Gloom but no doom

E. Ridge Rd. Monaghan Township, York County PA

Thick fog and overcast skies made my morning walk with Baby Dog as dark and as quiet as midnight.  Not even an owl called, let alone one of the earlier-rising day birds.  Baby Dog stays close by my side and doesn’t stop to sniff anything.   I think she misses the activity of daylight on our walks, too.

I actually find these next two months or so the darkest time of the year for our walks.  Once the leaves begin to fall, the sky overhead becomes visible and that opened-up vista makes walking at night much easier, even when no moon lights the sky.  At the moment, the leaves serve as an impenetrable barrier to light from above.  And so we walk more cautiously now.

The headlamp lights the way but doesn’t help much with navigating the little ups and downs of a dirt road.  The depth of potholes or even uneven ground is hard to judge or to see. It takes some getting used to for me, accustomed as I have been for these last 4-5 months for walking in the morning light.  I have reached the time of year when our morning walks no longer venture off the dirt roads.  Early in the summer we wandered off-road and even off-trail. No longer. The footing on the dirt roads is chancy enough.

The gloomy weather is also slowing or even halting migration this week.  Counters sit on hawkwatches all day long and don’t see more than a handful of birds. I’ve been searching diligently for nighthawks to no avail. Either they aren’t flying or they are flying above the gloom.  I will keep looking. They are a cool bird, these odd little nightjars.  Tonight doesn’t seem as though it will be much better, but I still will look. Perhaps it will clear enough or perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to see them.

Don't wait!

Along N. Wharf Rd., Monaghan Twp., York County PA

May is a lovely time of year for an evening walk. I have nothing against walking in other months of the year, though some of them present difficulties for those of us who aren’t retired or independently wealthy.

Walking in winter’s darkness can have its charms, though that can pall before the light returns to the evenings. A little bit of nighttime walking is fine, but I find six months o f it not nearly as interesting or enjoyable. A winter’s walk in daylight is still restricted to weekends for me, and those are busy enough that a daylight walk feels hurried, crunched in between this errand or that one.

In July and August, morning walks are preferable as the day’s heat takes all night to dissipate. An evening walk then can sometimes be hotter than one in the middle of the afternoon. Summer’s heat is hardly conducive to an enjoyable foray. And there are the ever-present evening storms to contend with, too.

But May is one of those months where daylight stretches on for hours and the temperature is pleasant and even a bit cool as dusk approaches. What could be finer? I think it’s the best month for walking. October has its charms and the temperature is usually fine, but the evenings are already growing quite short. No, May is the best month for an evening walk. The day’s work is done, the dinnertime chores are done, and daylight still beckons me outside. It’s enough to make me wish for May to last for months. Hurry! Don’t tarry or you’ll miss the best walking time of the year. We’re already halfway through the month. Don’t waste another day of it.

Walking

Much of the snow that fell on Monday is going fast. Last night, under a gorgeous full moon, the forest was mostly snow-covered with large things like boulders and downed trees visible above the white blanket. This morning , the snow still more than half covers the woods, but it’s going fast.

A full moon with a bit of snow cover brightens the landscape to the point where I could almost read by moonlight. The extra light brings out the residents, too. Geese honked and scolded most of the night. A raccoon visited my birdfeeders but didn’t fiddle with the chicken pen. Deer stepped daintily through the snow, heads down, looking for bare ground that might produce something for them to eat. The night seemed nearly as busy as the day.

I took a walk shortly before dark last evening. The wind had calmed, and the day, while not warm, was comfortable enough without the biting wind. In winter, evening walks can only be done in full darkness, and now the same walk with enough light to see my surroundings was a pleasure. After dark, I notice sounds more than sights. Usually I stick to known paths, as even with a headlamp footing isn't easy to gauge. 

I can’t yet walk up on the ski slopes. They are either still snow-covered or ankle-deep in melting, muddy snow. So for now I confine my walks to the dirt roads and trails. It’s enough that I have daylight left to foray around the mountain. I travel less distance in daylight, paying more attention to the sights like some tourist, surprised by nearly everything I find. I wander from edge to edge of the old road, inspecting this or that or nothing much. It's the same route, but it sure seems a lot different. 

A moss walk

First off, I can report that Baby Dog has no interest in mosses. So she couldn’t figure out why I kept stopping on “her” walk to look at them. I, however, think mosses are very neat things, even more so in winter when they aren’t competing with equally neat flowers and birds and bugs and such.

The first photo is of cushion moss. It’s growing off the edge of a bank and reminds me of a water fall. My moss identification skills are pretty poor, partly because there are a lot of different mosses that are very similar, but mostly because good moss identification guides are tough to come by. And moss species are quite variable even in small areas, unlike birds where a guide to the eastern U.S. covers everything you will see in that region. For a moss guide to be really accurate, you’d probably have to have several for the average state, either that or a really big book.

 

The next photo is of feather moss, I think. This is one of the identifications I’m not sure of. My photo looks close to that, anyway, so that’s what I’m calling it until someone else tells me something different.

The last photo shows the moss spores. Now here’s where I think the mild winter is showing up in the landscape. Moss spores typically arrive in late March or April. Here we are a few days before the end of February and those spores are out there and ready to go. I think this may be the first actual sign of spring and its early arrival that I’ve found.

Spring arrives in the small things first, though I am usually too busy looking for the big things to notice them. I’m looking for birds and wildflowers, but I guess I should be looking more at moss to tell me when spring is arriving.

Back in business!

 Sunday dawned sunny and calm, a blessed relief after the brutal winds of Saturday. Time for a walk through the forest to see what late non-winter, early spring looks like. Baby Dog was my companion, a guinea pig for the new hands-free leash system I’d just gotten. With Baby Dog tied around my waist, I could carry both my hiking stick and my camera.

The weather was seasonably chilly, especially during the pre-noon hours. I noticed only the sun and its increasing warmth, far warmer than the sun of just a month or so ago. I wanted to see if the warm winter had sparked any signs of new spring growth, even though it is still very early. Baby Dog wanted to sniff her way from one end of the mountain to the other. It was a good mix.

Looking across to Nell’s Hill, the vista looks as wintry as ever, considering there is no snow. The trees are still sleeping, and even the buds aren’t yet enlarged. Grasses are brown and flattened. The landscape is largely silent, at least until three pileated woodpeckers got into a shouting match. I never could decide if they were alarming at me or were fighting among themselves. Three crow-sized black-and-white birds screaming through the forest are ear-splitting.

We hadn’t gone very far before six deer tiptoed and then bounced along in front of us. They all looked brown and healthy. These deer had an easy time of it this winter, though they aren’t fat. I suspect that even during a mild winter a diet of dead, brown grass and the few acorns that fell last fall doesn’t have much nutritional value.

At the bottom of the abandoned ski slope, we turned north and reached a pond, as always unfrozen. Water is pumped out of this pond for snowmaking, so the water never freezes. Even without that, the pond would be late freezing as it is both deep and spring-fed. In summer the edge of the pond is dense with cattails and other moisture-loving plants and is a great spot to watch butterflies that are attracted by thistle and the mud along the water’s edge. I look for skunk cabbage, among the earliest and arguably the largest of the new spring growth. I don’t see any.

After the pond, we walk along an old woods road. I notice that I can see deeper into the forest than I’m used to. The lack of underbrush means I can better see the topography of the land, see rock outcroppings that I normally can’t, see a small draw across a creek that bears investigating on some future day.

The stream that flows through the narrow valley is running and pretty full, if not as full as after spring rains. The ground is soft but not muddy. In April the area is often too wet for walking in hiking boots, and even with Wellies or rubber boots, the ground can be so mushy that I can easily sink 3-4 inches. I usually just avoid the area then, waiting for the drier weather that will come after.

Baby Dog isn’t sure about the new leash. She wants to stop and sniff everything, and I want to keep walking. She’s like a kid in a candy store, and I’m not letting her buy any candy. We move deeper into the forest, her lagging behind as always. I reach an area where mosses are thick and lush, a haven of greenery in the brown. I’ll post photos from that part of our walk tomorrow.

Tempted

One warm day with fog was all it took for the snow to disappear literally overnight. Oh, a few patches of it remained this morning, but with rain in the forecast for tonight, whatever may remain will certainly be gone. The feeder birds have already disappeared, gone back to their natural food supply and ignoring my offerings. I’m sure they will return whenever the next blast of winter reappears.

The warm winter evenings have tempted me outside my cabin on more than one occasion lately. When the wind is calm, walking in the woods at night is a rare pleasure. Two nights ago I could smell the snow, all crisp and cold. I didn’t take a headlamp, as white snow underfoot is just as good or even better. A thin slice of moon curled just above the horizon, a deep orange.

By summer, underbrush impedes such off-trail meanderings, which accounts for the rarity of such an adventure. I try to look at everything, to memorize the sky, the moon. I draw the winter scents deeply into my lungs, somehow hoping they won’t disappear as soon as I’m inside again. I never know how long it might be before another chance to wander at night comes my way. Better to take advantage while I can.

Wandering

Green heron at sunset

Last evening I set off into the woods an hour or so before sunset. The shadows were already long and inviting. The sky was a deep, clear blue with no humidity to shorten the distance or obscure the view.

I followed no path and had only a vague notion of where I was going. What I really wanted to do was walk where I hadn’t walked recently, where ticks, high grass and higher temperatures had defeated my ambition for a while. It’s one thing to wear long pants to avoid ticks when the temperature is cool, but doing so when it’s 95 is more than I am willing to do. Now that the season is heading towards fall and the grasses are drying up, ticks are already fewer in number, and now I am willing.

So I wandered through the long grasses between the forest and a pond, scaring up frogs and scattering dragonflies of various sizes and shapes. A green heron squawked and flew into a tree on the edge of the woods. A belted kingfisher rattled, flying low over the pond, slaloming its way between a flock of Canada geese and a lone mallard in eclipse plumage.

The shadows lengthened and still I walked, up into a pine forest that whispered on the northwest breeze, past the scolding crows. I walked past the tornado-damaged trees and the drooping brown-eyed susans. I hopped over a tiny, no-name stream, running full again after a rainy week. I heard the patter of a groundhog’s feet as it galloped across a ski slope to get away from me. I saw the doe and fawns grazing up on the hill, raising their heads and twitching their tails as I passed.

I saw the sun fall low against the distant hill and the first stars of evening join the nearly full moon in the sky above before I found my way back. It was only the darkness that brought me back to the cabin. If not for that, I might still be walking.

A walk in November

Sunday was such a nice November day that I was compelled to go for a hike—not that I need much in the way of compelling. But I usually end up starting my hike right out my own cabin door, and it is a bit unusual for me to actually get in the car and drive someplace to go hiking.

I didn’t go far, just the few miles down to Pinchot Lake to walk on a trail I hadn’t walked on in a while. The walk is an easy one, mostly flat with a few mild uphills. The trail was rocky in spots, though, and those rocks are now covered with ankle-deep leaves, so that made the walk a bit more demanding that it would otherwise have been.

I was simply looking to get out of the cabin and wander around the woods for a bit before I became mired in household chores, so that was good enough for me. This lovely spate of pleasant November weather is soon coming to an end, and I was determined to take advantage of it while I could.

I left early on Sunday morning and never saw another soul on my little trek. White-throated sparrows and Carolina chickadees scolded me throughout much of the walk. A time or two I heard a deer crashing through the woods to get away from me, though I never saw them.

Nothing recharges my batteries like a quiet morning walk in the woods. It doesn’t matter to me if I don’t see anything unusual. It doesn’t matter to me if the walk doesn’t take me to some exotic vista. I’ve never quite understood the folks who feel they have to see a waterfall or a great view on their hikes. It’s the time away from the everyday that’s important. It doesn’t even matter if I don’t go far. It’s only important that I go.

Weekend ramble

The "brown" season is settling in here at Roundtop. After six months of being surrounded by green, now I’m surrounded by brown. I’m still adjusting to that, in part because the change happened unusually fast this year. Normally, the colors of fall hang on for a while, sometimes for a long while. This year the colors were gorgeous for a day and gone literally overnight.

Yesterday the weather was a bit warmer than is typical and combined with a sunny sky and calm wind, the day felt wonderfully warm. I traipsed around the woods a bit, enjoying the temperature and the open view the now bare trees present. It’s much easier walking without underbrush and seasonal growth impeding my progress. During the warm seasons, I can’t easily stray far off a trail because of it. This time of year I can walk wherever I want, and that’s more to my wandering style.

I set off into the woods, following no path, not even a deer trail. I walked where the ground was easiest, skirting around boulders, avoiding low spots or steep climbs. I just wandered wherever my feet took me. The leaves are deep and fluffy on the forest floor, as no rain has fallen since they fell. The leaves aren’t compressed at all, and my every step was crunchy and loud. I had no chance to sneak up on any woodland animal unannounced.

I noticed that a few leaves still cling to the trees. I suspect they will soon become the marcescent leaves of this winter. The beech leaves in today’s photo will likely be among those that hang on. Oddly, at least to me, a same-sized beech tree about 25 feet from this one has dropped all its leaves. Both trees look much the same in height and girth. Both appear healthy. Yet one hangs on to its leaves and the other has dropped them.

A few trees have leaves that haven’t yet turned color. Those are increasingly rare. Several small chestnut oaks huddled together in a tight group fall into that category. Is it because those leaves are so large?

Birds didn’t mind the noise I made as I crunched through the forest. Dark-eyed juncos are here in numbers now. Later, when I was back at the cabin, I saw the first of them eying my bird feeders. The juncos have been here since mid-October, but until now they apparently found plenty of natural food and didn’t need to visit the feeders. They are still cautious, sitting above the feeders, watching the chickadees and titmice flit in and out before daring to dip down and feed themselves.

The chickadees and titmice are working hard on the dessicated flowers of the tulip poplar trees. They flit from seed pod to pod so quickly that until I eyed them with binoculars, I suspected kinglets or gnatcatchers.

Just being outside in the daylight is already a treat. The time change and having to work for a living makes my daylight forays a thing of the weekends only. Yesterday was a day lovely enough to get me through the week until I can be outside during the daylight again.

A Weekend Walk

I took a walk into the woods on Sunday, a warm hazy day that felt like the first true day of summer. I followed one of the old dirt logging roads that winds across the mountain and then down towards its base and along the valley. For this walk, I stayed higher up on the hill and didn’t go down by the creek. Deerflies are starting to be annoying right now. By staying higher on the hill, even a faint breeze helped keep them at bay. I saw several deer, including a buck who’s antlers were already above his ears, and with just a wide knob where the tines will branch. I’ve also been seeing a doe who comes out of the woods and walks down the pond. I think the deerflies were bothering her too, as she seems to be spending more time in the open than she was just last week. I’m sure she has at least one fawn in the dense thicket, but she hasn’t brought them out into the open yet.

I also saw a doe with two smaller deer—not fawns but likely last year’s fawns. It was not long after dawn, and they came out to the big new pond for water. After they sipped as much as they wanted, they ran around the bank, chasing each other and running, apparently just for the enjoyment of it.

The woods are very dense right now. I can’t see more than 10-15 feet into them unless I find a spot where a few downed trees create a bit of an opening. All weekend long I’ve been hearing the yellow-billed cuckoo calling all over the mountain. I suspect it hasn’t found a mate. Unfortunately, this isn’t a surprise as the birds are pretty uncommon. I hear it in the early morning and again in the evening. It really doesn’t make a sound that in any way says “cuckoo.” If anything, to me it sounds a little bit like a single “coo” similar to a dove’s. Except that this “coo” is loud, and even “coo” doesn’t describe it very well. I haven’t seen this cuckoo at all this year. But I will hear it call constantly for a minute or two. Then it will be silent but I’ll hear it again in a different spot a minute or so later. Sometimes it’s nearer, sometimes further away. Sometimes I hear in on the north side of the mountain, sometimes to the south or west of me. But I only ever hear one.

Friday Morning Walk

Last night the first truly violent thunderstorm of the season rumbled through, rattling the windows and dousing the mountain with some much needed rain. I didn't need an inch of rain to come down in 30 minutes, though, as even on a lush mountain top like Roundtop, rain coming down that fast runs off as much as it soaks in.

This morning, the aftermath of the storm was fog and wet vegetation. It was too wet for Dog and me to walk in the woods, so we followed this two-track for a while instead. We followed the trail over to the new pond (which I couldn't see) and back. The extra moisture makes everything smell even more delicious to Dog than is the norm. That's a good thing, as he didn't seem to notice that the walk was shorter than our usual jaunt in the woods.

The vegetation is nearly at its full expanse already. I've lost my view to the west until fall gives it back to me again. For the next 6 months or so, the expanse of my view will be limited, and I will live within the green confines of the forest, sheltered by its green embrace.

September 2, 2005

"It seemed to me that something extraordinary in the forest was very close to where I stood, moving to the surface and discovery." - Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia

I walked in the woods before dawn this morning. It was still and clear and a blessing to watch the world wake up. Waking before dawn in early September is not like waking before dawn in June. At this point in the year, dawn comes a minute or so later each morning, and it won’t be more than another week or two before my early morning walks will need to include my headlamp.

This morning I woke up early, before the alarm, and rather than toss restlessly until it was time to get up, I decided to greet the day early. Dog didn’t seem to notice the early hour, nosing along as he does each morning, smelling all those smells that I can’t. The eastern sky was just starting to glow with red as we walked up a little two-track dirt road to reach the pond. The Canada geese, slumbering along its edge, slid off into the water, grumbling with the soft tones they use amongst each other. The pond was like glass, only marred by the small island made by the silhouette of each goose, and even the geese, somehow, didn’t make ripples in the water as they floated quietly, with a stillness of their own.

In the distance I heard the call of a great horned owl and nearer, that of the eastern wood pewee. Dog and I walked along the edge of the pond for several minutes before a few of the normally hyper-vigilant crows saw us and announced our presence to the rest of the forest.

Night’s hold on the forest wrapped it in shades of black and gray. Still dark enough to feel other-worldly in the forest, I felt like I was walking inside an old black-and-white movie. Colors didn’t exist yet, or were only hinted at towards the eastern sky.

At the far end of the pond, two deer, cropping grass at its edge, flagged and ran from us. It was still too dark for me to see more than their white tails bouncing for a few steps as they ran deeper into the woods. Dog, his nose to the ground and the wind taking our scent to them and not to him, never noticed.

As we returned home, the rest of the world was starting to awaken, though the sun hadn’t yet broken the horizon. Mourning doves, a downy woodpecker, the kingfisher, a flight of goldfinch were all on the move with the coming of the light. It was time to start the day.