A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
I ask too much of spring. “Please, no more snow,” I ask in March. After this is granted, there are always a couple of final, last, heavy, wet flakes that barely survive their landings. Then I ask for temperatures high enough not to have to use our wood-burning stove.
Next I ask for the ground to dry, so I can put aside snow boots for hiking boots. When the crocuses and daffodils and hellebores appear, I confess the joy they give me is less than they deserve, because they sneak up on me before spring has truly arrived. I think of them as I do spring training baseball games, to be appreciated more for what they anticipate than for what they are.
Then that “April showers” thing sets in. I get it. It rains a lot. We need the rain. The rain is good. Could we get even one day with a bit of sun? Apparently not.
Even after the rains thin a bit, I’m still not happy. No leaves. As long as the branches are bare, winter lingers, day after day. Waiting for spring around here can be more depressing than enduring winter. When can we sit on our deck in the early evening?
Very gradually, almost subliminally, I notice a haze of color on the trees. Light green, or reddish or purple buds seem everywhere, replicating spring’s protracted uncertainty. Some buds open immediately, others take days. This can vary even on the same tree or bush. Since the budding of trees is nothing less than the way they reproduce, little wonder it takes so long, is so uncertain, and doesn’t respond well to being observed.
Each day the colors are more apparent. I drive down to the valley, on a cat medicine run. Whoa! Spring has already arrived down here! Apple blossoms! Impressionist swatches of color cross the mountain distances.
I return to our mountain with faith restored. How curious that what we wait so long for, that seems so agonizingly gradual, can appear to us to have arrived all at once.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
On the way to the Tumbling Waters and Fossil trails at the Pocono Environmental Education Center are two stone seats with a ring of stone between them. A monument identifies it as The Ring of Aldyth. Honeymoon Haven has placed it there for lovers to seal their relationship, it says.
Until 1972 Honeymoon Haven occupied the land that became PEEC. It was one of many mountain destinations for couples from the city seeking a romantic retreat for their honeymoon. These were very popular with soldiers returning home after World War II. The Ring of Aldyth was one of several photo ops there.
This monument is a replica of one found in the courtyard of The Church of the Recession at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. The legend, more fully described in the courtyard, tells of a Saxon lass named Aldyth, and how she waited to see if her true love, a warrior in the Saxon army, would survive the battle of Hastings in 1066. They sealed their troth by holding hands within the stone ring. Though the battle was lost, the warrior returned to Aldyth.
The Church of the Recession is a replica of the Church of St. Margaret in Rottingdean, Sussex, near the battleground. It was built well before 1066. I was curious if there was an original Ring of Aldyth in their courtyard, or at least a legend.
I contacted the Vicar of Rottingdean, Rev. Doctor Anthony Moore who replied, “There is certainly no Ring in Rottingdean.” I conclude that this most interesting stone monument in our part of the forest seems to be a replica of a replica of which no original ever existed, to memorialize a legend that was created sometime in the 1930’s in California. Aldyth, was, however, the name of the wife of King Harold of Hastings – make of that what you will. The legend might be fiction, but the love of warriors returning to their true loves is certainly not, whether returning to Sussex after the Battle of Hastings, or returning to the Poconos in 1945.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
Spring hiking season is upon us. My first experience with real hiking came in 1996 when I trekked the base of Annapurna in Nepal. My prime motivation for this was to be able to say, “When I trekked the base of Annapurna.” I trekked with a small group of moderately fit westerners, led by a Sherpa, a member of the Nepalese ethnic group who for centuries have lead Himalayan ascents.
Our group gathered the night before we departed to learn the rules and warnings of the trek. Our Sherpa’s final words were, “Tomorrow I will tell you how to trek the base of Annapurna.”
The next morning he said only, “One step at a time.”
We all laughed, but I was also disappointed. I felt I needed advice. Soon I understood this was best advice I could have received.
We spent one entire day walking up. I could see nothing but steps carved out of the mountain for as far as I could see, until the trail disappeared into the clouds. I said to myself, “One step at a time.” Eventually, I reached the clouds.
Later, when we spent a day walking down, and my knees hurt more with each step, his advice enabled me to endure the pain. When we trekked along the side of a mountain and the steps became distressingly narrow for my size twelve boots, I took each step very carefully, focusing on the current step, looking neither ahead or behind. When we returned to the valley I knew I had been able to complete the trek because I recalled his very good advice again and again.
One step at a time. Stay focused. Keep in the present. Don’t look back. The clichés of motivation didn’t originate in offices or classrooms or factory floors, but in the mountains and fields and seas where following or not following them had real consequences. Now when I hike through our forest, the altitudes are not as great, nor the paths as narrow, yet I frequently repeat our Sherpa’s still helpful advice.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
Winter’s snow has been replaced by the leaf blanket of early spring. In previous years, I raked leaves from our driveway and the few flowerbeds we determinedly carved from the mountain shale.
Now we have finished a major landscaping: a stone sidewalk, several additional flowerbeds, bushes, a raised bed for herbs and vegetables. We hope a tall mesh fence will keep the deer from the garden. Many more leaves must now be cleared. I shopped for my first leaf blower.
I chose a snazzy model, sleek and futuristic, Luke Skywalker’s leaf blower. Three speeds and a battery pack. No blue tooth. I could wield it with one hand, like a Viking his broadsword. All ground cover shall yield to my power!
First attempts brought mixed results. The modest pile I accumulated returned to chaos with an errant turn of my wrist. What blew the leaves together can also blow them even farther apart. Twenty minutes of labor wasted in an instant. “Doah.” My leaf blower self-image sagged from Jedi Warrior to Homer Simpson. An older generation would have noted my resemblance to W. C Fields, suddenly surprised at the damage wrought from his own ineptness.
I concluded one must approach this task like a border collie, defining and patrolling the boundary of the herd of leaves. I carefully nudged them closer together, finally directing them to what was now the edge of the forest, where they could be reunited with their kind.
This worked. The battery charge lasts about 45 minutes, as do I. A couple charges over a couple days and I was finished, needing only to fine tune the job by picking those last few leaves from crevices and bushes.
Mastering the power of the leaf blower was essential. I couldn’t just point it toward the leaves without a plan and expect to accomplish anything but make a bigger mess. I needed a little experience, considerable patience, and an end game. Power alone does not make a leaf warrior. Foolish power can destroy in an instant what wisely directed power needed time and forbearance to create.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
“The wolfsbane should be coming up soon,” my wife said.
“You planted wolfsbane? That is so cool!” I replied. I was fascinated by vampires, zombies and werewolves as a boy. Wolfsbane is well known to werewolf aficionados as a useful deterrent.
Then I discovered that wolfsbane, also called monkshood because the flower looks like one, is deadly poisonous and has been used for centuries to kill real wolves. Should we be growing it with Violet the Corgi sniffing about?
Kathleen thought it unlikely that her seed supplier was selling deadly poisonous plants. We found she had planted winter wolfsbane, or winter aconite, a relative to the real thing, but not harmful. Or was it?
Websites, from seed catalogues to academic journals, differed. Some say it is not harmful or don’t address the issue. Others say that the whole plant is toxic, especially the bulb.
At the advice of my veterinarian, I checked the ASPA website list of toxic plants. No winter’s wolfsbane, but no real wolfsbane, either. If they left out an obviously toxic plant, then perhaps the omission of the winter kind was not proof of its innocence.
I again perused the list of plants poisonous to dogs. Chamomile, chives, daffodils, lemon grass and onions were included, along with many other common plants, as well as several we encounter in the forest, like milkweed. The whole forest is toxic!
Apparently winter wolfsbane is poisonous, but not very, similar to daffodils. No case has ever been reported of a dog getting sick from it. It might be poisonous if you made winter wolvesbane tea and served it to someone every morning, not that I’m suggesting this. A dog digging or munching at it would be in little danger.
We are now free to enjoy the little flowers, which appear even before crocus. Since I have seen no werewolves in our part of the forest, the wolfsbane must be doing its job. Nor has Violet developed a bark that says, “Danger, werewolf approaching!” I wonder what that bark would be like?
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
When countless trees were felled by last winter’s high winds, this tree was the one we watched. Our house would be significantly demolished if it toppled toward us. It did not. It seems to be not only the tallest, but also the strongest and most resilient tree in our part of the forest.
It is an eastern white pine, pinus strobus, the tallest tree in the eastern United States. Many are over 200 years old, some over 400. The Iroquois Confederacy called it “the tree of peace,” yet it helped spark a revolution.
Its long, strong trunk was highly coveted for the masts of sailing ships. This made them particularly attractive to the British Empire in the eighteenth century, for both commerce and war. Great Britain, however, had forested their own land to near bareness, and looked to their colonies.
A law was passed making it maddeningly difficult for colonists to harvest their own white pines, but allowed confiscation by the crown. This led to the Pine Tree Riot of 1772. The British sheriff of Hillsborough County, New Hampshire was awakened in the middle of the night by colonists angry about his arrest of a local logger. They beat him with switches and small logs, and ran him out of town. This discouraged the British from enforcing the law and inspired a similar event called The Boston Tea Party.
Long, strong logs are no longer in high demand for the conduct of commerce or war, having been replaced by oil, various metals and perhaps, in the near future, that diminishing but essential natural resource, water. Who knows what the next world power will find essential for their empire, or where they will find it.
Having lost their high strategic status, white pines are now allowed to grow tall over their neighbors, though they are still in demand for the strength and size of their wood. Perhaps, since they are now used extensively as Christmas trees and holiday wreathes, they can even reclaim their Iroquois status as a tree of peace.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
Was winter finally breaking? My wife said, “We should think about taking down the bird feeders this weekend.” The anxious interval between bear arousal and the final retreat of the snow was upon us. We don’t wish to abandon the birds before their natural food supply returns, but neither do we desire repeating last year’s experience of meeting a black bear eye to eye as he was exiting our deck. The pole was bent from vertical to forty-five degrees, the feeders scattered.
At eleven-thirty that night, Violet the Corgi’s barking woke everyone in house. From my years of interpreting her barks, she was saying, “Okay, be calm. There is a bear outside. He’s not on our deck. Yet.” The “Bear on deck!” bark last spring was considerably more urgent.
I switched on the deck lights. No bear. I walked onto the deck and shined a flashlight around the grounds. No bear. Everybody went back to sleep, until about two-thirty, when Violet gave the same bark. I did the same inspection with the same result. No bear.
I concluded that, while Violet might have been barking at some shadows earlier, she was not likely to have been fooled twice. Nor were her alarms likely to have been stimulated by lesser varmints. I have never known her to use that particular cadence and volume without a bear being within her smelling radius. I removed the feeders from the pole. Violet was silent the rest of the night. Everybody slept until morning. Bird feeding is reluctantly suspended until the hummingbirds arrive.
Today, I examined footprints in the slushy snow near the deck. Were these Corgi footprints close together, or something larger? I assume it has been warm enough to rouse a bear from torpor. Every print was indistinct, shadowy. I don’t think any were bear tracks. The bear might have been far enough away not to leave tracks near the deck, but close enough for Violet to pick up the scent.
Which is scarier, the bear you see, or the bear you don’t see?
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
The finch turns from gold to gray, leaves from green to red and orange, moss fades, the ground itself wears a white blanket then throws it off. The bright, pink plastic ribbon around the tree never changes. It blends with the fall, stands alone as the only color in winter, reflects like psychedelic neon against the angle of the setting sun in any season.
It doesn’t fade or bloom or wilt or open because it doesn’t live, so never dies. It wraps around trunks, dangles from branches, flies from rebar spikes hammered into the ground. It gives new meaning to the first line of Woody Guthrie’s most famous song: “This land is your land. This land is my land.” On one side of the pink tape is your land. The other side is mine.
Flagging or surveyor’s tape does have something in common with birds and leaves. It comes in many colors and one needs to know the code for proper identification. In most cases, red means power lines, orange communication, yellow utility, green sewer or drains, blue potable water, purple reclaimed water or slurry.
White may be the most ominous, often indicating future excavation. The tapes can also be used in forestry for indicating trees that need to be taken down, or not. Hikers, hunters and paint ballers use them to indicate trails and directions.
These human intrusions are the only colors in the forest that seem out of place and crudely rendered compared to the subtly and variety of organic color and form. I am fortunate that in my part of the forest no one cares if Violet the Corgi and I venture onto their property, as we often do on squirrel patrol, to visit the creek, chase a tennis ball, or just stretch our legs and enjoy nature.
Near us there are only pink property line indicators. Nobody removes the tape. We respect private property. This land is my land. That is my neighbor’s. Good to know. Good also to remember that the forest doesn’t care.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
When March arrived without a trace of spring, I began to look for subtler signs. I found some on the golden yellow of the pine siskin, applied as an accenting coat, streaked randomly along tail feathers, breast and wings. It is a cousin to the goldfinch, who now also begins to turn from its drab winter coloring to bright yellow.
I find both around our feeders constantly. I recently discovered everybody isn’t a goldfinch. Their differences are obvious, once you see them, though both are finches. Our siskins and goldfinches have more golden yellow feathers today than four days ago, when this photograph was taken.
Feathery gold is accumulating now, each day more and brighter, a seasonal optimism. While the goldfinch doesn’t migrate, the siskin sometimes does, depending on weather and food availability. The golden colors of both birds return gradually. The siskin flies north, though ours seem to stay all year; the finch molts in place.
Robert Frost wrote: “Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.” Gold and brightest yellow in nature seem ever receding, as Frost states in the final line of the poem which is also its title: “Nothing Gold can Stay.” However, I have a prosaic codicil to add.
It is, “Sometimes gold returns.” It returns with the siskin. It returns with the spring molt of the goldfinch. Even gold, immutable, is subject to eternal return. You just have to know where to look for it.
Photo by Kathleen Lyon
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
Two cords of wood are stacked under our deck. This will get us through the winter and into the fall. Having enough firewood is a comfort.
The delivery truck backed up our driveway, an impressive feat, dumping the wood close to the deck. Then came the job of stacking.
I’m a tad obsessive. I fold clothes. I adjust crooked picture frames. I recently arranged the contents of our pantry according to container: boxes on one shelf, bags on another. Transforming a pile of firewood into a stack calls to me.
All wood deliveries are not equally easy to stack. Some cords arrive with uniform pieces. Others have various sizes and shapes. These bring greater challenges and frustrations.
The most frustrating aspect of wood stacking now is that I simply can’t complete the task. Or, more precisely, completing it would take too long. I need the wood under the deck before the next snow arrives, which will be soon.
I am reminded of Mr. Winifred Chestnutt, my neighbor when I lived in North Carolina during the Carter administration. He was 92. Every day he would be on his land, falling timber, cutting and stacking. I asked him how he could do this every day at his age. “When I get tired, I stop. When I feel better, I go back to work.”
I’m not good at either. I usually work too hard and then give up. I phoned my friend and neighbor, who stacked the wood for a fee far less than the chiropractor would charge to get the kinks out of my back, would I be so foolhardy as to try to finish the task. With the next storm imminent, my only choices were to work too hard or find someone else to work too hard.
Next year I’ll try another strategy: work smarter. Order more wood, sooner. Next year I hope to have time to stack the wood myself into an orderly, properly obsessive stack before the storm arrives. I might finally attain the Zen woodsman consciousness of Mr. Winifred.