Walk In The Woods

Today, for the first time since last autumn, the dogs and I went for a walk in the woods behind the house.  The land slopes down to a narrow swamp, and that slope, which faces south, was completely free of snow.  There were quite a few trees down, victims of the brutal winter.  But the six huge sentinel pines that stand near the ridge were still upright.

I wondered when we set out what we would find back there.  It is such a secluded spot, that I thought we might run across a deer carcass, or a bear-marked tree (a few years ago in early spring a bear came out of those woods and right up to the house--one of the high points of my life).  And of course I always hope for a glimpse of one of those elusive--and, according to the State of Vermont, nonexistent--catamounts.  But there was nothing out of the ordinary that I could find, other than a bit of carnivore scat--too big for a fox, must have been a coyote.

The dogs, on the other hand, found plenty.  They sniffed every stump and patch of moss.  Wolfie marked conscientiously, the "Posted" signs we put up before hunting season not being enough for his purposes.  Frequently, Wolfie and Bisou would converge on the same bit of ground, sniff intently, then take off.  Lexi, following behind, would stop at the same spot, read the same message.  The dramas and catastrophes of the past four months were spelled out for all to see.

Except for me, of course.  I felt like someone who'd never learned to read and wandered into a bookstore by mistake, and was surrounded by people picking up books, flipping the pages, reading a sentence or two,  placing them back on the shelf. 

But still I enjoyed the walk, in my pathetic human way, feeling the sun on my back (the trees are still bare), enjoying the respite from the wind that raged over the hilltop, listening to the chickadees.  Back at the house an extraordinary sight greeted us:  the hens were out in their yard, all six of them, pecking at the frozen ground, fluffing out their feathers in the sun.

"Posted"

Never thought I'd say this, but Hallelujah!  it was cool and cloudy in Vermont today.  It rained just enough last night to keep the final phase of the Vermont-to-Arizona conversion from taking place.

To celebrate, this evening I took the dogs for a walk in the woods.  Wolfie thundered ahead, followed by a close-to-the-ground red projectile:  Bisou.  Lexi, who in former years was the first to disappear from view, now keeps close to me.  On these outings I carry a treat bag full of mozzarella chunks as insurance against disobedience and disappearance.  Periodically, I call the dogs and give each of them a piece of cheese when they come to me.  Lexi is always there first.

Entering the woods this evening was like diving into green water--dreamy and silent except for the waving and rustling of the trees.  The ground is covered in reddish-brown leaves, the result of the drought.  Against this background, it is getting harder to see Bisou.  By October, she will blend perfectly into the reddish-orange leaf fall.

Unfortunately, by October we won't be able to walk in the woods.  In one of the most beautiful times of the year, the dogs and I will be confined to the yard, for fear of hunters.  It's not that I'm against hunting.  In fact, I would like nothing better than to get our protein from wild sources.  But I don't hunt, and neither does my husband, and the idea of people with guns tromping through our woods alarms me.

Hunting is a long-standing tradition in Vermont, and locals bemoan the proliferation of "Posted" signs over former hunting grounds.  These signs are put up by flatlanders like us, not born to a hunting tradition and reluctant to put our pets and ourselves in jeopardy to maintain it.

Last spring, as we were laying out the trail in the woods, we found an alarming number of spent cartridges on the ground.  Soon we'll have to go to the hardware store and buy a couple dozen yellow "Posted" signs.  Then we'll  take one last hike through the yellowing woods, and staple the signs on our trees, and hope they work.

A Trail In The Woods

For the past two days, in the falling snow, a man with a chain saw has been working in the woods behind our house. He has a master's degree in "Northeastern Sylvan Hardwoods," and he's making a trail so we can walk our woods without getting lost. I call him Our Forester.

I love a man who knows his trees. The first time Our Forester came over, we went with him to figure out the boundaries of our land (is that the stone wall over there? Oh look, here's a piece of old barbed wire...this must be the corner of the property). And as we walked, he would stop and point to a non-descript tree trunk and say "you've got a nice red maple here," or "these beeches look like they're in pretty good health," or "this one here's a sugar maple." (A sugar maple! We have sugar maples on our land! We'll be "sugaring" this spring!) All the trees he pointed out, except for the pines, which are green, looked pretty much alike to me--ashes and white birches and gray birches and oaks and cedars and hickories and gnarly old apple trees.

He would put his hand on a winter-bare tree and look up at the branches outlined against the sky. "Now this one's got a nice rounded crown," he'd say. "If we clean up the area around it a bit (he meant cut down the little spindly trees and bushes) it'll get a growth spurt, and you'll have a really beautiful tree in no time at all."

Obviously, we can't just ask him to cut us a trail. In Our Forester I have found a kind of vet for our woods. He needs to give them a thorough check-up, and then clean out the stuff that is clogging them up so the trees can breathe and grow strong and healthy and produce nuts and apples and things for the wildlife....

Speaking of which, there are a lot of wet spots in the woods, spots that with just a little work could be cleared out and maybe dug out a bit and turned into a nice little pond that would make the frogs and the salamanders and the fisher cats and the coyotes, not to mention the bear that I want to believe still lives around here, really happy, come spring.

Lost In The Woods

The day before my family departed, I organized an expedition to my favorite old pine tree in the woods behind our house.

As expeditions go, it was to be a short one—10 minutes round-trip—since we were taking grandchildren (Violette, 6, and Remy, 5), and lame Lexi, whom I couldn't bear to leave behind. Wolfie came along, too, and my husband and daughter. Because we'd only be gone a few minutes, I decided the dogs needed neither collars nor leashes. Nor did I need to change out of my dress.

The pine tree, which I visit often, is southeast of the house, right next to a stand of white birches. This time, because we were trying to organize three adults, two children, and the dogs, we left the yard by a slightly different route, and somehow the birches and the pine tree were nowhere to be seen.

“No matter,” we said, “we'll just head downhill for the swamp, which must be huge after all this rain, and then go back home.”

We walked downhill, the dogs scampering ahead, the children marveling at mushrooms. We found a number of tiny creeks, the result of the recent downpours, but the swamp wasn't where we thought it should be.

“We'd better just go back to the house,” I said. I was aware that any minute the children might get hungry—it was almost lunch time-- or thirsty, or tired. And I was worried about Lexi overdoing it.

We climbed back up the hill...and instead of our house, we saw another hill. Remy, thank goodness, still thought we were looking for the swamp. But Violette knew that we were lost, whereupon she set up a Cassandra-like wail: “We're lost, we're lost, we'll never get out of here! I'm tired, I can't go another step, please carry me, pleeeeease, I'm dying! Help! We're lost! We'll never get back!.” She kept this up while striding valiantly over stone walls, thorny bushes, and muddy creeks. I tried to explain to her that screaming uses energy, which she should conserve, but six-year-olds are not into energy conservation.

The woods were beautiful. There was birdsong, and a cool breeze, and no bugs. We came upon a magical little pond, perfectly round, with a tiny pier, that we'd never seen before. The dogs drank. It was cloudy, and midday, so we could not orient ourselves by the sun. We had no idea where we were.

We kept going. I thought of Little Red Riding Hood, walking through the woods to her grandmother's house. I thought of Hansel and Gretel and their organic GPS. I thought of Dante, lost in a wood in the middle of his life.

We came upon another magical spot—a stone walk leading down steps to a stone-lined pool the size of a hot tub, the whole surrounded by lilies and raspberry bushes, and not a soul in sight. Lexi was slowing down and limping noticeably. Would we have to carry her, and the kids, and for how long?

With Violette's laments ringing in our ears, we found a small Christmas tree farm, and knew that we were a long way from home, since there are no tree farms in the vicinity of our house. Next to the Christmas trees was a beautifully-tended apple orchard, and blueberry bushes, and a vegetable garden and, God-be-praised, a farmer, straight out of Norman Rockwell, who told us that we had ended up on Betts' Bridge Road.

That meant that to get home we'd have to walk a good fifteen minutes along a two-lane highway, with two leashless and collarless dogs. Ed said he'd cut across some more woods and fields and come back in the truck to get us. Too weak to argue, we waved good-bye and sat under a tree by the side of the road—like gypsies, I thought. It had been two and a half hours since we'd left the house.

The dogs lay down and panted. Violette shrieked at a daddy longlegs. Remy put his head on my lap and broke a stick into “bullets.” I fretted about what we would do if Ed never came back.

But he did, and we all piled into the truck and went home and had lunch.

Hibernating Faeries

Took the dogs into the woods this morning, and this is what I saw: