A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
While driving home from the city last week, I noticed that the recent thaw allowed a rare winter landscape in colors other than white. The mountains glowed with rich browns, bright yellows and deep greens. They were repeated in my part of the forest, especially when the sun was out and the grasses and long-fallen leaves were painted with cadmium and Naples yellow.
The colors surprised me. I had assumed a winter landscape in the Poconos that was not white would be drab and lifeless. When the sky is cloudy, as it is so often, it appears exactly that. When the same bright sun that melted the snow stays long enough to shine on the colors of the dormant landscape, the result can be as beautiful as the brightness of spring or the vivid array of the fall.
If spring is dominated by colors of budding plants and fall by their demise, then the winter landscape is dominated by the earth. Plants have receded, allowing the deeper ochre, umber, sienna, Payne’s gray and almost black to have their moments among the rocks.
An earth color or tone is sometimes described as any color with some brown in it. Many earth tones are named for animals, like fox, lion or buckskin. “Taupe” is French for mole. The sap greens and viridian of the pines show the mature needles at the end of life, rather than the lighter, brighter hues of new growth.
I was beginning to enjoy this rare palette when the next snow arrived and again white covered everything, a more natural order for this place and season. By the time we see the earth’s surface again, it is likely to be during a false spring in a disappointing and annoying March, or when again we discover that, much as we love spring, baseball in April is a trial.
Then new buds will be visible, daffodils more than a dream. Planting will demand its annual urgency. The earth colors will recede like grandparents at a graduation party, the foundation of all the activity, their work complete.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
This is Hornbeck’s Creek near my part of the forest, the day the temperature reached the mid-60’s. Three days before my thermometer registered -8. I’ve never experienced a more than seventy-degree change within three days.
This is also the highest water level I’ve ever seen, except for last spring when a beaver temporarily turned the creek into wetlands. Usually I see this level in April, after the spring thaw. Since the recent warm spell melted most of the snow, I call this the “winter thaw.”
This isn’t all bad. I’m happy to have no ice and snow on the roads and driveways. The next storm will have to start from scratch, not build on already accumulated ice, which is what makes local travel dangerous.
Yet, if the amount of precipitation continues as it has since last summer’s imitation of a sub-tropical rain forest, the winter thaw might be followed by another new term, “the spring flood.”
That won’t bother me much. We live up the mountain from the creek and the worst thing would be that Violet the Corgi would lose her nearest wading pool. Our neighbors, however, who live just to the left of this photo, might not be so lucky. A few inches change in the peak level of the creek might bring water into their back yards, perhaps into their homes.
It remains to be seen if “winter thaw” and “spring flood” become permanently descriptive terms in the forest. Are the most recent seasons anomalies or, to use a current term, “the new normal?”
The old saying, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” was coined either by Mark Twain or his friend Charles Dudley Warner, the editor of the Hartford Courant, in about 1897. A century ago this was humorous, as doing something about the weather was so obviously out of the realm of human possibility. Today, as the high water from the creek flows to the Delaware, humans actually can do something about the weather. Twain or Warner’s phrase has changed from witty to tragic.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
Last week the Naif in the Forest was the Naif in Florida, but fear not, I have returned in time for the sub-zero weather. While basking in the very rainy but sixty degree grayness which locals described as “the worst weekend here in four years,” my wife and I enjoyed the Morikami Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach during a brief sunny interval. We saw a snowy egret walk very, very slowly across the path. He peered into the bush and stared for a long time, completely still.
Suddenly, he pierced his head into the bush and emerged with a wiggly lizard, desperate to escape. He turned his beak upward and the lizard gradually slid down and down, still wiggling. One could see his journey down the egret’s slim neck, wiggling no more. The reptile disappeared into the egret’s stomach. The bird then moved equally slowly to another bush and another lizard. Finally, he turned around and briefly stared right at me, before he returned to the side of the path I had first seen him. That stare, given what I had just observed, was terrifying.
As he stared at me I thought, “I’m really glad this bird isn’t eighty feet tall,” because if he were, I’d be headed for the fate of the lizards. I recalled that these guys had once been dinosaurs. Even T-Rex was only about 20 feet tall so I might not have been swallowed whole, but still.
Our stroll through the gardens was very meditative and restorative, except for that one incident of nature’s insistent brutality played out before my overactive imagination. We adjourned for lunch to the beautiful restaurant overlooking the gardens.
I ordered a bento box, a traditional Japanese lunch, including shrimp, salmon and chicken. In one lunch, without having to hunt, fish or kill, at least not directly, I devoured far more creatures than the hungry egret. My wife ordered the vegetarian alternative. I should have either done the same, or at least not have recoiled so from the gaze of the lizard-swallowing egret.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
Our first autumn in the forest, my wife asked me to plant daffodils. I accomplished this several times in the suburbs. I dug my little trowel six inches into the ground, cleared a space slightly bigger than the bulb, then covered. The most interesting aspect was placement: three bulbs at the corner of the house, five or six near the sidewalk. Spring imagined, as winter approached.
I carried bulbs and trowel to our new back yard. A clump on either side of the clearing would be good. I stabbed my trowel into the ground. It penetrated at most an inch before I hit solid rock. My wrist, then arm, then shoulder recoiled from the resistance. This was my intimate introduction to the Marcellus Shale. The photograph shows an outcrop. Outcrops are gray because the sun has burned away the carbon that makes the underground shale very dark.
The more than 90,000 square miles of shale that comprise this formation and covers a significant portion of the state, ends at the Delaware River. It varies in thickness from five to 250 feet and was formed approximately 390 million years ago. While much of the Marcellus Shale is a huge reservoir of natural gas, I am led to believe by informed, if not expert, opinion that none of it is under our part of the forest. Natural gas formation requires a specific cooling process. Our shale cooled too slowly. All the gas burned off.
I bought my first pickaxe. I swung it mightily, again and again. At last I created a space in this most formidable mountain large enough to plant a tulip bulb. I repeated this until all the bulbs were planted. I celebrated with my favorite anti-inflammatory and a long, hot bath. We have since spread several loads of topsoil, making future plantings less of an ordeal.
What lies beneath a task can be harder than what one anticipates, and the effort required to attain success far greater. I never appreciated daffodils as much as I did those that, the following spring, bloomed in the shale.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
Violet the Corgi is an avid, if easily distracted fetcher. When she wanders from the task, I fetch the ball. This is not easy, because the tennis ball is the same color as much of the forest.
I started playing tennis during the Kennedy administration, when tennis balls were white. When did they become green, I wondered? In 1972, I discovered, but they did not become green, but yellow. What?
Yes, the official color of a tennis ball is yellow, though there is an endless controversy, as many people see it as green. The balls turn greenish as they age, and we fetch mostly old ones.
The photograph shows how similarly colored the tennis ball is to this moss, making tennis ball foraging difficult. That is, if it is moss. It might be a liverwort, a heartwort, a lichen or fungi. It looks like the escarole I left in the refrigerator too long. I’m calling it moss. I’m open to other opinions, almost any of which would be more informed than mine. Hey, I thought tennis balls were green.
This green or yellow tennis ball, ignored by Violet the Corgi, landed very near this moss or whatever. I mused that this artificial object created solely for the recreation of humans and sometimes dogs, should blend so perfectly with the natural environment. The color for this object, chosen precisely so it would contrast to the background of a tennis court, happens to be the color most ubiquitous in the forest.
Some differences of opinion can be settled objectively. This moss or whatever has a name, one of which is correct and all others are not. Other differences are of perception. You see a yellow ball and I see green. Upon such differences worlds have been shaken. I propose an alternative. Expand one’s definitions and the names one gives to one’s perceptions. For instance, it is clear that the ball is neither green nor yellow. It is chartreuse.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
Yesterday I discovered a fallen tree that had been subject to serious recent excavation. There was a pile of uniform wood chips, as if they had been cut with a chisel. There were two holes in the wood, one in a deeply cut circular pattern, another a larger rectangle. There was similar work in the stump.
I emailed photographs to several friends, forest experts among them, asking what creature did this. A bear would not be so precise. A beaver would not venture this far from the creek and woodchucks are rare. The answer was swift: a pileated woodpecker. This was confirmed by instructors at PEEC, and made clear once I saw photos of “pileated woodpecker destruction” on line.
We have seen pileateds every year, if not frequently. They are the size of large crows. “Pileated” is Latin for “capped,” as their red crested head looks like a cap. They feed on carpenter ants and wood-boring beetle larva, often at ground level of fallen trees. With all our recently fallen trees, we ought to see more of them soon.
They carve huge nests with multiple entrances, abandoning them to other animals after one season. They don’t migrate and are attracted to suet feeders. They may turn their attention to wooden houses, if the wood contains insects. Their rate of pecking is 11-30 per second and can be quite loud.
Film cartoonist Walter Lantz and his wife Grace Stafford were kept awake on their honeymoon in 1940 by a woodpecker attacking the roof of their cottage. This was the inspiration for Lantz’ greatest creation: Woody Woodpecker, who began each cartoon by pecking through the screen, exclaiming “Guess Who?” followed by his signature maniacal laugh. In later years Lantz’ wife did the laugh.
I always wondered, if your spouse could do Woody Woodpecker’s laugh, would this be a good thing or a bad thing? I suspect this would depend on the circumstance, much as the holes carved by pileateds. Are the holes in a dead tree, creating homes for themselves and others, or the roof of your honeymoon cottage?
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
This is a grey squirrel. For once I feel confident in my identification. This one is munching seeds fallen from our bird feeder.
They can be destructive, eating away at vegetables, insulation or taking up residence in chimneys. However, they also played a role that was important to me when I lived in the city. They brought a bit of the forest to me.
Violet the Corgi hates squirrels, or so it seems. She takes every opportunity to chase them and is especially outraged when they appear on our deck and eat seeds that she would prefer to eat herself. She stands three inches from the glass slider and barks loudly and constantly until we let her out. Three seconds later the squirrel has leapt from the deck and the natural order has been restored. She is Captain of The Squirrel Patrol.
I’m beginning to think Violet does not, in fact, hate squirrels, and that her constant alarm and pursuit of them connotes instead amusement or entertainment. After all, she doesn’t hunt them, merely chases. She has never come close to catching one, which, if she were truly focused on doing, she surely would have done by now. Of the countless squirrels she has chased, the odds are enormous that there would have been at least one who was really slow, or injured, or otherwise vulnerable.
Likewise, I suspect that squirrels might even enjoy being chased. They repeatedly present themselves to her, unlike rabbits, which scurry away before Violet can smell, let alone see them. Squirrels have no fear of her, what with their perfect record of escape.
Could it be that Violet and the squirrels actually enjoy each other? That all the barking and running and scurrying and climbing are, in the end, something they do for the endless fun of it? I am beginning to suspect so.
The forest can be cruel and scary and implacably oriented to the cycles of life and death. It can be also, at least sometimes, just silly fun. As proof I offer: there are squirrels.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
These two photographs are of the same crop of turkey tail fungus, the lighter color taken on November 12 and the darker six weeks later. I think they also qualify as turkey tail mushrooms. They fit the definition on several mushroom websites and videos, which seem as plentiful as the variety of fungi and mushrooms themselves.
They also appear to be “true” turkey tails, not false, the difference being the undersides. The false simply looks false, like a knock-off Rolex found at a Times Square street vendor. The false turkeys aren’t as symmetrical or attractive, and lack the healthy ingredients of the real, such as antioxidants, polysaccharopeptides and other goodies that might improve one’s cancer immune system. I would not want to find myself collecting false turkey tails and thereby losing those polysaccharopeptides.
I focused on color. When I snapped the earlier photo, I thought the fungi was lovely, a delicate grey and lavender with a touch of darkening rings. The later photo shows richer variegation, the more typical turkey tail. While not minimizing the turkey tail’s medicinal possibilities, nor how much one might obsess about correctly labeling fungi, I was left more impressed with how much the turkey tail had changed. Had it not been in the same location, I would never have guessed it was the same fungi.
That it changed color so profoundly, but was beautiful in both, seems even more rare. Usually, as a living thing follows its life’s path, it first shows some potential for beauty, like a flower bud, then bursts into its fullness, then wilts, its beauty a wistful memory. Not this guy. I just checked him out today and he’s still quite lovely, though smaller. The colors have lightened again to something closer to their November tones.
A wise friend years ago summarized the three stages of humanity: youth, middle age and “my, you’re looking well.” Turkey tail fungi follow a different pattern: beauty in changing array across its full life span. Perhaps this is also the human pattern, if we had eyes to see.
** Warning: Please do not pick & eat mushrooms, or any other forest plant, without the advice of an expert.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
This photograph is our short fieldstone wall, which I call the “Mouse Hotel.” Most of the year I see many mice in and out of the little crevices. Squirrels and chipmunks hide their lunches; toads stay cool there. It drives Violet the Corgi crazy. Now it is as quiet as a hunter’s cabin off-season.
Almost everybody but the mice are hibernating. Mice are looking for a warm place for winter, perhaps in your foundation, near your chimney or, best of all, your cupboard! A great number of beasties hibernate, including black bears. Maybe. Depending on your definition.
Bears alter their metabolism considerably and can sleep for as long as seven months. However, some experts do not consider this true hibernation. A bear’s temperature does not lower nearly as much as the true hibernators. More importantly for naifs in the forest, they can be fully awake almost instantaneously. True hibernators require a long time to awaken.
The quietude bears attain in the winter is sometimes called “torpor.” I get that. Torpor is what overcomes me in the seventh inning, the third quarter and the next to last act of any Shakespearean play. I can’t say I arise from it almost instantaneously.
I recently asked a Pike County Facebook group when it was safe to put out bird feeders. That is, when would bears likely be in their long, deep sleep? The answers were most various: “I never take my feeders in.” “I never put out feeders.” “After the first hard freeze.” “After the first big snow.” “I put feeders too high for bears to get.” “Bears always get to my feeder no matter what I do.”
The ability of bears to awaken suddenly, and not truly hibernate at all, might be why I received such a broad spectrum of responses. I might have a bear in my part of the forest who can, figuratively, stay awake during five pitching changes in one inning, while your bear may dose off and continue sleeping even as Hamlet is going insane.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
A mature shagbark hickory can grow to over 100 feet and live for 350 years. The bark of the mature tree will curl up, sometimes extravagantly. The first time I saw a large one, with its several appendages jutting out all along its considerable height, I was reminded of my first scary movie: Disney’s “Snow White.”
She enters the forest and is scared by several large trees, which have not only arms, but bright, malevolent eyes! Fortunately they were rooted, or they might have pursued her to a bad fate. I hid my eyes.
Real shagbark hickories do not have eyes. They have delicious nuts everyone eats, from mice to bears to humans. The nuts lack commercial value, however, as it takes about forty years for a tree to start yielding, and even then a tree’s productivity varies considerably. Their leaves turn a golden brown in autumn, providing harmony to the reds, oranges and yellow of other species. Their wood is extremely hard. They provide vast shade in summer. They are good citizens of the forest.
I recently reviewed the “Snow White” scene. I now understand it was all in her mind. She was terrified by circumstances. The trees appeared menacing, causing her to run more deeply into the forest, which increased her fear and confusion. Yet I clearly remember my fear upon first seeing this was quite real.
So it is with fear. It can cause us to mistake good citizens as menacing evil. We can run from them, only to increase our disorientation and confusion.
Snow White was a child, her fears understandable. She had nothing to fear from the forest, as she eventually discovered. Her real danger was from the evil power in the castle. That’s the way it is with fear, at any age. We project our fears upon things and even people that, if given a chance, could be helpful, benevolent.
The shagbark hickory is our friend. We need no longer fear what scared us as children, nor fear as adults the shadows in the forest, or anywhere.