A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident

Our driveway twists and turns with gullies on both sides and not enough room at the top. Everybody hates it. I knew that in order to take our trash and recycling containers to the curb with freezing ice everywhere, I should attach crampons to my boots for the first time this year.

I am grateful for crampons. Who invented such a useful addition to footwear? Prehistoric ice trekkers attached pointy things to the bottom of their feet. Celts used iron spikes over three thousand years ago. My little rubber attachments date to the early twentieth century.

Oscar Eckenstein was the Lebron James of mountain climbing when his group attempted to ascend K2, the second highest mountain in the world, located on what is now the border between China and Pakistan, in 1902. He might have succeeded were Aleister Crowley not part of his crew. Crowley was an expert mountaineer, eccentric and self-promoter. An experienced practitioner of the occult, he was an early adapter to psychedelic drugs, cult leader and writer. His image is among the many on the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s.” He fell ill with a variety of ailments from malaria to snow blindness while ascending K2. He also complicated the expedition by insisting on taking several dozen volumes of poetry.

Eckenstein decided he needed two things to have succeeded: to have left Crowley in England and better traction. The latter he attained by inventing the crampon in 1908. It was forged from iron but comparatively sleek, making it much lighter and more useful than previous devices. Its name comes from a symbol in German heraldry, a long “z” figure with a slash through it that resembles Eckenstein’s design. He showed his invention to Henry Grivel, whose family had been blacksmiths in the Italian Alps for centuries. Grivel marketed the first ten-point crampon in 1910. My crampons are an updated version. The Grivel family still runs the Hotel Crampon in Courmayeur, Italy.

I walked down the icy driveway with no fear of slipping, sliding or Aleister Crowley. Well, maybe a little fear of Crowley. 

 

A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident

This photograph of the new Battery Park City was taken on my last visit to Manhattan, in the fall of 2019. The World Trade Center peeks from behind the skyscraper on the right. The dark, small, cylindrical edifice is an entrance to trains and subways.

Until this year my friend Pete and I enjoyed long walking tours of the city at least once a season. We chose this location because we had not yet walked through the new parks and residences of this neighborhood. Battery Park City had been conceived back in the 1960s to replace the moldering remains of the shipping industry, which gave the area all the charm of Elizabeth, New Jersey. Long in the making, and with a financial structure more complex than the architecture, it was finally a reality.

We were impressed. We strolled between high rises in parks carefully designed to provide residents with both nature and community. The underlying principles of the project were those of Jane Jacobs, the urban activist who successfully saved Greenwich Village from the highways and high rises of Robert Moses. One third of the area has been reserved for parkland.

The dominant feeling on the sidewalks is serenity, a rare emotion in Manhattan. One sees all the large, new condos, shopping areas and restaurants, but only as background to trees and playgrounds. It is as though the trees are a cover, making it impossible to focus on the buildings beyond their entrances and shrubbery. I took this photograph as we prepared to return home on New Jersey transit.

When I saw it, I saw a reality the landscaping had obscured. The one-third area reserved for parkland is square footage. The cubic footage of human construction dwarfs and obscures what is in fact a comparatively small amount of greenery. From any perspective beyond submersion in the project, one sees how the buildings dominate. Manhattan’s trees still grown in the shadows of the skyscrapers, but at least they are becoming part of the conversation, if only in a whisper.

A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident

I recently discovered a German word that describes what I experience during walks in the forest. It is waldeinsamkeit. Wald means forest. Einsamkeit means primarily loneliness, but also solitude, depending on one’s state of mind. 

Waldeinsamkeit is intended to mean solitude in the forest, a feeling of oneness, of being part of nature. It is the experience that brought most of us here, and motivates local folks to stay. We need not spend a lot of time describing this experience to each other, as it is so fundamental to forest living. The person experiencing waldeninsamkeit as loneliness will soon be heading for a suburb or a city. 

This German concept has been expressed by romantic poets for centuries. It is especially used by those who walk in the Black Forest, the setting of many fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. There is a suggestion of enchantment as the cares of the world outside the forest fade away. 

A modern Japanese discipline is similar, if adorned with New Age connotations. Shinrin-yoku is a form of ecotherapy, or healing through contact and communion with the natural world. It was conceived in the 1980s and is one of many disciplines that seek to recover health and vitality from the earth itself. 

It means “forest bathing,” walking through the forest and intentionally doing exercises to enhance one’s state of mind and body. It may seem strange that one would need a therapy or exercises to be invigorated by a walk in the forest, but when one considers how estranged many humans have become from the natural world, intentionality and discipline might be needed to recover. 

If, however, one finds oneself in the forest without the benefits of a shinrin-yoku practitioner, I suggest you take a dog. A dog will enhance your nature bathing like a loofah enhances a Jacuzzi.  A dog will reconnect you to the natural world and open you to its healing power. A dog has the power to banish loneliness while enhancing solitude. This is a special form of the German concept that I just invented, waldeinsamkeit mit hund.

 

 

A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident 

The first day that snow was on the ground I noticed a plant standing tall and strong when every other splash of green was either on the limb of an evergreen or limply hanging onto a branch like overcooked kale. It is a Lenten Rose. 

I knew the Lenten Rose was the first sign of green and color in the spring. Its first flowers pop through the snow well before the more heralded crocuses.  It is so early I have come to think of it as a harbinger of false spring. There will be more snowfalls after this bloom and real spring lags well behind. It is helpful, however, to those with Seasonal Affective Disorder, to whom false hope is better than none at all. 

Now I discover the same plant that brings the first bloom of spring also lingers longest into the winter. This is like an athlete winning both the hundred meter dash and the marathon: a constitution requiring the both the fastest speed and the greatest endurance. What kind of super plant is this? 

The Lenten Rose is one of several species of Hellebores, an herb whose name comes from the Greek words meaning, essentially, “bad food.” Aptly named, every part of the plant is poisonous. Rabbits and deer won’t eat it. Touching any part of the plant invites an allergic reaction. It was used in ancient Rome and Greece to treat a variety of ailments, none successfully. 

It is classified as an herb, though it doesn’t fit easily into any category. Herbs are usually medicinal or enhance the preservation and taste of other plants. Herbalists over the centuries have used Hellebores to both cure and induce madness. As late as the twentieth century an expert on the plant suggested that hellebore cuttings tossed in the air or spread on the ground and walked upon would induce invisibility. I intend to try this in the spring, remembering to wear gloves while scattering.

A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident

“Is that a spotted lantern fly?” Kathleen asked a few weeks ago. She was referring to an invasive species that has been seen as nearby as Berks County. It destroys grape, fruit tree and logging harvests. It is not a true fly, but a planthopper, using its wings only to strengthen its jumps. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture requests sightings be reported. This would have been their first appearance in Pike County and reason for alarm. 

“No,” I said. A friend in Berks County had posted photos of the spotted lantern fly. I knew this bug, though sporting a big spot, was not. Therefore, I did not kill it. 

Later I searched on line to identify this orange flying bug with pretty, dark blue and yellow-orange coloring, a big spot, and very long antennae. I failed.  My descriptions were too general. I had overlooked its most identifying feature. 

Richard Patterson, my friend and expert in the forest, immediately recognized it as a net-winged beetle, named for the ruffles and ridges on its wings. This name covers a large number of beetles of considerable variation.  All they have in common is their wing texture. One looks like a very small ear of corn.  

The net-winged beetle is like a big firefly with no lights. It has no stinger, is slow in flight, eats moderately and harmlessly, is not invasive and protects itself only by expanding its wings and tasting terrible. I’m glad I knew enough not to kill it. 

Suppose, however, I knew only that bugs with a spot or spots might be heading our way to be destructive, but didn’t know what they looked like? With a little paranoia, poor impulse control and excessive confidence in my ability to do the right thing without good information, I might have killed it. 

That would have been bad for the beetle and bad for the forest, which needs diversity. I too, would have been harmed. I would have taken one step closer to trusting fear rather than facts, not a good strategy for any species’ survival.

A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident 

Everybody here has photographs of deer. We have seen as many as seven traveling together. The dogs run themselves to joyful exhaustion in their futile but determined chases. 

Our deer are white tails, the most widely distributed large animal from Canada to Peru. Males grow and shed their antlers annually, according to individual hormone cycles. There is no “shedding season.” Antler tissue is the fastest-growing tissue known, as much as one inch per day. 

White tail deer are matriarchal; mothers lead with offspring and males following. They reach speeds of forty miles per hour and can cruise at twenty-five. They are strong swimmers, can clear a fence nine feet high and a stream twenty-five feet wide. This is no surprise to anyone who has tried to keep them from their garden. 

They are prodigious eaters. They are a ruminant with a four-chambered stomach and eat five to ten pounds of food a day from a very wide and diverse menu. Thus these beautiful, shy and sensitive creatures are also pests. We have carefully tried to plant flowers and bushes that deer don’t find delicious, and it isn’t easy. We have also built high and sturdy fences around our vegetable garden. 

Plants and bushes of the forest have no such protection. Our ground cover has a fraction of the diversity and resilience one would find in a well-balanced ecology. Deer season has a worthy environmental goal in addition to sporting and commercial motivations. 

Deer came even closer to our home when we lived in a New Jersey suburb where a nature preserve was close but no hunting allowed. When some hunting was contemplated due to the increase in the herd, the strategy was met with resistance, controversy and limited success. While hunting here seems natural, hunting in a densely populated suburb is problematic. 

Deer over-population is a good example of how hard it is to solve local environmental problems locally.  When your problem runs forty miles per hour, jumps nine feet and eats ten pounds of the forest and your garden every day, it is even harder.

A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident

Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arranging. It has six principles of design: balance, contrast, dominance, proportion, scale and rhythm. This photograph shows our attempt at gourd arrangement, the decorative autumn art of the Poconos. I have at least suggested each principle, except perhaps dominance. This principle is expressed in another seasonal gourd presentation, the Jack-o-Lantern. 

A gourd and a squash are basically the same thing, at different ends of how humans use them. A gourd looks good. A squash tastes good. The butternut squash therefore is both squash and gourd. It is delicious, but its smooth surface, when dried, allows for painting and carving. 

In searching farm stands for gourds, I found several new shapes, sizes, colors, stripes, bumps. There were greenish-blue pumpkins and elongated shapes that might have been created by Dali. Some were pricey. They seemed like designer gourds. I wondered if this was a new thing. A web search found only one listing for “designer squash,” a photograph of a variegated pumpkin by New Jersey photographer Linda Stern. She told me that the title and the pumpkin were a one-off phenomenon to her, though perhaps we had discovered the beginning of a trend.

 Just as various breeds of dogs have been combined of late to the attraction of people with allergies, these new gourds seem designed for a similarly exclusive audience. Laboradoodle gourds. This must be a hot topic with at least one group, The American Gourd Society. 

 Founded in 1937 when the Depression inspired the need to organize, it has its own website and, until this year, hosted many events for gourd growers, artists and yes, designers. Some twist and turn their growing gourds into pretzel-like shapes, gourd bonsai. There is a Pennsylvania chapter. 

As fall turns into winter, our gourd/mum arrangement becomes performance art. The mums wilt with the first hard freeze and take their place among the compost. Then the gourds soften. Mice, chipmunks, birds, whoever is still awake, gets a nice meal before hibernation. When the gourds are gone, winter has arrived.

 

A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident 

I finally achieved a marginally decent photograph of a chipmunk. He is exploring a covered deck chair. I had so despaired of capturing an image of these tireless scurriers that my previous blog about them resorted to a photograph of Violet the Corgi stiffing where she believed a chipmunk was hiding. 

Our deck has provided several photographs of critters that I otherwise could not get to slow down, sit still or present an unguarded moment. Among them are crows, wasps, spiders, caterpillars, squirrels, gold finches, moths and, had I the proper equipment for night photography, a bear. 

When we sit on our deck, beginning in April and continuing into November with the help of blankets and a portable heater, we enter a liminal space, where humans yield a portion of our imagined sovereignty. The deck is where the wasp bit me after I disturbed his nest under the arm of the chair. It is where mother mouse gave birth under our grill and that unfortunate woodpecker met his demise for enacting a variation of the myth of Narcissus, mistaking his image for a rival. 

We grow flowers, herbs and vegetables on the deck. We attract birds and hummingbirds, futility attempt to chase away squirrels. Years ago there were raccoons. The deck blurs the border between ancient forest dwellers and newcomers from Jersey City. 

The deck also acts as a re-entry into the forest for creatures that find themselves inside our house, mostly by accident. I have escorted many moths, spiders, stinkbugs and assorted unknown fauna back to the forest by helping them onto the deck. I either capture them by hand or entice them onto a piece of paper. Some seem to know immediately that this is helpful. Others seem not to consider it help at all. 

Eventually we close the sliders and return to the environment heated by electricity and a wood stove. The place where wi-fi rules. The forest shouts its silent indifference, appears to tolerate this brief interval when our species seems supreme, if only to itself.

A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident 

This is a male praying mantis. I saw him fly, which only males do. The egg sack of the female makes her much larger than the male, and unable to fly.  He is a Chinese mantis, with characteristic facial stripes and colored both green and brown. This species, one of only sixteen found in North America, was discovered at a plant nursery outside Philadelphia in 1896. 

Mantises look like grasshoppers on steroids, but are more closely related to termites and cockroaches. They are considered a neutral presence in a garden because they will eat anything they can catch, insects both destructive and benevolent. 

They are “sit-and-wait” predators. They may be brown or green or both, as camouflage. They can rotate their heads almost one hundred and eighty degrees. Their attack form is so efficient it has inspired two schools of Chinese martial arts. 

Praying mantises have unusual and interesting movements, which is why they are among the few insects kept as pets. A closer look reveals that, on their own terms, they are relatively terrifying. If they were ten feet long they would be much scarier than alligators.  The 1967 film “Son of Godzilla” agrees, as the mutated dinosaur protects his son from giant flying mantises. 

The female kills and eats the male after about twenty-five percent of mantis couplings, further contributing to their terrifying reputation. The female prefers smaller males as they are easier to subdue. The male in this photo, still alive in the late fall, near the end of the mantis life cycle, is big for his gender and has thus far beaten the odds. I’m sure I saw him at least twice after this photo. 

It is unsettling to begin to recognize an individual insect. Equally unsettling is to consider that he might also be recognizing me. “Geez, that’s the third time that guy with the crazy dogs has peered down on me. I thought you got a photo the first time,” the mantis said to himself, or so I imagine. “Leave me alone. I’m workin’ here.”