Walking the Berkshires

My Latest Nature Notes in the LJ

The December 10th edition of the Lakeville Journal ran my biweekly Nature Notes column, readable here in full with free subscription.  Fair use excerpt:

"Now, as we shrug off the last warm days of autumn and feel the frosty ground firm beneath our feet, seems an odd time to take stock of the natural world around us.  True, with the branches laid bare we can see through the forest to the crags and cobbles that lie beneath, but this is hardly the time to sample a swamp to see what species it contains, or mark the passage of salamanders from their winter quarters to perform their rites of spring. 

Those seasons are either behind us now or still to come. But like the fabled ant that labors through the days of warmth and light to put up its winter store of grain, we can profit from taking the time to account for the species and natural communities that co-occur with our own..."

First Snow

It is very wet, almost slush before it hits the ground, but it sticks and will stay and by morning we may have four to six inches of it.  My children did not wait for it to accumulate but were outside making snow people out of virtually nothing.  At least one of the kids has no snow pants that we could find, and I need a couple of new pallets to lay before the back door where the ice builds up on the path, but if winter is truly here we are ready, now, and mostly willing.

I drove home through the early part of the storm, and in the higher elevations it was heavy and thick while lower down the roads were still warm enough to melt what fell.  I remembered that my high beams merely light up the swirling flakes.  I thought of how it feels to be in silent woods with snow on the ground and more falling, of how "the moon on the breast of the newfallen snow" is one of the loveliest lines in Clement Clarke Moore's classic.  Of sledding at night in those wide fields behind the schoolhouse, and what tracks in the snow reveal to my otherwise impotent senses.

I like my winters white and cold.  I like pond ice that freezes fast and black.  I like the way the frost gets in my beard, and the winter stars spill their constellations across a moonless sky.  I like how ice freezes on the rock face, blue where it is new, in draperies that reveal the hidden falls high on the mountainside. 

My Vermonter wife curses the white stuff and says that only a flat-lander is fool enough to abandon the wood stove, but at its best the snow is a comfort to me, and feels right.  It softens the edges, amplifies and enhances the architecture of the woodlands and the scoured outcrops.  It covers the deep wounds in the land until spring, and lightens the hearts of my housebound offspring.  Shoveling is a small price to pay, especially for the first snow of the season. 

Reflections on Ken Burns' : The National Parks

I've been watching the DVDs of Ken Burn's latest documentary: The National Parks; America's Best Idea.  Burns and collaborator Dayton Duncan have brought their cinematic eye and art to the American wilderness,  illuminating places such as the Grand Canyon - about which Teddy Roosevelt observed; "The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it." -  and ideas about conservation and public benefit that the filmmakers present as emblematic of American democracy. 

It is a powerful story, carried forward by stunning visuals and Burn's signature treatment of historic images and personalities.  Like many viewers I find it inspiring and it makes me want to visit and revisit many of these places (which will likely be welcomed by the Park Service in the face of a marked trend of decreasing visitation and connection between Americans and our Great Outdoors. 

It is also a story that embodies great complexity, with larger than life figures like John Muir who somehow outshines even Teddy Roosevelt in the first part of the series.  Some of the "talking heads" help to weave together what for the sake of the story is tempting to cast as opposing conservation viewpoints rather than two sides of the same coin. The nation's first Forest Service Director, Gifford Pinchot, still gets less than his due, in my opinion, particularly after having just read Timothy Egan's brilliant new history of The Big Burn; Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America.  Pinchot was certainly more significant as a conservationist than just as the pragmatic proponent of sustainable use of forestland that he becomes when juxtaposed to the wilderness prophet Muir.

Those talking heads without whom a modern documentary would be unthinkable are a narrative device pioneered and perfected by Burns.  I am always intrigued to see which emerges as the charismatic authoritative voice in the film, as Shelby Foote did in Burn's treatment of The Civil War.  Two episodes into the series, there are two voices that stand out for me, but for very different reasons. 

One belongs to William Cronon, the Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and author of the excellent Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England.  His is the voice of gentle intelligence and sensitivity, seeing the study of history and ecology as mutually sustaining (a perspective with which I am fully in accord). 

The other is Shelton Johnston, a charismatic veteran park ranger, a marvelous story teller whose love of the parks is palpable.  Johnston is an African American with considerable Native American ancestry who was raised in Detroit.  More than this, his background makes him a distinct minority both as a Park Ranger and among visitors to our national parks.  Not even 1% of those who visit Yosemite, for example, are African American.  As Johnston said in a recent interview:

"It's bigger than just African Americans not visiting national parks. It's a disassociation from the natural world," said Johnson, who has worked in Yosemite for the past 15 of his 22 years in the Park Service. "I think it is, in part, a memory of the horrible things that were done to us in rural America."

The rejection of the natural world by the black community, he said, is a scar left over from slavery.

"All Snoop Dogg has to do is go camping in Yosemite and it would change the world," said Johnson, 51. "If Oprah Winfrey went on a road trip to the national parks, it would do more than I have done in my whole career."

The conservation movement in America has a long way to go before this disconnect is resolved.

Burns' film emphasizes that the creation of National Parks was a reaction to the wholesale exploitation of natural resources during the final decades of the 19th century.  Yet the very idea of setting aside land for non consumptive public benefit would not even have been considered for the American wilderness if we had not already chosen to do so within our own developed habitat.  The rural cemetery movement, the development of public parks within the urban landscape by Frederick Law Olmstead and those he inspired, and even the setting aside of some of the great killing fields of our nation's Civil War as monuments to its memory, all preceded the establishment of the first National Park.

This was not the case in the 18th century, when the Common was a place for the community's livestock and there were better uses for old battlefields than places of quiet reflection.   We do not set aside land until we believe what it contains is both essential and irreplaceable.  Nor do we invest in the survival of what we do not see as having value.  Whether that value is intrinsic, as Muir would have it, or essential to our own health and well being, or both of these things, has long been part of the national conservation debate, and especially so regarding the conservation purposes, use and management of public lands. 

One thing, at least, has changed since Roosevelt's Day.  Nature does not take its course, at least during the span of human lives, completely free of our influence.  Our hands may mar without our even being aware, but they can only mend if we are deliberately conscious in our choices and pay close attention to the results of our interventions.  Having a national conversation along these lines would be a wonderful outcome of Burn's storytelling.

  

Stepping Outside

I need to get out in the woods.  Doing so at this time of year means sharing it with deer hunters, and with bears that have not yet forsaken the beech nuts and berries.   It means broader views opening up beneath the barren canopy, and being under mountain shadows by mid-afternoon.   It means the cry of the geese above and the smell of the leaves underfoot.  It means stepping outside the shell of myself and my daily surroundings.

I need to head for high ground.  The autumn air up there is a matchless stimulant.  I crave the knife edge of the long slope, the long view from above.  I want to worm my way upstream in a cool ravine, amid the hemlocks and the wild trout in their plunge pools.  I want to span my hands about the girth of one of those oldest of the old trees that remain in a few places that have never known an ax.  

I want to step outside in the great outdoors the way the irascible Edward Abbey challenged us to experience it in the preface to Desert Solitaire:

"In the first place, you can't see anything from a car.  You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus.  When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you'll see something, maybe.  Probably not."

On my knees, certainly.

I don't have 40 days to wrestle for my soul with the devil in the desert, or 40 years to wander there.  I am 41 now, and here I am inside.

Poet on a Plane

I am not a frequent flier.  When I do travel by air, I sit by a window, as much to transcend my physical confinement as to relish the world from above.  The seats are narrow and the hours are long, and I have to give myself over completely to the pilots inside their fortified cockpit and have faith in unknown flesh and machinery. This is not an altogether comfortable place for one who values self reliance.

Last week I flew from Hartford to Detroit, and from there to Lexington, Kentucky to visit my sister and her family.  I am in one of those hard places where something deep inside is struggling to surface.  Part of me fears what may emerge, "what rude beast, it's hour come at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born."  The human heart has far more than its 4 physical chambers, and some of these I would much prefer to bypass.

And so I boarded the plane, carrying far more than my small carry on bag. And in such a place I found unexpected grace.

You cannot pick your companions when you fly alone.  You can retreat into yourself and the too small space you have been allotted too close to the occupant of the next seat.  Or you can find, beyond all expectations, a profound connection with a perfect stranger born of shared circumstance and mutual experience.  When I used to rely on my thumb for transportation, backpacking in the Pacific Northwest or trekking across Southern Africa, the very act of accepting a ride from a stranger was a goad to conversation.  Some of this was a way to take the measure of the other, but also to give rein to our better natures.  You have to be open to the possible when you travel this way, to embrace the moment, to adjust expectations.  I haven't felt like that for a long time.

On this flight, my companion had the middle seat while I was by the window.  Yet it was she who directed my eyes to the afterglow of the buried sun.  It was she who showed a friendly interest that turned my inward focus outward.  What opened with talk of our separate journeys was soon revealed as twining paths with many interstices.  We were both making the same connecting flight.  She was a professor and woman of color whose star student from the Berkshires had just published an exquisite chapbook of poetry that grew from the loss of a first child in stillbirth.  I know both of those places intimately, and suddenly she was reaching into her bag and handing me her second copy of this work of which there were only 30 made saying I was meant to have it. 

From there, it was an extraordinary journey.  We spoke of writing and what sets the story free to come.  We spoke of Africa and race and finding common ground with those unlike ourselves and yet never apart from us.  She revealed a love of the natural world born on a farm in South Carolina before the end of segregation, and how she felt when she saw her first whale.  I talked of family history, and Faulkner, and what the world must have been like in the time before propellers when blue whales could communicate pole to pole.  I told her the story from Africa I have never been able to write, but not the fresh and secret pain I carry in my heart. 

This was not a confessional, nor was this other human being an angel or a muse.  It was, however, a time of joy where none was sought or anticipated, of gifts freely given even as their impacts were not completely known.  I liked who I was in that place. I value what was shared and allowed to shine. I carry that self knowledge with me now, able to look beyond the rim at the great unknown.  And I am grateful for the gift of rising above the unkindness of silence, for that will abide long after I land.

Climate Data Point

We are now in the second week of November here in our corner of New England, and spring ephemeral wildflowers are breaking out of dormancy before the ground freezes.   There are trillium, wild leeks and jack in the pulpit shoots nudging up from the ground in the warm, wet weather we have been experiencing this Fall.  The deep freeze that we are due with the onset of Winter will kill them back, at the cost of some of their stored energy reserves.  Some adult plants may not survive, which for slow growing leeks and trillium means a number of years before they are replaced with mature specimens.  I will monitor these patches and see how they respond.

It is a small data point, and means little in isolation.  Repeated stresses like this would be more worrisome.

Scary Ladybug in the LJ This Week

Just in time for Hallowe'en: the invasion of the harlequin ladybug!  Readable here with free subscription.

"These are not the sweet, friendly red-and-black ladybugs of childhood memory, the benign foe of aphids, the farmer’s friend. They are an alien species with rusty orange shells, once intentionally released as a biological control for crop and landscape pests and now here to stay.

And they want to come into your home. "

NN in the LJ

Last week's Lakeville Journal carried my Nature Notes column on our National Bird, readable here with free registration .  Fair use excerpt:

Bald eagles, wild turkeys, beaver, bear and moose, once driven from Connecticut,  have made promising and even dramatic returns.  Today we live alongside each other — not always easily — but whether encountered in midstream or in our very backyards, these species are evidence of extraordinary resilience and adaptation.  

Not every plant or animal is able to make such adjustments, and habitat destruction remains the single greatest cause of biodiversity loss worldwide. Still, the landscape of northwest Connecticut retains a wild and scenic character, where coyotes howl and eagles soar despite centuries of settlement.  

It is not difficult to imagine a time when even western mountain lions will venture a furtive paw in the Litchfield Hills as they gradually track eastward. Whether we would accommodate the presence of a top predator of their caliber in our neighborhood is an open question, but it is certainly something to ponder. And it certainly makes my heart glad to see eagles here.

Eagle Eye

Photo credit: Litchfield Greenprint / Wendy Carlson

This is what my drive to work looks like to the bald eagle I saw today.

The bird was down in the shadows next to the river, and later I got to watch it flying out low over the water to a chorus of angry crows.

Last Week in the LJ

I meditated on the fringed gentian in last week's Nature Notes article in the Lakeville Journal, readable here

with free registration.

...Fall blooming plants fill a fascinating evolutionary niche. They eschew competing for pollinators throughout most of the growing season, serving as welcome nectar sources for migrating butterflies and other species when other wildflowers have gone to seed.   A number of asters, including some of the showiest, also bloom in late summer and into the fall, as do the various goldenrods.

The gentian, though, standing singly or in isolated patches, is nearer to earth than the swaying asters and nodding goldenrod. Poets note its lonely solitude, a lovely sentinel at the ragged end of summer. Victorians invested great meaning in flowers, with the gentian a symbol of enduring hope in the face of certain mortality...