Waiting for the Light

I knew there would be times like these, when time or inspiration would be in short supply, or when my thoughts were so scattered that I couldn’t draw them together into a coherent whole. I’m not worried, though. I made no firm commitment to a blog schedule. I know how things are, both in my world and in my brain. I want to write when I feel something there. So far, it’s worked as well as I could have hoped, especially when I have the opportunity to spend a little time quietly in the woods. I don’t want to feel forced to write, although it is natural to want to be consistent, just in case there are actual readers out there.

It seems commonplace for bloggers to announce their intentions to call it quits, take a break or change directions. Self doubt and second thoughts run rampant. Other writers simply stop and disappear, taking the road to blogger hell paved with good intentions. I was instinctively aware of these pitfalls. So, from the start, I made no promises to myself about how often or how much I would write. And besides, being a guy, commitment is scary.

Travel and other commitments have kept me from spending a morning on Moose Hill for a few weeks now, and it’s not looking much better for the next couple of weeks. It’s getting to be like missing a run or bike ride with feelings of withdrawal symptoms. I want to get back. The best I could do was take my bike to run a business errand last week, and on the way home take the long way around up and over Moose Hill.

It was a wonderfully clear and dry late summer morning. The cool wind felt good on my face and the exertion of standing on the pedals to climb the hill was invigorating. Just as the blood was rushing through my head and taking my mind to that dreamy place, I heard – or thought I heard - my peewee. This little flycatcher has been calling to me all summer. I haven’t heard him for a while, and I figured he was done calling for the season, or maybe, he had even started moving south. But there he was, calling to me.

That’s the way it was this summer. I’d find myself alone in the silent woods, or even half asleep at dawn in my bed and a bird would talk to me. First it was the wood thrush, and then the peewee started in. Now, I heard dozens of bird calls and songs, most familiar, some bringing back old memories, some prompting me to search through guidebooks to identify them. These sounds were lovely, exciting, stimulating , or even comforting. But the thrush and peewee seemed to be carrying a message.

The flute-like song of the thrush and the message he carried seemed easy to understand. It was a prompt to reflect fondly, but with the tinge of melancholy. I imagined him calling to remind me that time is short. Youth is fleeting; I had mine, it’s gone, and all I can do is hope I used it as wisely as I was able. Life is ephemeral. Times past and lives past are gone and will not be coming back. Loved ones and friends were lost, either through mortality or stupidity. Mistakes were made and it’s OK to feel sad about them. He would warble his invitation at dawn to seek him out and then again at sunset as I thought about these things, allowing me to simply feel the emotions that come with the growing knowledge that the hour is getting late.

The eastern wood peewee’s call is more enigmatic. If I could choose, this bird would not be at the top of my list of potential mystical messengers, with his cartoon-character name, small size and child-like call. But there he was, first as I ran through a warm summer rain, later as I walked through the quiet forest, and even as I bicycled up the hill. Is it a language barrier? Is he speaking clearly, but I just can’t interpret? Or, is he calling from a plane of understanding I simply cannot reach?

Sometimes on a winter Friday night with the week drawing to a close and the period of rest beginning, I’ll sit reading by the fire. With the warmth of the blaze in the stove, it’s not long before the book droops to my chest and I start to doze off. I’m reminded of the story of Kekule discovering the structure of the benzene ring while dreaming about snakes dancing head-to-tail as he slept by the fire. I sense something out there, or in this case, in here. Something nags from the back of my mind. Do I feel it, or can I hear it? Lacking the intellect of a Kekule, I can’t decode the signal. Something, someone is trying to communicate, but beyond that, I cannot grasp the message. At this point, I don’t even know if it’s a statement, a question, or a command. Maybe it’s feelings like this that turn people into seekers and wanderers. Maybe I’m on a quest and I don’t even know it yet. Maybe I’m hearing voices, and we all know exactly what that means!

The peewee gives me the same feeling. Claude Lacombe says in one of my all-time favorite movies, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” when referring to those risking their lives to climb Devils Tower: “They were invited.” My peewee in no Francois Truffaut, and Moose Hill is no nerve gas-shrouded national monument, but I feel an undecipherable invitation to climb and explore, both the outer and inner world.

Faith

After a week of extraordinarily hot weather and a major wind storm, I was up early this morning hoping to head out into the woods and take advantage of a break in the weather. Other than the weather – or maybe because of it - no subject settled on my mind this week. As I studied a Moose Hill trail map last night trying to decide where I might want to go today, I found a destination but no goal. I set out this morning for a place known as Hobbs Hill (Elevation 342’). The map showed an interesting-looking trail circling a summit that offered the potential for a breakfast spot with relatively few mosquitoes. Even though I had nothing special on my mind, I set out with faith that I would find something to write about.

I knew exactly where the trailhead was even though I had never followed the path. After only about 10 minutes of cycling, I was there. I walked the bike down the trail, flicked the kickstand, and continued on foot. The trail went downhill and soon crossed a swamp on a very impressive boardwalk. The walkway seemed like an expensive and ambitious project for a trail that seemed to get so little use, but I was glad it was there. It is a broad and beautiful swamp and I penciled it onto my mental map for future visits. Today, however, I was seeking higher ground.

On the other side of the swamp, the trail soon turned uphill through oak, white pine and huckleberries. In a short while a faint, informal trail branched off to what I took to be the top of the hill. As I climbed higher, the oaks gave way to short hickories and the Vaccinium surrendered to grass. The forest here was almost park-like with good views through the woods and scattered boulders to sit on. In the understory were a few eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana), a dwindling reminder of the pastureland this once was. In contrast to the rich, moist maple forest of last week, the soils here were rocky, thin and dry. I assumed the hickories were bitternut hickories (Carya cordifirmis), but I need to double-check on my next visit to make sure they are not shagbark hickories (Carya ovata), too small yet to be shaggy. One of the goals of my Moose Hill explorations is to refresh my fading dendrology skills. The grassy forest floor on this rocky hilltop made me wonder if I was seeing the effects of fire, or hungry deer reducing competition from woody plants.

Looking for a spot to eat breakfast, I selected a flat-topped rock on the edge of the hilltop rather than the summit itself. Almost instinctively, I wanted a vantage point where I could survey a small valley below with eyes peeled for any wildlife. In the primitive parts of my brain, was I a predator on the lookout for game, or was I probing deeper to the primordial recesses where I was prey on the lookout for carnivores that might be stalking me? If I were to observe a real-life struggle between hunter and hunted – say, a hawk pouncing on a squirrel – could I be a neutral observer, or would I have to take sides?

I sat there taking a few notes and eating my PBJ and drinking my coffee; one making me want more of the other until I didn’t have enough of either. I marveled at how quiet the woods were. After the long heat wave, everything seemed suppressed and I knew why Rachel Carson didn’t write Silent Summer. I heard a few goldfinches tootling by overhead and a blue jay squawking in the distance, but otherwise, the forest was quiet. The only birds I saw were a small flock of robins working in the leaves and grass. I wondered if these woods robins could be the same birds seen nesting in dooryards and bopping around on freshly-mown lawns, or were these characters cousins from the other side of the tracks, picking through the leaves to get at the moist earth below?

The woods were quiet, but the air was full of the drone of cicadas, their sound swelling and throbbing, and then subsiding. This reminded me that I noticed my first katydid of the summer Wednesday night, making me think that despite the oppressive heat of the moment, the season would soon be slipping away. I can still remember my mother teaching me the song of this green cricket-like insect: “Katy did, Katy didn’t,” starting in mid-summer and croaking ever more slowly as summer gave way to fall. I didn’t know about that, but this Katy sounded like someone I might like to meet.

I was enjoying the warm, but dry, morning with a gentle breeze and a blue sky above my umbrella of hickory leaves, but it was time to go. I found my way back to the main trail and followed it as it continued around the shoulders of the hill and dropped back down into the oaks and pine. I spotted a young deer streaking through the woods and then spooked what may have been its mother. I regularly see whitetails as I drive or bike by the fields, but less frequently do I see them deep in the forest where they usually move quietly and inconspicuously.

The trail took me along the edge of a mature pine plantation on a sandy slope. I heard an avian ruckus up ahead that I thought might have been prompted by my intrusion until I heard the shriek of a hawk. There were calls of more jays, a nuthatch and another unfamiliar sound. There was a sort of mewing sound and some chucks or clucks. A catbird? A towhee? Then I saw my wood thrush fly over to pose politely on some nearby dead pine branches. It was as if he had come to say goodbye; as if his flute was packed away for the season and he was making plans to head south. I’ll be sad to see him go.

No particular issues were burning in my brain this morning. No rant was raging; demanding a voice. No thoughts from the depths came welling to the surface. No moody musings were longing to be shared. I left home with faith that I would be struck by a topic. I felt sure I would stumble on a few slender threads that could be braided into a line of thought. None of these things happened. My faith went unrewarded, but as coasted down the hill on my way home, somehow, I was not disappointed.

Hope

I set out this morning in no particular mood. I had that all-too-common inertia where a body at rest on a dreary morning tends to stay that way, but I reminded myself that, like going for a run or swim, I never come back from a trip to the woods without being glad I did. So, I packed my bag and headed out the door, trusting that my wandering would lead me to a good mood.

As soon as I turned from the busy street onto the lower slope of Moose Hill Parkway, I began to hear a few birds. A Carolina wren, a robin and a catbird were singing and chortling. A chipping sparrow led me up the hill, flushing in front of my bicycle, flying up the road a few yards, landing and doing it again and again about a dozen times.

I found my mood changing to one of hope. Now, hope might be regarded as a luxury in what seems like a world gone mad. News from the Middle East offers no hope. Surely, missiles in Asia carry no payloads of hope. A source of hope is being snatched from those with incurable disease and injury. My modest hope at the moment was for a couple of hours of quiet exploration, observation and contemplation. I could feel my anticipation growing.

About half way up the hill, my hopes were raised yet again. Even shredding the cuff of my favorite field pants in the bicycle chain didn’t dampen my spirits. I paused at a house that is being renovated. This property is nicely situated just off the parkway where an intersecting street forms a switchback on a piny hillside. This house was for sale last year and, based on the fashion around here these days, I felt sure the lot would be scalped and the small unique home would be torn down to make way for the largest possible McMansion. To my considerable relief, it appears that the new owner is undertaking a careful and tasteful renovation. It gives me hope to see that there are still some people with the vision and courage to create a comfortable and sensible home that is appropriate for its site and for our times.

Nearby, I stepped off the road, walked down a trail and parked the bike. In keeping with the mood of the moment, even the deer flies and mosquitoes were hopeful as they quickly picked up my trail of carbon dioxide and body heat. I was prepared once again with long clothing, hat and spray. Moving down the trail, I soon heard the thrumming of a bird flying on stubby wings. A fledgling wood thrush paused to study what may have been its first human being before flying clumsily into the woods. I took that young bird as a sign of hope that in future years there will still be thrush melodies to massage my moods as I walk in the forest.

A little further along, I found a small American chestnut, Castanea dentata. This tree was once probably the most important species in the hardwood forests of the Eastern U.S. Then, just about a century ago an Asian fungus, the chestnut blight, began to destroy this majestic and valuable tree. Now, it is found only as sprouts from old roots and these sprouts soon succumb to the disease. They keep sprouting back, clinging to life for decades, as if hoping that some day a young genius will discover a miraculous cure and no one will be standing in the way with a veto pen.

It was an exceptionally still morning. No breeze stirred a leaf. Thick humidity from last night’s rain hung in the air. A heavy overcast muted the light. An occasional large drop of water fell loudly through the leaves. Few birds moved or sang. Suddenly, I heard a loud clacking coming through the mist and trees. Few things around here are large enough to make that much noise, and my hunch about the source of the sound was confirmed when I heard a loud snorting. The repeated forceful exhalations – obviously coming from a large, angry animal – could have been frightening if I didn’t recognize the sound of a deer. I couldn’t see the animal, but I assume it saw me and was snorting its irritation at my intrusion. Or, maybe it was just a buck signaling his hopes for the coming rutting season.

A little later, I discovered another great spot. A large, high outcropping of bedrock, like the hard old bones of New England sticking through the flesh and skin of the surrounding glacial deposits, offered a wonderful place to sit for breakfast. This place was so quiet, with the solitude and thick air that even the bugs gave me a break and my chewing on a bagel was the loudest sound in my head. Other than a few chickadees and titmice, only my loyal companion, the wood thrush, could be heard. Even my taunting pewees and ovenbirds were silent. A recent fire pit made me speculate about early explorers that may have camped on this vantage point in millennia gone by. I became thankful that this place still existed so a twenty-first century man could find a moment of peace, and I was hopeful that it would be this way for generations to come.

Breakfast done, I lingered for a few more minutes enjoying the moment and feeling happy to simply exist. I felt lucky to have a little time away from TVs, radios, advertisements, computers, telephones, cars and nagging voices. I picked up my pack and headed for home, wondering if there are ways to preserve and prolong good feelings when we find them.

Moods are funny things. Sometimes bad ones come crashing in. Sad ones may sneak up on us. Maybe good ones need a little help and cultivation. I opened my mind to good moods this morning and they found me. Even the rain that began to fall as soon as I stepped back onto the road didn’t dampen my hope.