Return from the Trenches (of Camp)

My absence from blogging for the past few days was because I was an instructor at an Adventure Camp for 8-15 year olds. My session included hiking, wildlife identification and nature awareness. It was a lot of fun, if not quite what I’d planned. The kids seemed to be having a lot of fun, though how much they actually learned is up for some debate.

I had 3 different groups of kids and took each for about a 2-mile hike down the mountain at Roundtop. There, we walked along an old woods road along Beaver Creek and then hiked back up the mountain to the camp. By the third trip up the hill, in what was by then 90 degree heat, I was ready for the day to end!

I’d dutifully started each hike with a list of what to take when hiking and a tally of what not to do in the woods. Some of my instructions, like being quiet so we’ll see more, didn’t make it past the first 100 yards. The kids really weren’t interested in things they couldn’t touch—like birds. Seeing four species of ferns really or even a very pretty little wildflower wasn’t up their alley either.

But, things like picking raspberries, now that was okay in their book. The only real problem is that the raspberries are just now ripening and there weren’t always enough to go around. So, despite my pleas to only pick the black ones, I soon was besieged by one child after another holding up a single, pathetic-looking raspberry in various stages of unripeness and asking me if this one was okay to eat. Eventually, we passed enough raspberry bushes that every child was able to taste at least one ripe one.

We did find some fun things along our walk that the kids were thrilled with. Unlike the deer and the birds, a box turtle was simply too slow to be able to hide until my little armies were past. Poor turtle was handed from child to child, turned over (again despite my pleas) and inspected thoroughly before being reluctantly released. Turtle was long gone by the time the next group walked through the same spot.

One group discovered a small salamander, an Allegheny Mountain Dusky Salamander. I hope the poor thing survived. It was discovered under a rock and passed from child to child and eventually dropped, though not stepped on. The species is (fortunately) abundant and tends to be more terrestrial than the average salamander.

Assorted frogs leapt into the ponds in terror whenever one of my roving tribes neared. Usually the frogs de-camped long before I could identify them. One counselor caught a black snake that was about 4-5 feet long, and the kids all got to touch that, which was a big deal. Insects of any species, if they were of an unusual color and could be captured, were objects of much enthusiasm. Dragonflies were only of passing interest, as they were colorful enough but couldn’t be caught.

All in all it was a fun experience, though I wish the kids were a bit more, um, focused. I can’t honestly say they really learned much, though most of them seemed to be having fun. In three weeks I get to do it all over again. I just hope the mountain recovers by then.

Signs of Nearing Winter

A few of the leaves are finally starting to drop. One tree at the end of the driveway, which was a brilliant yellow yesterday, is about half bare this morning. The season is progressing, even though it seems glacially slow this year. Today is so warm I came to work without a jacket. That seems unbelievable to me in November. I’ve also started work for the season at Ski Roundtop, though I’m only doing pre-season things—no snow on the hill yet.

Rain Traveling Through Trees

Before I moved to the woods, I didn’t understand how rain travels, how I could hear it moving closer and closer by its sound on distant, then nearer, leaves. I didn’t appreciate its motion, how I could track a storm’s path by the sound as it traveled slowly up the mountain, growing closer with each second.

If I thought about it all, I assumed that clouds lowered over an area, and at some point rain simply fell from the sky. I would have said that when it rained over me, it would also be raining over my neighbor’s house, at the end of the block and also at the next street over. If it was possible for someone to notice timing differences at all, it would be over miles, not feet.

In truth, rain moves in slowly; at a measured, if inexorable pace. Sometimes I can hear it roll up the hill for perhaps half a minute before the first drops reach my cabin roof. It is a gentle sound, a little like wind through the trees, growing gradually louder and louder as it nears.

The sound itself and the knowledge of what the sound is have become one of my favorite little treasures, a small piece of lore that people who live in cities or suburbia don’t get to experience. I certainly never heard it or understood what it was until I moved here and into a silence that allows for understanding and perceiving such small noises.

The first time I noticed this distant gentle noise, I didn’t know what it was. It sounded a little like the wind, yet I knew it wasn’t. Gradually, I’ve learned to recognize the sound earlier and over greater distance. The sound seeps into an edge of my awareness, eventually breaking through whatever else I am hearing. No other sound is quite like this one, not even the wind, though that is what I compare it to.

The sound of rain traveling up the mountain reminds me of wind because wind also travels in the much same way, letting me hear it before I feel its effects. Sometimes the rain I hear never reaches me at all, and I hear it pass through the valley or hear it roll along the next mountain, missing my little corner of the forest.

It is only because I live where it is already quiet that I am able to hear this gentle sound. No other sounds compete with it as they would in more populated spots. The everyday noises of a city or a town, even on a quiet street, are likely too loud to allow someone to hear sounds this gentle. And even if a street was quiet enough, on some hypothetical day, the lack of trees, at least compared to the numbers of them in a forest, would prevent comparison to the sounds I hear.

Sometimes I think about our ancestors who lived thousands of years ago and how they must have also understood this sound and knew what it was. It makes me feel closer to them to think that I share this small knowledge, this small similarity with one piece of life that they experienced.

I connect with their lives and connect to the earth in ways that I never imagined before I moved here when the sound of rain travels through trees.

September 14, 2005

Late Note: Maybe tonight is the night!! The forecast for aurora borealis in the mid-latitudes for tonight and tomorrow night looks very promising. I’ll be out there if the weather is at all clear.


Fall weather is fast approaching here now. Each day I see a few more leaves in the forest understory that are yellowing or turning reddish. The annual plants are starting to die back as well. But the strongest indication that fall is near is by the smells.

My sense of smell isn’t nearly as acute as Dog’s, but we humans have better noses, I think, than we give ourselves credit for. I can identify a good many animals by their smells. I can tell that a homemade cupboard I have was made from boards taken from an old chicken coop, though those boards haven’t seen chickens in many, many years. Horses, cows, skunks, dogs, cats all have their own species scents that most humans can differentiate. I can also tell when deer are close by their musky smell, and bears have their own strong and pungent smell as well. Now, I can’t tell one deer or dog from another by their smells, the way Dog can, but I can still tell one species from another.

Places have their own smells as well, and sometimes when I smell a scent that I haven’t for a while, that scent takes me back to the place where I first smelled that aroma with such strength that it is almost magical. I can still remember the smell of my grandmother’s kitchen, and when I get pieces of that smell in other places, even today, for a second or two, I am back there again.

I remember the smells of the Adirondacks in winter—crisp and raw, snow and pines. Alaska’s coast smells to me of spruce and moisture. Africa, ah Africa, such glory in a smell. So many spices, mixed with the smell of earth and animals. I remember that smell as much as I remember anything.

And now I can tell fall is coming by the smells around me. Early fall smells are richer and deeper, almost indolent in a way that even summer is not. Mid-summer smells still carry some of the brightness of spring smells and don’t carry the same deep richness as those of early fall.

If you want to know better what I mean, drive or walk past an apple orchard with your windows down in the next few days or a week. The apples are nearly ripe now, heavy with sweetness, and the scent from them is almost impossibly beautiful and pervasive. That’s a smell you don’t get earlier in the year.

In the woods, the smell of leaves and earth has a similar richness, but not, of course, the sweetness of the orchard. In the mornings, when the air is damp, the smell, to my human nose, is strongest. It is a little like rich, damp soil, but not only that. It is a more complex smell than soil alone. It’s as though the earth has reached not only the height of its abundance but also its full breadth. And then, before that starts to fail, the aroma is tinged with a hint of crispness, the tang of change that makes the richness all the more poignant.

August 28, 2005

"Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves." - Frederick Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

New blog. Yeah, I can see the excitement in your face. Just what the world needs. So why am I blogging? Because I haven't yet read the kind of blog I want to write, and I'm tired of waiting for someone else to write it. At this point the only viable alternative is to write the ding-dang thing myself.

Now that that's covered, what *is* the kind of blog I'm going to write? Here's the deal. I live in a cabin in the woods--pretty deep in the forest--off the public road system anyway. And no, I'm not Alaskan (unfortunately) or even Canadian or Montanan (is that the word?) or one of those other outdoorsy states. I live on the east coast, surrounded by encroaching suburban ghettos and the thought processes of urbanization that go with it. But I don't live like that. I try to live simply and in tune with the eastern forests that surround me. I don't care if pointy shoes are "in" this fall (are they "in"?), and you'll not find a single piece of lime green anything in my closet. I don't have a lawn or a garage or cable TV or any of that stuff. So I'm going to blog about what it's like to live in an eastern forest at the beginning of the 21st Century. I'm going to talk about the change of seasons, what I see off my back deck and around the cabin, and I'm going to comment on the foibles of those who buy into and live that whole "normal" lifestyle kind of thing.

Who am I? Well, you've probably guessed I'm a woman because of that pointy shoe, lime green comment. Right you are. I'm single and live with three cats (2 Maine Coon and 1 foundling and a large dog). I like hiking, birdwatching, hawkwatching and backpacking, and I'm tired of keeping my mouth shut when I'm in "polite" society. The rest you'll find out as we go along.

Pictures? Sorry you asked. I don't own a digital camera. It's on my wish list, but most of my little extra cash goes towards things like the new tires I need on the truck and if I'm really lucky and thrifty the storm door I need on the front door. I promise I'll work on it. In the meantime, I'll work on scanning some non-digital images and see if I can add those. Don't expect them tomorrow.

What I will promise tomorrow is more meat to the blog and less introduction.