judy loves hummingbirds.  She loves them so much that she has one tattooed right above her ankle.  She says that every time she has seen one she has been on some kind of vacation – with me in the Adirondacks, with a friend on the Maine coast, or elsewhere.  More than once she has seen them at rest and has meditated on the fact that even a creature as frenetic as a hummingbird must stop every once in a while.  Seeing them when her own life was frenetic, she too has stopped.  There is a time for wingbeat intensity and a time to rest.

Many years ago, when I was alone in the Alaskan bush, I awoke almost daily to the low-pitched buzzing sound of a hummingbird hovering just outside my tent.  Even then Judy had an affinity for hummingbirds, so I couldn’t help but think that her animal spirit was watching over me.  Nowadays I can’t see a hummingbird or the mere image of one without thinking of her.  Judy’s existence and the essence of that tiny bird are somehow bound together.  Don’t ask me to explain how I know this or why it is so.  Some things go beyond words.

A couple days ago Judy put up her hummingbird feeder, hoping for the best.  She put up a fuchsia plant next to it, thinking that that might help attract the little busybodies.  She was right.  Yesterday, just before dusk, I looked out the kitchen window and saw a female.  Judy saw it a few minutes later, delighting in the encounter.  This morning, we both saw a male hummingbird at the feeder, repeatedly.  It looks like Judy has finally succeeded in attracting them to our home.  That makes this a red-letter day.

There are times when the wild is in our faces, and other times when it seems elusive.  Always it keeps us off-balance, somewhat amazed, unsure what to expect next.  That is the wonder and beauty of it.  Few creatures illustrate this as well as a hummingbird does, flitting around with such erratic intensity.  Maybe that is why Judy, wife of a woods wanderer, loves them so much.

Tags: backyard nature, birdwatching, hummingbirds, the wild

Even though I don’t consider myself a materialist, I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about money.  Who hasn’t?  For most of us living in middle-class America these days, money is more about survival than it is the endless acquisition of goods.  My wife, Judy, and I are concerned about keeping a roof over our heads, food in the cupboards and the other basics of life.  We worry about future prospects for some kind of retirement, health care, and all the rest of it.  These are hard times, certainly – not nearly as bad as the Great Depression, we are told, but worse than anything we’ve ever seen before.  And we keep wondering when it’s all going to turn around.

The other day Judy remarked that springtime seems especially beautiful this year.  I agree, it is.  Why is that?  I suspect that it has something to do with survival, with all the time and energy we’ve devoted to money matters since the economy took a turn for the worse.  After a long pow-wow about cutting back our expenses, just in case, we looked up from our porch chairs and were pleasantly surprised to find the world just as beautiful as it has always been – as if money doesn’t matter at all.  How strange.

Money does matter, and what we are experiencing in America these days is what most of the people on this planet deal with every day.  Many of them are worse off than the average unemployed American – much, much worse off.  I read somewhere recently that a billion people go to bed hungry every night.  That’s almost one in six people.  Simple facts like this keep things in perspective.

How dare I ramble on and on about the wonders of wild nature while a billion bellies are growling, when the future is so uncertain!  Sometimes I am ashamed of my wild thoughts and feel guilty about the long walks in the woods that I enjoy while so many people are suffering.  Then someone else mentions the scent of lilacs in the air, the rat-a-tat of a woodpecker knocking, or the luxuriant feel of a handful of dirt.  Then I nod my head in deep reverence.  These are things that keep us going.  These are things that matter.

What is the point of living if there is no joy in it?  What is easier to enjoy than a colorful sunset, a cool breeze in the morning, a few notes sung by a songbird, or anything green?  When one’s belly is full, of course.  I don’t know how to turn the economy around or how to fix all the world’s woes, but I do know that we’ll be in deep trouble the day we loose our appetite for the simple pleasures of life.  Without it we would be only so many desperados bouncing off each other in search of a quick fix.  So let’s try to enjoy the things commonly found in nature even as we take care of the difficult business at hand.

Tags: economics, the human condition, wild nature

Monday morning I headed for the hills.  After crossing over a recently opened mountain pass, I drove through the Stowe Valley to the edge of Mt. Mansfield State Forest where I parked my car.  The sun was shining brightly.  My dog, Matika, grew excited, especially when I shouldered my pack and we started up the well-groomed woods road.  I wanted to stretch my legs.  With the upper reaches of the Long Trail still wet with snowmelt, this was one of the few responsible ways to hike a trail deep into the forest.

The Cotton Brook loop is either 8 or 9 miles long, depending upon where you start.  I made it a 9-miler just to push myself.  It was a stress test of sorts, with an eye towards a trek on the AT I’ve slated for August.  I hiked hard at the outset, averaging 3 mph even while stopping occasionally to check out wildflowers.  Jack-in-the-pulpit greeted me at the outset.  Foamflower, wood anenome, bellwort and bluets bloomed along the side of the trail.  A few early-season bloomers like trillium and trout lily lingered beyond their peak days.  The surrounding forest was a dozen different shades of green.  I reveled in it while breathing heavy and breaking a sweat in the chilly, early morning air.

Matika cavorted off-trail at first but settled into a steady trot once she realized that she was in for the long haul.  Four and a half miles back, we stopped at one of the two main feeder streams tumbling from the head of the Cotton Brook Valley.  There the stream ran clear despite heavy rain a couple days earlier.  I splashed some of it into my face before continuing my hike – a baptism of sorts.  I do not take clear mountain water lightly.

Around six miles, I felt dull nagging aches mounting in my hips, knees and lower back.  The higher-elevation bloom of Dutchman’s breeches and bleeding hearts distracted me somewhat, but the aches persisted even when the trail flattened out.  Suddenly a euphoric rush coursed through my body and I smiled skyward.  The endorphins had just kicked in.

Around seven miles I left the main trail and hiked down to the brook.  There Matika and I took a long break.  A few black flies buzzed us while we ate lunch but weren’t menacing enough to take seriously.  Here the mountain stream was a whitewater torrent loaded with silt, more mesmerizing than calming.  I lost myself in it for a while.

My joints had seized up during the break so it wasn’t easy getting going again.  All the same, I set a steady pace on the way out and enjoyed every minute of it.  Another wave of endorphins helped, as did the ibuprofen when it finally kicked in.  Matika stayed ten yards in front of me.  The warm spring air made it easy to daydream.  I thanked my lucky stars for living in Vermont and being able to slip into the Green Mountains this way pretty much at will.  I’m fully aware the hard hiking through the woods is luxury that few people enjoy.  At my age it isn’t easy, but the dull aches are a small price to pay.  Yeah, I’m a lucky stiff.

Tags: hiking, mountain stream, Vermont, wildflowers

After weeks of alternating rain and sunshine, the grass is a fuller, deeper green than it’s been in six months.  But that’s not what’s captured my attention lately.  Not really.  I am awestruck by the leaf-out all around me – in the bushes, in the trees, and across the forest floor.  It is so sudden and overwhelming that I find it difficult to think of anything else when my eyes fall upon it.  And yes, it feels sudden, even though I had all of April to anticipate it.  Nothing could have prepared me for this kind of green, even though I’ve seen it fifty times before.

Vernal green, Kelly green, the green of a living landscape long since dormant and springing to action.  Wizard of Oz green – a brown and gray world bursting into Technicolor vitality overnight, too green to be real.  I first noticed the green unfurling while running my dog a week or so ago.  A maple leaf no bigger than my thumb rolled out of its bud and yawned.  All I could do was stand there amazed by it.  But now I’ve gone beyond that even.  Now I’m completely overwhelmed.

What kind of world is this, anyway?  How can there be so much green where there was only bleached forest detritus, dark mud and naked branches only a few weeks ago?  I go about my daily affairs the best I can, but all this green distracts me.  I fight back the urge to cast off my clothes and dance through the lilies like some feral naturist drunk on life.  I make a list for the day, look at my watch and pretend that I have it all under control.  But this green unfurling is making mincemeat of my reasoning powers.

Every other day is built around a stint of woods wandering, however brief.  The rest of my life is just some kind of muddling through, a sleepwalk of sorts, full of numbers, ideas and other abstractions.  Head down I start my walks.  Five or ten minutes into them, I look up and see the luminescent green.  Then and only then am I fully aware of being alive.  And my first impression is always the same:  This remarkable world is too beautiful for me to run roughshod over it the way I do.  What was I thinking?

But enough blather already.  A cardinal calls me out even as I write this.  I’ve gotta go.  And maybe, just maybe, after I’ve seen enough songbirds and wildflowers amid the green, I’ll be able to get something constructive done today.  Not that it matters.  Life needs no excuse to exist.  In that regard, I am no exception to the rule.

Tags: awareness, existence, springtime, vernal green, wild nature

People naturally assume that I’m eager to save the planet from the ravages of industrialism, protect all endangered species from extinction, and preserve as much wild forest as possible.  Surely someone as passionate about wild nature as I am must be an environmental activist, or so the conventional line of reasoning goes.  This assumption is made by liberals and conservatives alike, and confusion registers visibly in their faces when I deny it.  And when I add that I reject “-Ist” and “-Ism” altogether, that I’m too much of a philosopher to be truly political, most people peg me as a fence-sitter and leave it at that.  Who can blame them?  Action is what matters in this world of ours.  Words are only words.

I studied too much political theory back in college – that’s the problem.  I learned all I could learn about Socialism, Fascism, Republicanism, Democracy, Theocracy and the rest of it.  I even cultivated my own alternative political philosophy for a while.  But all that is just theory.  Politics is the concentration and exercise of power to project one’s own cherished values onto the world.  Ideology is merely the excuse needed to get the job done, to mobilize other people to action.  As a would-be propagandist and pamphleteer, I see right through the advertisements, both left and right.  In other words, I know bullshit when I see it, and no “Ism” is an exception to the rule, not even Anarchism.

Generally speaking, I am reluctant to voice this opinion of mine – and that’s all it is, really – because there’s no advantage in offending nearly everyone else on the planet.  But make no mistake about it, I don’t care to wave any flag, even one with a picture of Mother Earth on it.

While activists break into two distinct camps, warring with each other in the political arena, global warming continues, thousands of species disappear, and the wild forest grows smaller. When the liberals are in power, laws are passed protecting the environment – keeping Big Business from trashing it, that is.  When the conservatives are in power, those laws are rescinded or new ones are passed, enabling businessmen to profit from the use and abuse of natural resources no matter what.  Back and forth the pendulum swings, year-in and year-out.  To what end?  Do you really believe that one side will ultimately win this battle?  Do you really think that an activist of any stripe can do anything that can’t be undone?

What’s at stake here is quality of life – the quality of our lives, not those of trees, whales or spotted owls.  It’s really more a matter of economics, not politics.  When enough people grasp the true cost of their shopping mall world, and what is lost in the process of perpetuating it, there will be little resistance to salvaging what’s left of the wild.  Most people act in their own best interest.  All any real lover of wild things needs to do is show them exactly what’s at stake.  Then nature will take its course.

Tags: economics, nature, philosophy, politics

After a short but intense round of writing this morning, I pulled on my hiking boots and shot out the door.  I couldn’t get to the woods fast enough.  I parked my car at the trailhead then hiked hard towards one of my favorite haunts.  There I found the objects of my desire: wildflowers of all sorts in bloom.  I found wild ginger, marsh marigolds, blue violets and various others on full display.  But the wild lilies are what really got my attention.

I dropped down on one knee next to a mixed patch of them – white and purple trilliums, trout lilies and bellwort – touching the flowers to make sure they were real.  I was astounded by their abundance. The unseasonable warmth that has graced Vermont during the past few days has brought them out a bit earlier than usual.  I enjoyed their elegance – how something so simple could be so beautiful.  I marveled at their unbroken symmetries – triads of petals and sepals convincing me that there’s a force in nature greater than myself.  Then I stepped away to continue my hike.

The daystar burned brightly overhead even as clouds gathered on the western horizon.  I smelled rain, so I turned around and hiked back to the car.  I saw two marsh hawks circling low over wetlands.  Suddenly robins appeared everywhere.  Splotches of green mottled the forested hills in the distance.  Matika panted heavily at my side, and I soaked my t-shirt with sweat as if it was summer.  I spotted more wildflowers here and there along the trail, but my head remained full of wild lilies.  Once they spring up there, it’s hard to get them out.

It makes perfect sense to me that lilies are associated with everlasting life.  That such life forms should suddenly emerge from the cold, dark earth is proof positive that chaos does not reign supreme in this world.  I find it difficult to behold wild lilies without lapsing into mysticism or waxing sentimental.

Give me a bouquet of lilies on my deathbed and I will pass away assured of something more than oblivion.  Until that day I will wander among them whenever I can, worshiping their Creator and rejoicing in the eternal renewal that is spring.  I’m a madman, I admit – mad with the simple pleasures of an infinitely varied world.  Whenever wild lilies are in bloom, nature does not disappoint.

Tags: hiking, spirituality, springtime, wildflowers

I went into the mountains earlier this week to spend the night – just me and my dog, Matika.  I hiked a logging road uphill for a half hour, then followed a small stream a quarter mile to a favorite camp spot.  At 1500 feet, a few patches of snow still lingered in the woods.  Although some furled leaves pushed through the forest floor, no flowers bloomed at that elevation.  That’s okay.  I hadn’t come to botanize.

In early spring, I don’t expect much.  But I do expect to enjoy a long, meditative evening feeding sticks into a campfire.  With that in mind, I gathered wood shortly after setting up camp.  But it was still too early in the day to start a fire, so I went fishing for a while.

I broke out my fly rod and retraced my steps back to where I’d seen a brand new beaver pond.  Figured that would be a good place to start.  I flipped my line into the pond and every quiet run or deep pool I could find while working my way upstream, but no trout rose to my offerings.  That’s okay.  I hadn’t come to fish.  Not really.

By the time I returned to camp, I was ready to start a fire.  I crumpled a little birch bark and built a small tipi of sticks around it.  But a dry wind blew down the mountain, kicking up leaves all around me.  Hmm…  My wood pile, the leaves, the surrounding forest – everything was very dry.  As I put a match to the tipi, I told myself to be very careful.  I had a couple liters of water close at hand just in case.

The parched tinder burst into flames and every stick I added to it burned hot and fast.  I kept the fire small, but had to put out an ignited stray leaf more than once.  Stressful.  I burned just enough wood to boil up a pot of water for dinner, then immediately snuffed out the flames.  So much for campfire meditation.  I donned a sweater as I sat in the chilly woods at twilight, while brooding over this unexpected turn of events.

A gust of wind blew down the mountain with enough force to rattle my tarp.  I fretted about the impending storm as I tied down the tarp edges with more guylines.  Then Matika and I crawled under it.  The wind roared in the distance.  The temperature dropped as the forest grew dark.  I nodded off but awoke around midnight to the sound of sleet hitting the tarp.  Matika groaned.  Several times through course of the night, the wind tugged at the tarp, threatening to pull it from its moorings.  But we awoke at dawn still dry and under cover.  The forest calm at that time seemed rather peculiar.

With very little wind blowing and leaves subdued by dampness, I enjoyed a breakfast campfire well into the morning.  It wasn’t what I had planned, but when you’re in the wild, it’s best just to go with the flow.  During the past 24 hours, Mother Nature had shown me a face I’d never seen before.  I pondered that while sipping coffee and poking at quiet embers.  Twenty-seven years in Vermont woods, you’d think I would have seen it all by now.  But the wild, by definition, can always surprise.

Tags: adversity, camping, springtime, the elements, the wild

Even though I had the house all closed up yesterday morning, I could hear a cardinal singing loud and clear from its treetop perch.  I didn’t dare look out the window because I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist the blue sky.  I was hellbent upon getting various literary tasks done before noon, but it seemed rather foolish to write about the natural world while it was springing back to life just beyond my walls.  What would Thoreau do?  Eventually, I stuffed a compass in my pocket, slipped on my hike boots, and headed for the hills.  No doubt my dog, Matika, wondered why it had taken me so long to do so.

After watching a big old turkey crossing the road, I stepped into the woods.  I needed to hear the high-pitched symphony of spring peepers and had in mind a beaver pond where I was sure to find them.  Just before leaving the last semblance of a trail, I spotted coltsfoot in full bloom – not all that unusual in mid-April.  But the spring beauty that I found a few minutes later took me completely by surprise.  A week early, at least.  I dropped down to my knees and snorted the flower as a drug fiend snorts cocaine.  The result was just as narcotic.

I flushed two deer from a streambed while bushwhacking through some brambles.  Matika immediately chased after them but turned around when I called her back.  Good dog (sort of).  We hopped over the stream and continued deeper into the woods, skirting the beaver pond.  Its shimmering waters were clearly visible through the naked trees, but I wanted to reach a favorite spot on the pond’s opposite shore.  That would take some doing.

My passage through the forest wasn’t very direct.  I traveled from one patch of green to another, looking for more signs of the season.  I found a few mottled trout lily leaves springing forth, then stumbled into some fresh leeks.  I chewed a leek just for the sharp sting of it to my palette.  Matika sniffed the tracks of animals that had passed this way recently.  We reached the far side of the pond sooner than expected.

A Canada goose honked as we approached the pond’s marshy shoreline.  There I sat on a fallen tree, with Matika resting by my side, long enough for the peepers to resume their trilling.  They had fallen silent during our approach but started up again once we were quiet and still.  The goose floated closer, honking continuously as if to evict us.  She eventually got her way.  Matika and I moved away after the peeper chorus had sufficiently scrambled my brains.

A few wood frogs croaked from an ephemeral pool that we passed on the way out.  They stopped as soon as I went over to inspect their haunt.  I searched for more wildflowers in bloom but found none.  No matter.  An unblinking sun burned high in the sky and all I could think was this: How lucky I am to be alive on such a beautiful day.  I drove home slowly, very slowly, irritating the other drivers on the road who had places to go and things to do.  Too bad I couldn’t have walked home.  I really shouldn’t have been behind the steering wheel of a car in my condition.

Tags: bushwhacking, Canada geese, hiking with dogs, spring peepers, springtime, wildflowers

After parking my car where Preston Brook spills into the Winooski River Valley, I hike the narrow dirt road up a steep grade into Honey Hollow.  There’s a dusting of snow on the ground and flurries in the air, but I’m dead set upon finding springtime here on this early April day.  I follow a deer trail down to the brook once I’m above the gorge.  The trail empties into a small clearing a short while later, where a hungry deer have foraged beneath a lone apple tree.  From there it’s an easy bushwhack along the stream, back to the base of Camel’s Hump – my favorite Green Mountain.  I set a steady pace to keep from wearing out too quickly.

I’m looking for signs of eternal renewal but my dog, Matika, doesn’t care.  Any day in the woods is a good one to her.  She leaps over a feeder stream, does a 180, then leaps over it again for the sheer joy of leaping.  She scratches here and there, sniffs, and runs about wildly.  She couldn’t be happier.  As for me, well, I’m halfway between being in my body and in my head – between sensual awareness and philosophical abstraction.  I hope to tip the balance towards the sensual before day’s end.

Preston Brook roars as spring runoff cascades through the rocks.  It is a bank-full tumult of whitewater racing out of the mountains, teasing me with mere glimpses of its clear, green pools.  This stream won’t be fishable for another month, but already my thoughts have turned towards the speckled trout lurking in dark corners just beneath the surface.  Icicles dangle from the moss-covered trees that have fallen across the torrent.  I look for a stonefly shuck amid the rocks along the stream’s edge but don’t find one there.  Soon, very soon.

Beneath my feet, the ground is soft, spongy, and covered with forest detritus.  In wetter places, I sink up to my ankles in mud.  While stepping over blowdown, I notice tiny, club-shaped reproductive organs arising from a patch of moss – a sure sign that the growing season has commenced.  The Christmas ferns, polypody, and evergreen woodferns pressed to the ground by winter are starting to rebound.  Deep green clubmoss pokes through patches of snow, making me think of a different era when the growing season was very short, indeed. And for a split second I feel Neolithic – fresh from the Ice Age.

Coltsfoot appears suddenly before me on a mudslide.  I am shocked by its tight curl of yellow petals on the verge of opening.  Already?  A bit later I spot a robin on the branch of a young maple tree – something common in the lowlands this time of year but rare here in the mountains.  Looking around, I notice the hemlocks adding welcome color to an otherwise brown and gray forest.  I thank them for it.  My eyes hunger for green.

Miles deep in the hollow, I take a seat next to the brook and rest.  Matika has a cup of kibbles for lunch while I eat a handful of nuts, a granola bar and a few pretzels.  Before long I’m chilled by my own sweat, so I pack up then tag the narrow dirt road for a long walk out.  I daydream along the muddy lane, recollecting other walks here in years past – many, many walks.  Growing older isn’t so bad.  My vault of pleasant memories overflows.

Through a break in the trees, I see Bone Mountain in the distance looking very cold and gray.  No matter.  A gust of warm wind blowing up from the Winooski River Valley reminds me what time of year it is.  I pass a dozen green shoots of wild lilies breaking through the earth.  Then I smile.  Yeah, it’s that time of year and I can feel a vital part of me thawing.  And before I get back to my car, I’m already planning my next outing.  This time of year, I can’t get enough of it.

Tags: awareness, Green Mountains, hiking, signs of spring

I read in the newspaper yesterday that the government of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro is going to build ten-foot walls around the slums of that big city in order to protect the nearby urban rainforest from further deforestation.  This is wrong on so many levels that it makes my head spin.  But I can’t think of a better issue to ponder today, as the G20 tackles the world’s economic woes.

Naturally, as a guy who has made woods wandering the central focus of his life, I’m all for preserving forests wherever they may be.  That’s why I get this sick feeling when I read stories like this one.  The Rio government is pandering to the likes of me – to affluent, nature-loving people in Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere, who are deeply concerned about the mass extinction of plants and animals as well as global warming.  Yeah, they know how to package it.

Reality check:  the burgeoning slums in question have destroyed 500 acres of urban rainforest during the last three years.  Since 2000, about 150,000 square kilometers of Amazon rainforest have disappeared.  Quite a difference, I’d say.  Besides that, isn’t the term “urban rainforest” something of an oxymoron?

Using the Internet, I dug deeper into this matter only to learn that the project managers think this wall will significantly reduce the drug-related violence spreading from the slums to the city’s richer quarters.  How convenient.  Two solutions for the price of one.

Yes, Brazil is one of the countries attending the G20 summit.  With the world’s tenth largest economy and a population of nearly 200 million, it’s force to be reckoned with, no doubt.  But when I read about walls being built around slums to save urban forests, I can’t help but wonder who’s in charge there and what their priorities are.  Looking out for their poorest citizens isn’t at the top of their list, obviously.

The world is small and getting smaller.  What happens in a rainforest thousands of miles away affects those of us living here.  What happens to the Brazilian people affects us, as well.  Both the economy and the environment are global, so we should care about what happens in faraway places.  But in the Age of Information, bullshit travels at the speed of light.  We would be wise to keep this in mind the next time the politicos here, at the G20 summit, and elsewhere tell us what they are doing to make things better.

Tags: economics, global warming, globalism, the environment, the human condition