Woods Wanderer

I’ve waited a week and am glad I did. Temps have risen into the 20s already this morning. No wind. Clouds instead of sun but that’s okay. I step out of my car, parked at the bottom of the woods road, to assess the snow conditions. Should I use snowshoes or microspikes? There’s only 3-4 inches of snow on the ground, but there will be more by the time I leave the road and enter the woods. I strap on my snowshoes.

The snow on the narrow woods road has been packed by other people. My snowshoes barely make an imprint in it as I creep steadily uphill. I’ll be stepping away from the beaten path soon. In my daypack is all I need to survive the night if it comes to that. When bushwhacking alone in the winter I like to be prepared.

A mile into the mountains I leave the woods road, following a set of barely visible tracks in the fresh snow. There’s a little more than half a foot of snow here. My Green Mountain Bear Paws sink only a couple inches into it. I slowly make tracks, stopping frequently to enjoy the surroundings. Snow clings to the branches of trees and covers everything else. I cross a set of fresh deer tracks, cutting my pace even more. There’s no reason to rush.

Beyond a small clearing there’s no semblance of a trail at all. I’m truly bushwhacking now and loving it. Running wild. My thoughts are running wild, as well, though I’m focused for the most part on finding the easiest route through the woods. I keep to the right of a mountain brook. I step gingerly over the smaller streams feeding the brook. Ice breaks underfoot.

Downed trees are obstacles to negotiate carefully. I sidestep them when possible. I slip and fall once, brush off the snow then keep going. Reaching an old campsite, I fashion my foam pad into a seat against a tree. I sit and listen to the brook murmuring beneath the ice and snow. It’s the only sound breaking the silence. Stillness and silence in the deep winter forest –– there’s nothing like it.

Snowshoeing out, I retrace my steps. My tracks into the woods are the obvious path to follow now. I don another layer to keep from cooling down too much. By the time I reach the bottom of the woods road, I’m a little giddy. All the stinky thoughts I had at the beginning of the day have washed away. Good outing.

Tags: bushwhacking, hiking alone, running wild, snowshoeing, The Green Mountains, winter woods

Remarkably enough, there were no black flies out yesterday when I set foot on the mountain brook. I don’t know why. They’re out in force in my backyard. A bug-free outing in the spring is a real treat, though. I walked the brook for several hours, pretending to fish for trout. But what I really wanted was the sound of rushing water, a cool breeze wafting up the stream, and wildflowers in bloom along the banks. I got all that and more.

Oh sure, I casted my fly into every emerald pool of water and did my best to entice brook trout to the surface, but nothing happened. No rises, that is, until the last hour of my outing. I caught and released one brookie at that time, happy not to be skunked, then lost another on a second rise. Slow fishing. But when the forest comes alive with that luminescent, vernal green it’s hard to care about anything else. The sudden explosion of leafy growth, both overhead and across the forest floor, is reason enough to be in the woods. Trout fishing is just a good excuse to witness it.

When I stumbled upon painted trilliums in full bloom, I couldn’t help but smile. Plenty of other wildflowers come up in May, but this is one of my favorites. There’s something about painted trilliums that brings joy to me. Perhaps that is because I associate it with the Green Mountains – my home turf – and with my first mountain brook outings a long time ago. Eternal renewal. That flower shouts it.

When I was finished fishing, I sat down on a large rock next to the stream. I smoked a cigar in celebration of a recently published book and counted my blessings. I have many, including the crystal clear stream itself. Just then several dun-colored mayflies rose into the air, similar to the fly I had been using. I reveled in the beginning of a mayfly hatch even though I was too tired to take advantage of it. Sometimes it’s enough just to witness such things. The miracle of spring is that even the harshest winter can’t prevent it from coming. And that is reason enough, I think, to walk the brook this time of year.

Tags: mountain stream, springtime, The Green Mountains, trout fishing, wildflowers