Balsamea Aranyaka

A light broke upon my brain. It was the carol of a bird.
– Lord Byron

May 9, 2008 – Early this morning I finally got a chance to see a merrily singing White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis). Perched about 12 feet up in the top of a young birch tree, it entertained me for a long time while I regretted not having my camera handy.

Photo released to the public domain by Ken Thomas

          If Balsamea had an anthem, it might be the song of this prolific singer, with some percussive accompaniment of red squirrel chatter, and the laughter of woodpeckers. The White-throated Sparrow’s song sounds plaintive and happy at the same time, as if to say, “I’m alone, but I’m enjoying my solitude until you join me.”

          I read that they live up to ten years. No doubt some of the white-throated sparrows I hear were native Balsameans long before I arrived. They seem unoffended by my presence.

          The shrill whistling song consists of two long notes followed by three rapid triplets, sometimes only one long note, sometimes three, sometimes not all three trailing triplets; perhaps juveniles practicing. It goes something like this: “me, ME, me-me-me, me-me-me, me-me-me.”  There is an audio recording at the USGS Infocenter, but it’s not a particularly good recording. (See below for links to more recordings.)

          Tradition describes the song verbally as “Poor Sam, Peabody, Peabody, Peabody,” or “Oh, Canada, Canada, Canada.” I prefer to interpret it as, “Here we sing-for-thee, in-the-tree, happily!”

          I don’t know where these singers were all my life, because I don’t recall hearing them prior to moving to the Adirondacks several years ago. Perhaps living here amidst so much boreal forest awakened my awareness of nature. I think so.

          They spend winters in the southern states, come north in the spring and stay until autumn throughout the northern states and Canada. Hearing their song for the first time each year is a reassurance that winter is finally over.

          They sing any time of the day and often at night. Recently one serenaded me all night long.  On a silently windless night, long after all the other birds have finished their sunset choruses, when I hear this sparrow’s song, lilting through the trees in the dark, it feels like an auditory dessert, a surprise lullabye sung just for me.

          A Google search on “white-throated sparrow” yields many hits but here are some recommendations:

          I enjoyed reading nearby Southern Vermont Chris Petrak’s blog post titled, White-throated Sparrows Are Practicing Their Songs, where he says, amidst a thorough essay on the singer, “The White-throated Sparrow has one of the most recognizable songs of any sparrow, or any songbird for that matter. To my ear, the clear, whistled notes of the song sounds plaintive and mournful, a song of ruefulness and longing. I have to remind myself that it is a love song, a song to establish territory, warn off rivals, and attract a mate. There is nothing plaintive about the White-throat’s song to another White-throat. To one of his own kind on breeding territory, it is a declaration of territorial prerogative or an invitation to erotic adventure.”

          One of the more authoritative treatises on this singer is at the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology. Their sound recording has three long notes before the triplets. I occasionally hear them sing that way, too.

          Video clips are available at the Internet Bird Collection.

          National Public Radio affiliate KPLU and Seattle Audubon offer an excellent recording as part of a radio essay written by Dennis Paulson and narrated by Frank Corrado at birdnote.org, in Sounds of the Boreal Forest Transcript-782, with a sound track of the boreal forest provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.

- The Balsamean

On Weather

Another personal essay by Zivara from his Summer 2003 journal.

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When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shop-keepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too … I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.
– Henry David Thoreau

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June, 2003 – Spring in the Adirondacks has finally warmed up and dried out after a wet, cool beginning.  Still, nothing about the weather has stopped me from enjoying the outdoors.  Being out there under all kinds of conditions, including rain, wind, snow, ice, darkness – things people deem negative – are opportunities to enjoy the experience of reality in nature as it really is, not merely as it is in “fair weather.”  Each condition is a unique and enjoyable experience in its own way.

For me, the least preferred condition is high heat (over 80) with full sun.  But those are days for being in the water and slow saunters in shady places, and there are plenty of opportunities for that.  I’ll take a cloudy or partially cloudy day over a full-sun day any time except in winter when the sun is a better friend to me.  Some day I want to be “out there” in a hurricane, hunkered down in a hollow, ready to leap and run out of the way if a tree comes down at me!

One night I stayed out until well after dark and never turned on a flashlight, so my eyes could adjust and get their night vision.  Then I walked back to the car, partially cross-country and partially on the trail, in what most would call “complete darkness.”  It was not “complete” at all.  Humans do have some capacity for night vision.  Night walking makes for very mindful walking, too, when all your attention is really on walking, not on how you’re going to pay the bills or deal with tomorrow’s appointments.

We are like aliens on our own planet.  The experience of “adverse” conditions in nature is not really adverse!  Each has its own beauty.  Shutting ourselves in against them leaves us disconnected from reality as it really is, knowing only a partial reality that we create in our buildings and yards and cars, even our gardens, but not the one filling the majority of the space in the world.

We know most of the roads and stores and major buildings within fifty miles of home, but we don’t know our way around a single square mile of any woods without well-beaten paths, and many can’t even navigate those without taking wrong turns.  Many people can’t even use the sun to tell them what direction they’re going.  Neither would they recognize the same large tree in the woods if they walked past it ten times, usually because they’re too busy thinking about other things and other places and other times instead of what is right in front of them in the present moment.  We’re too busy going someplace else to enjoy where we are.  We’re too busy racing forward to take a moment to turn around and see where we came from, which is the best way to recognize the way home.

Thoreau once wrote, “I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.  There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one.”  I find it interesting that he said “unconsciously yield to it,” then claims that it is heedlessness and stupidity (or not being consciously aware) that gets us lost.  This points up the need to learn to know that “magnetism in Nature” by conscious effort, by heedfulness and careful attention, until it becomes second nature, so we can then “unconsciously” follow it the way we “unconsciously” drive a very complex machine at the death-defying speed of a mile a minute (and faster) over fantastic distances.  If we put half the effort into learning what nature is doing within our sight as we put into learning to drive and maintain a car, we’d all be smarter than foxes and owls in knowing nature, and never afraid of the dark.

I can sit or stand still for an hour in the woods and just look at what is within immediate view, and do it repeatedly at the same place over and over again throughout the seasons, and see completely “new” and different things every time.  Not to mention hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling, and the apparent changes, or differences, incurred by changes in daylight and weather.  Just a small change in the speed of the wind makes a place altogether different.

That’s why I spend so much time on the same trail and in the same wooded area over and over again.  It’s also why I’ll never tire of the woods and trails within ten miles of where I live now.  To me, going ten miles away is to the outer limits of my territory.  Ten miles!  In eight months of living here, I don’t yet know one percent of the public land within three miles!  (I’m surrounded by public lands … one of the best things they do with my taxes.)

An example of this phenomenon of being unconscious of reality is that I believed I had to carry-in rocks to make a fireplace at my little “Big Pine Refuge,” a plot 200 feet off a certain trail.  So I dutifully hauled in dozens of rocks from the trail and the creek, a few at a time, over many visits.  But with each visit to the place, and repeated observations of the surrounding fifty feet, I learned more about it.  Finally I found that there were enough large rocks within fifty feet to make a wonderful fireplace that could be there for a hundred years before nature buries it in her inexorable progressions through changes of state.  In just two days, using only what I found within fifty feet, I built a fireplace larger and more fortified than I could have made in months with scores of the rocks I had strength and will enough to carry from the trail or the creek two hundred feet away.  Now, mostly for the sake of tradition, I still bring in at least one rock on every visit, to build a cairn, a monument, a cenotaph in memoriam to billions like myself who have died and have been dying of life detached from reality.

I am aware that at any moment a microburst of air can blow down the huge Pine (of nearly a three-foot diameter) nearest my fireplace, or that it may just fall over of its own weight at any time.  When the great Pine goes down, its roots will flip up and toss about my silly little monument like a house of cards in a gale.  I’ve considered this carefully, and determined that it is no matter for concern.  The joy has not been in having it, but in building it, in being there, in all the hikes associated with each visit to the place, in all the real living simply and joyfully lived there and nearby.

It is much more a monument in homage to the God who loaned me the Big Pine Refuge than it is a fireplace.  There I am much more naturally inclined to prayer than in church or in my apartment.  That place is a church to me.  (I may yet learn truly that every place and every moment is sacred.)

I should write a Will to have the ashes of my carcass dumped into this fireplace by a few friends gathered to build a fire in it, with the supply of wood I stacked little by little in a hidden stash nearby, burning a tribute on top of my ashes to celebrate the passing of life enjoyed there.

Though it seems that I enjoy such things more alone than in most kinds of company, it would thrill me no end to know that someone else came to regard and enjoy the place as I do.  But that may be impossible for anyone who did not experience the transformation of the plot from just another spot in the woods to a refuge.

I don’t have a fireplace there.  I have an altar.  And I did not build it.  It was there already, just waiting for some idle arms and legs to bring it together, and a heart to appreciate it and the process of its appearing.  In a sense, it has been there always, partly inside of me and partly scattered in pieces on that little plot of ground, waiting for a long time to materialize, using me as part of its process, not at all anything that I can call mine.  It is a temporary gift for me to enjoy while I can.

I cherish it more in knowing that at any moment it may disappear, as do all things, and as will I.  Everything changes.  Nothing is forever but God, the All, the Nameless, the Placeless, the Presence in all presence, the Conscious in all consciousness.  I seem to know this best when I am alone in the woods.

I think it’s true that I’ve never been to the same place in the woods twice without finding it different (and I add to the changes by my repeated presence).  Not so in our cloistered world of houses, offices, stores, cars, roads, and sidewalks.  We do all we can to create sameness and familiarity, which is the opposite of what Nature does … and what God does.  We box ourselves into a fabricated reality for security, but it makes us falsely insecure when pushed out of the box, which is inevitable and frequent.

Not that I don’t appreciate my little boxes, like my stone fireplace/altar.  I enjoy creating them, too.  It’s human nature to do so.  But again in the words of Thoreau, “To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.”  Even a sacred refuge can become as boring to me as a TV commercial if I abuse myself of it with exclusive attachment.  The fact that my “Big Pine Refuge” will be destroyed eventually by nature is something good to know.  So I happily regard it as a temporary gift, and gratefully acknowledge that there are many more to be experienced everywhere.

I laughed out loud when I read in the same Thoreau essay of 1862, when this country was still almost completely wilderness, “When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shop-keepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too … I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.”  No wonder I’ve felt suicidal at times.

Besides … getting back to the matter of the weather … many forecasts couldn’t be more wrong if they intentionally lied.  Many are the most pleasant days, with just a few quickly passing showers, when they had predicted rain for the whole day.  So if I depend on the forecasts too much, I’ll miss a lot of “good” days, and there have been many “good” rainy days, and snowy days, and dark nights, too.  They’re all good.

Zivara

“On Porcupine Point”

Another personal essay by Zivara, from his journal in the Summer of 2003.

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“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  … But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
- Henry David Thoreau, in Walden

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          I pulled the steno notepad from my backpack, flipped to an empty page, and attempted to jot the day, date, and time as I usually do at the top of almost any writing.  I could not remember what day it was, and the date I knew only to be something after the 21st of June.  I guessed that it was Wednesday, June 24, but I could not be sure.  For weeks I had not paid much attention to day or date.  The 28-year-old Caravel watch on my wrist, riveted permanently to the stainless steel band that Dad had made for it some dozen or more years ago, did not show day or date.  I don’t wear my thirty-dollar Timex digital when I go hiking.  Once you hit the trail, who cares what day or date?  The Caravel said the time was 7:40 (PM), but that didn’t seem to matter either.  This moment was timeless.

          The time was defined for me more by the slightly dimmed sun, buried in a thick haze of humidity, about ten degrees above the hill beyond the west end of the lake.  Still, it mattered little to me how long it might take the sun to drop out of sight.  I was equipped, though barely, to spend the night if desired or required, even in rain.  What mattered to me more, time-wise, was how long that porcupine was going to stay up in that oak tree before he came back down to let me get another chance at a close-up photo of him.

          “Time?  What time?” I mused, as I removed my sneakers and socks, replacing them with nylon-and-rubber water shoes, setting aside the notepad after a few pages were filled.  The old Chicago song bubbled up from the archives in my brain … “Does anybody really know what time it is?  Does anybody really care?” …

          “I have all the time in the world to do anything I want to do right now, and the first thing is to get into that water.”

          A mildly stiff breeze blew steadily ashore from the lake.  Not so during the hike in, where the trail is blocked from the lake by dense forest.  The air was unmoving, wet and thick on the trail — swelter-stuff — with grass and who-knows-what growing up to the hips.  My meager clothing – nothing but a pair of cotton jersey shorts and a shirt – was drenched with sweat when I arrived, after a mile and a quarter of trail.  I drank two thirds of a liter of ice water on the way.  Trudging through the boggy, buggy, overgrown trail in the mind-hazing heat and humidity, I relished the notion of diving into the lake.  At this seemingly always-vacant remote and primitive campsite, I was greeted by the pleasant surprise of a good breeze at the water’s edge, blowing away even the most persistent bugs from the open-floored mostly-pine forest of the site.

          This so-called pond, by the way, is a three-mile long lake, fed by several small brooks.  A man-made dam at the northeast end helps control the water level.  At the southwest end, in the shadow of Catamount Mountain, a beaver dam over 200 feet long regulates a second outflow.

           I spent a long time hiding in the weeds trying to get close-up pictures of two beavers I met at the north dam one evening about a month ago.  Fascinating creatures.

          They make the most heartbreaking little mewing sounds.  I looked them up on various web sites, including ones that played audio of their sounds.  None of the web sites said anything about a certain sound that I suspect I’ve heard made by beavers, but have not proved.  It is a sudden thumping that is of such a low but intense pitch that it feels like it’s coming from your own chest.  The first time it happened I feared I was having a heart attack!  After several encounters with this sound, and noticing that it was always in the vicinity of beavers or likely beaver territory, I’m guessing it’s their form of Indian drumming communication, using their powerful tails, to let the lodge know that a big two-footer is approaching.

          I suppose there is some possibility that the thumping sounds are from bears beating on the tree in a rage when they can’t find the Charmin.

          But getting back to defining lakes and ponds, I have yet to unravel the mystery behind the logic (if any) for how Adirondackers name lakes and ponds as either lake or pond.  Lake Stevens on Whiteface Mountain, barely the size of two Olympic swimming pools, is a pond in my book.  Nearby Fern Lake is less than half the size and depth of Taylor Pond, which is big enough for speedboat races.  Some day I’ll ask someone knowledgeable if there is some reasoning that defines a pond regardless of its size.  To me, Taylor is a pond only relatively, in size, to the likes of the Great Lakes (among which, I might add, Champlain should be numbered).

          I read something once about lakes and ponds being defined by their geography, with lakes having steep banks and ponds having shallow, gradual ones.  Sounds okay to me, I guess.

          I’ve been all around this lake called Taylor Pond, hiking pieces of its surrounding trails, and some bushwhacking along the shore where the trail doesn’t go, always looking, as I tend to do, for something no one else would find.  (This spring I did find a long-abandoned camp site that I’m sure no one today knows about, there being no trail to it, but it has a densely overgrown waterfront area not easily accessed, with barely a rock to sit on, though I did find one nice one, from which I shot a photo of a pair of kayakers who waved to me.)  The primary access is via the small Taylor Pond Campground managed by the Department of Environmental Conservation.  My first visit was by a back way into a snowmobile trail I’d found on the map, off Nelson Road, late last autumn after permanent amounts of snow had settled.  I’ve watched this territory develop through the seasons since then.  Upon every visit it is something different, something new.

          One night in January, a friend and I burned a pile of cedar deadfall we had sawn up (which, by the way, made wonderful firewood), for many hours under a constantly falling snow, at one of the campsite fireplaces.  The lake was frozen solid enough to drive a tank across at the time.

          Given the continual changes as the seasons march along, I don’t think one can tire of coming here unless they do it more than twice a month.  (In summer the $4.00 in-season day-use fee inclines me to keep my visits to evenings after five, when the gatehouse has closed, or to hike in from Nelson Road.)

          One of the most scenic visits to this interior campsite was back in late March or early April … I forget exactly … when there was still enough dense snow pack on the trail for the snowmobiles, solid enough to walk on top of it without post-holing.  It was an evening hike.  After a short visit to campsite I-1, and a little fire created there to thaw my feet, I enjoyed the most spectacular full-moon-lighted snow-covered forest scenes of my life, during the return hike in the “dark,” when a flashlight was unnecessary given the moonlight on the snow.  I had human company on that outing, unusually.

          Later, in the spring, I had been twice on the nearly two-mile hike to the South Shelter, a lean-to on the south shore.  Now it was my first summer hike at this Shangri-La-like pond-lake.

          Rarely do I make the mistake of attempting to hike in short pants, especially in summer, for the bugs and scratches and poison ivy, but this was one of those times I dared it, for the heat.  (We were in the middle of a heat wave, with temperatures well over 90.)  Thinking a moving target is harder to hit, and because those tiny winged monsters do immediately swarm you if you stop moving, I moved as fast as I could without overexerting myself or getting clumsy on the awkward footing of the trail, swishing away buzzing things from my ears and legs with a big red bandana, like a cow or horse uses its tail.  At about a mile and a quarter, it warranted little concern to hike short-sleeved and short-legged, not even enough concern for a stop to apply insect repellent, which I use as sparingly as I can these days, considering the cost of the stuff.  I sustained only a few minor itchy bumps that healed themselves quickly.  Most bug bites are mild enough.  Rarely I get a nasty one that lasts a few days.

          Now, at campsite I-1, those shorts were stretched over my backpack, drying of their sweat-soaking, along with drenched shirt.  CHARGE!  I jogged gingerly into the lake, having decided I was not going to think about how cold it might be.  Whatever the temperature, I’d take it in one big splash.

          The water temperature was perfect.  It took no adjustment time at all.  I would not have asked for any warmer, and any warmer would have been too much.  After crossing the soft brown sand at a run, then tumbling and leaping through some rocks (all perfectly visible even at depth of four feet or more in the crystal clear water), the lake engulfed me, mind, body and soul, instantly cleansing me of weeks of a growing depression that had culminated the day before in abject lethargy and apathy and the most morbid of thoughts and feelings.

          Something I don’t remember happened in my dreams that night, and I woke resolved to take charge of my life, beginning with a treat to this idyllic spot on the lake where I have never seen another soul (on weekdays and off-season) except out on an occasional boat, though evidence of their presence was clear in remains of things in and around the badly eroded fireplace (probably built by the CCC, or in those days), most likely weekend boaters or fair weather campers not inclined to submit to bugs and bogs to get here in the height of a summer heat wave.  Now it was all mine, as it should be, and time had stopped long enough for me to get off the worldly-go-round, and rally to my own cause for a spell: the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.  This was the place for it.

          “What have I done to deserve this?” I wrote in the notepad.  What could anyone ever do to create such an opportunity for peace, joy, and fun?  Nothing.  No one deserves it.  It is granted as a gift by unmerited favor.  It is part of the healing splendor of grace.  Granted, one must find it and hike to it, even sweat for it or suffer cold toes in the snow for it, but the opportunities, skills and capacities to do so are gifts of grace in themselves.  As usual, I found a prayerful, reverential mood inspired automatically, naturally, in a place like this, far more readily than at any formal altar.

          After the first foray into the water and some photo shooting around the area, I sat on the picnic table, happily almost naked in the bug-free breeze coming off the lake, scribbling in the notebook.  I regretted realizing, after bathing in the fresh, clean water, that I should slick up with Deet before the return hike, later, at sunset, when the mosquitoes were likely to be on the warpath in full armament.

          The sound of the wind-driven water lapping at the shore gently pulled me back to the present moment.  “Stay here,” it said.  “Don’t go off into the future wondering what you will do then.  Be fully here, fully now.”

          I can’t help but believe … I feel I know … that the wilderness experiences of Moses, Buddha and Jesus were the critical times in their evolution as avatars.  Here, consciousness of reality, awareness of that consciousness, and insight enough to hear it speak in the voices of nature, advances rapidly, wiping away like dust the illusions of mind and culture and society.  Here, in a no-place like this, alone, with no agenda, no purpose, and no intention but simply to be here, one can really just plainly “be,” and that is a beginning of wisdom.  Had I spent the last thirty years doing this a thousand times more often, I might have learned some wisdom.

          “There you go again,” said the crackling sound of the porcupine clawing his way down the crisp bark of his tree on his sharp toes.  The sentiment was echoed by two wood ducks nagging at me as they flew swiftly by, just above the surface of the water.  “Yep, there you go, again,” they said.  “Wandering off again, this time into the past, and worse, with regrets!  Come back.  Stay here in the present.  Be where you are right now, not back there where you can never be, and in some sense never were, because all you ever are, when you are mindful enough to truly BE and KNOW IT, is in the present moment.  Besides, you’re just so much happier here than in the past or the future, aren’t you?”

          No argument.

          I left the camera on the picnic table, because I had only one shot left, reserved for sunset.  I tiptoed barefoot through the sticky, pitch laden, brown pine needle and bark-chip ground cover, easing my way around the far side of the tree where my yellow-quilled friend descended, hoping to avoid his notice.  But he noticed every step.  As he descended tail-first to about ten feet high, he started poking his head around to see where I’d gone.  By then I was about eight feet from the tree.  I froze, still as the big tree trunks all around.  “Don’t worry ‘bout me, li’l fella,” I whispered.  “I’m just another tree.  Heh-heh.  But not for climbing.”

          He looked me squarely in the eye, it seemed, silently looking for some movement or change.  “A tree with eyes, eh?” he asked.  “Your bark is mighty pale, too.  You must be a son of a birch.”

          I gave him my best poker face.

          We eyeballed each other for a long minute or so.  His black shiny eye almost hidden in his solid black face, led me to believe I was working far harder at seeing into the windows of his soul than he into mine.

          Finally he muttered, “Sure, sure, you’re a tree.  You stay over there.  I’m heading back up here.”  And back up he climbed, moving directly vertical on all fours more gracefully than I can walk up a single stair step.

          He never hurried, though.  It was as though he knew I was no threat, but he would be cautious anyway.

          Or, maybe these critters can’t run?  That might account for the large, black bare spot on his behind, around which all the yellow-tipped quills stood up straight.  Perhaps the bare spot is where former quills had been sacrificed into the noses of foxes and coyotes.  The quills around his shoulders and forward section were jet black, with no pale tips, and laid down smooth.  He looked a bit like a turkey with its feathers up.

          I was cautious too.  I did not know how refined his game of darts might be, should those quills be capable of becoming projectiles.  I could not remember how they worked, but I knew I did not want to use myself as a test dartboard.  (I later learned that they are not projectiles, as a cartoon might have it, but the tail can be used as a lash to deliver a stinging blow of barbed quills.)

          After a lifetime completely under the influence of television, I’ve seen so many things on the tube that sometimes it’s hard to remember whether I saw a particular thing in real-time or just in a broadcast of someone else’s time.  I don’t recall seeing a porcupine in the wild, but I know I’ve seen lots of them.  Maybe I did encounter one in the flesh, and maybe it was only two-dimensional ones on the screen.  I just don’t know.

          This may say something about a difference between “The Greatest Generation” (pre-television kids who grew up in the Depression and attained majority around the 1930’s and 40’s and World War II) and their descendants.  We learned some things faster because of Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street, but did we really experience what we learned?  Do we know the difference between knowledge and experience?  Hmmmmm … an epistemological puzzlement to be tackled in some other essay.

          On my way in to the site, as I broke out of the dense woods onto the peninsula wherein lay Campsite I-1, where the forest floor opened up to a brown needle-strewn carpet under many tall, straight pines, I felt compelled to celebrate with a photograph of that first view of the sunlight glittering through the trees in reflection off the water.  I did shoot a picture or two, and then, to my amazement that I actually had the camera cocked and ready for the moment, I encountered in the wild, if not really for the first time in three dimensions, at least seemingly for the first time in my life, a real, live porcupine.

          As with most animal sightings, he saw me coming before I saw him, so what I saw first was his rump, moving away from me.  Lumbering, I should say.  He (or she) was not running, just sauntering deliberately on a course to put maximum space between us.  I quickly adjusted the f-stop for maximum light, then tried but may not have succeeded at focusing through the sweat steam off my brow fogging the viewfinder, and held the shutter release half-way down to watch for that little green light to say, “Yes, you have enough light to do this without the tripod or flash.”  I didn’t bring the flash attachment, and probably would have lost the shot while fumbling for it anyway, so I had to make do and shoot what I could.

          The idiot light said, “Blinkity-blink, No!”  The shadowy forest floor at 7:30 PM was too dark!

          I fired anyway, and assumed a direct hit.  Then I moved a few steps closer, moving much faster than my prey, but gently, stealthily, like a cat or an Indian.  “Go over there, into that patch of light!” I said.

          The porcupine stopped, turned, looked at me, and said, “Come any closer, Paleface, and you’ll taste a bit of the law of the jungle.”

          I fired again, and again, and again.  I lost track of how many shots I took.  He stood there in that full-profile stance, black as the Ace of Spades from nose to tail, the only color on him being an array of yellowish-tipped quills across his mid- and hind-sections, silhouetted against the light brown pine needle floor.  To hell with the light sensor!  I shot again.  But I stepped no closer.  Now about 10 feet from my prey, I realized I was getting carried away with the film and I needed it for other pictures I wanted to take.

          The animal, as though contented that I had stopped approaching, and had stopped making that infernal click, zip noise with my one big, black eye, turned and began sauntering away again.  I stepped closer.  He arrived at a big pine.  Turning vertical and walking straight up as easily as I might fall off a log, he walked up the tree perfectly perpendicular to the ground.  I don’t remember for sure, but I think I snapped a couple more shots, hoping the light at his new height was better.

          I watched him ascend to about 20 feet, and he kept going, so I did the same.  I felt I had harassed him enough.  I thanked him for the visit as I resumed my footing on the last few hundred feet of the trail to the end of the peninsula of Campsite I-1, which is now named on MY map, “Porcupine Point.”

          Later, after I had gone for a swim, he had come closer to the campsite (actually there are two sites, but no matter).  I was wandering around shooting pictures, and heard that distinct crackling sound of his claws again sinking into the bark of a tree as he climbed.  By then I had only one picture left on the roll, which I wanted to save for a particular sunset scene I had planned, so I decided not to shoot him any more.  I did reconsider when he came down from the tree later, as I mentioned earlier, but didn’t take the shot.

[Taylor Pond is a small lake about three miles long, in the town of Black Brook, off Silver Lake Road, in the southwest corner of Clinton County, about 12 miles west of Ausable Forks.  It has a DEC campground with limited facilities (outhouses, water spigots), four interior/primitive campsites on the lake, picnic area, boat ramp, and canoe rentals, plus untold miles of trails (snowmobile and hiking/skiing only) near the lake and surrounding areas.  Campsites are $11 per night as of this writing, plus $2.75 registration fee, day use parking fee $4, in-season.  Open year-round, fees apply only in summer.  It is near Catamount Mountain, which has a trail to the summit reportedly one of the best hikes in the area.]

          I noticed that they have several aluminum canoes at the boat ramp.  Assuming these are rentals, I’m going to inquire as to the cost of one for a few days.  If it’s something I can afford some time this summer, I’d like to take one for four days, load it with my camping gear, and head out to one of the interior camp sites, either Porcupine or one of the three others.  You can see the South Shelter on this map.

          There are two other lean-to’s on the north side of the lake, farther west than what is on this map.  I have not been to them yet, but went by them on a trail northwest of them.  As far as I could find, there is no foot trail to the north-shore shelters.  They appear to be accessible only by boat.  I did see one of them across the lake from the south side.

          It is about a mile and a half or so paddle from the boat ramp to the South Shelter, which I can handle solo, and a shorter distance to Porcupine by water.  I’ve never gone canoe-camping solo.  It’s on my “must do” list.

          I always carry a notebook in my backpack, but I rarely spend time writing in it on the trail.  One reason is that it’s back there in the backpack, inaccessible unless I stop and “unsaddle,” as I call it.  Another reason is that even when I take a break and sit for a while, I’m usually too preoccupied with observing things or wading or cutting firewood or eating a snack.  I just don’t feel like writing out there.  I must overcome this, because I find that when I at least take some notes, it makes for a much better account when I write about it more fully later.  I do have a small notepad in a vinyl holder that I can carry in my pocket.

          Resolved: carry the small notepad at all times and at least jot a few key notes to trigger my memory when I get home to write “formally.”  Resolved: on any hike or outing involving a substantial rest break or a stay at one location more than an hour, take the steno notebook out of the backpack and write at least one page.

          At Porcupine Point the other day, I wrote three pages in the steno pad, plus a list of various other phrases to remind me of things to mention in a full write-up of the occasion.  It helped a lot.

          I admit: though I do immensely enjoy solo wandering, and find it more restorative and healing in some ways to be alone “out there,” with no one else to distract me from experiencing fully what I am doing and what Nature is doing around me, making it a much more mindfully experienced event, a “communion” with Nature, there are occasional twinges of melancholy and desire for company.  I make up for that by writing like this.  While out there, thinking about what I would say about it in writing makes me feel like I am almost “with” the readers, to an extent.  And, often in my head I “talk to” my best old friend while I’m hiking (when not talking to animals or trees).  I share this information cautiously, adding now that I have no serious regret of being alone.  It is something I’ve needed for a long time and really enjoy, because it fills an important need.  But it’s not always the most fun being alone, often it is more fun together with someone else, especially someone who knows what I mean about the advantages of having these delightful experiences of solitude.

          I saw an interesting stone at Porcupine Point and picked it up.  It was in the water when I found it.  They always look so much more interesting when wet.  After they dry out, they are dull.  So, while watching this small stone with a maroon stripe across it drying out, a poetic notion came to mind.  It can be a “crying stone.”  Tears can be rubbed onto it, to bring back its original appeal as an interesting stone, and perhaps give the mind and heart a little relief from what caused the tears.  I didn’t feel at all like crying, so I just licked it.

          According to Robbie Robertson on the CD liner for his album “Music for the Native Americans,” there is an Indian tradition that says finding a golden feather or a heart-shaped stone is a charm or omen of good fortune, like our traditional lore about finding a four-leafed clover.  So lately I’ve been making something of a hobby of looking for stone hearts.  I found one about a month after I started looking.  I did take it as quite a bit of good luck, because they are very rare.  I found this in Pettigrew Brook.

          I’m a lucky dog.

          I’ll leave you with that for now.  Let me know if you find any hearts of stone.  I’m curious to know how rare they really are.

Zivara

A Stick, A Night, A Fire

[Editor's Note: This personal essay by Zivara is not specifically about Balsamea, but expresses themes in a kindred spirit.  We welcome contriibutions like this.]

June, 2003 – I recently broke my favorite walking stick, a good companion of several years, purchased at an annual crafts festival at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY.  After a brief surge of sorrow — for my loss and for my stupidity in how I broke it — I quickly resolved to take advantage of the occasion to make a new one with my own saw and knife.  After a failed attempt at making a walking stick from a piece of Oak, I returned to the woods and cut two branches, the first a cane-height piece of Beech, the second a staff-height piece of Maple.  Both were cut just above a sub-branch that would serve as a handle head.

Over the next few days the Beech cane evolved under my knife into a beautiful piece, with a handle resembling a heron’s head, with a small knot for an eye.  The process of carving and sanding it gave me considerable pleasure, until, as the wood continued to cure, the head began to split.  I salvaged it by counter-sinking a screw through it, then filling the crack and over my screw’s head using wood-filler.  It has turned out wonderfully, after six coats of polyurethane and light sanding between each coat.

The Maple staff awaits carving.  I generally prefer a stick of cane height to a staff, but I thought it would be nice to have both.  In the event of hiking with a friend, I would offer the friend their choice.  Each with a hooked head, they could serve as pulls for hiking mates to help each other through climbing obstacles or creek-fording, or to recapture a hat blown out of the canoe.

Actually, the Beech was my second attempt.  The first was with that piece of Oak.  It failed as a cane for three reasons.  First, I had not sawed it properly to keep a branching piece at the head as a handle.  Second, it was too heavy.  Finally, the Oak’s long fibers made carving across their lines difficult.  So I turned that one into a campfire poker, for which it is more than well suited.  It is a darned fancy campfire poker.  Being Oak, the tip won’t burn off quickly, and it won’t rot lying across the top of the fireplace through the seasons.  Nor will it become a victim of termites or carpenter ants.

Browsing my tree guidebooks for perhaps the hundredth time, I was reminded that Ash is popular for the manufacture of furniture and baseball bats.  I resolved to find myself a good piece of Ash.  I studied the compound leaf pattern in the books until I was clear on what to seek afield.

Off I went to the woods, laughing to myself about how much smarter it may be to chase a piece of Ash rather than “a piece of ass” (as it was known in Navy vernacular).  Far be it from me to deny that the comforts and pleasures of a female companion are good things.  The trouble is that as I carve out my place in her life, unlike a piece of Ash, a woman needs to carve her place in my life, and I’m not amenable to carving unless I hold the knife.  Unlike the Ash, she talks, makes demands, has needs, attitudes, desires, and many fears, and she won’t tolerate being left in the trunk of the car between hikes.  My piece of ash never talks about anything I don’t want to hear, and when it does talk, I’m VERY interested.  Furthermore, rather than help me ford streams and ascend arduous mountainsides and whack my way through thick forest undergrowth, as does a good hard stick, despite all the comforts and pleasures of her company at home, in the woods not all women are as sturdy as a good stick (nor men).  And my stick is never afraid of the dark, or rain, or coyotes or bears, or not getting home in time to feed the cat.  At my age, a good woods-mate is harder to find than a good piece of Ash.

It took half a day to find my stick, but finally I did find something that looked like the pictures in the books, and sawed off a nice piece with a good handle on it.  Along the way, I also found another piece of Maple that seemed perfectly suited for my purposes.  Now I have the raw materials for four walking partners:  the salvaged Beech, the Maple staff, the Ash, and the second piece of Maple.

On the night of Friday, May 30, I took the Ash for a walk, in its raw, untamed state, to Big Pine Refuge.  Along the way we “discussed” how the handle should be carved for the best fit and grip, and studied the potential advantages to a little shorter length.

This was the occasion when the rock walls of the fireplace at Big Pine Refuge took on their first bit of blackening.  I arrived at the campsite half an hour before dark.  An hour later, the tree canopy above me glowed in the orange light of a blaze, but not so much that it drowned the twinkling of stars filtering through the holes in the trees silhouetted against the bright black sky.  Once again, I saw the brightness of the night.

Thoreau said, “Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible.”  Perhaps this is some of the genius in the design of the human eye.  Someone has argued that the human eye is not a light receptor, but an emitter.  Either way, it is true, according to the New York Conservationist magazine, that after forty-five minutes in the dark, humans get the best degree of night vision.  I have tested this and found it true.

Night vision is not the same as day vision.  One must accept that things visible to us in the dark do not appear in the same way as in daylight.  There are differences in the shadings, and different ways of looking.  Some things visible in the day are invisible at night, but other things stand out as never seen in daylight.  Night vision is something to learn, as in the way one learns to swim.  It is merely crawling in water, but altogether different from crawling on land.  Different principles apply.  Seeing in the dark is a different way of seeing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if forty-five minutes in the dark yielded new vision in matters of truth, love, relationships, or career?  On second thought, it is true that spending concentrated, consciously aware spells of time in darkness or silence does open channels to wisdom not gained otherwise.  Thus we have meditation.

I spent three hours in a meditation of sorts that night at the fireplace in the woods.  All the familiar sounds we take for granted became more clearly pronounced, and they spoke distinctly to me.

I heard as if for the first time the constant shish of not only the nearby creek, about 200 feet away to the south, but also the lower-toned gentle roar of the more distant creek, twice as far away to the north.  They said with perfect diction that life is a river, in which I am immersed, and which flows through me, even flows as me.

With each piece of fire wood I snapped apart, the sharp cracking sound advised me that the energy in that sound, and the energy it took me to break it, is the same energy that would become heat and light and smoke and ash in the process of the fire.  The seasoned life in the wood makes a good fire, not its death.

I fancied as a sort of laughter the snaps, pops, and crackles of the fire.  I smiled back and agreed that things really are very funny.  I chuckled at a view from outside myself, seeing this character reclining alone in the middle of the night on a piece of plastic-lined painter’s drop-cloth spread in the middle of the woods on a small lawn he planted around a big rock fireplace.

I looked up at the Rorschach splatters of the treetops against the starry sky and said thanks to the Genius who gives such vision, such light in darkness, even the light of humor, to see such things in the bright black of night.  I observed that only some Observer greater than myself can step out of me and look at myself, and share the view with this so-called self I call me.  This Observer lives partly in me, and moves freely in and out of me as it chooses, and still there is some part of me that seems able to direct its perspective to some extent.

Finally, after burning three small logs and quite a pile of smaller stock I had accumulated over previous weeks’ visits to the Refuge, I let the fire dwindle down to just orange-glowing coals.  I laid back and relaxed, as if to let sleep befall me if it would.  “I could sleep here just like this,” I mused.  “If it got chilly, I’d wake up and feed the fire again.”  I thought about the fact that I had a jacket and two emergency “space blankets” in my backpack.  “Maybe I should just reload the fireplace with a big bundle of kindling and small logs and just stay the night.”  Undecided, I just dropped all thought and let my heart and mind focus on everything I could hear, feel, smell, and taste.

The ember-light dimmed still more as I lay listening to the creek and watching the stars.  The wind had become almost perfectly still.  A soft, thin mist hung in the dark all around me.  Life lay still in perfect silence and darkness.

Far off to the southwest I heard a wind rolling down from the mountains.  I listened as it slowly rolled toward me, then directly overhead, stirring the trees above me, first at their tops only, then lower, each phase with a unique sound, but the movement of air at the ground with me was minimal.  Then silence enveloped me again.  I closed my eyes and slid toward sleep, but stopped in some half-waking zone.  In a little while, from the northwest, another wind rolled down, this time missing my camp by a few hundred feet, blowing by to my left.

I could not leave.  I stoked up the fire with a fistful of long sticks broken into little pieces, and watched as they quickly burned away again to barely glowing embers blanketed in their own ash.

I stood and prayed in gratitude for the place, for the time there, for the fire, for each of the things I enjoyed observing and feeling, and for a special dispensation of protective grace on this site and its surroundings, and for a blessing upon all creatures who might pass through here, human or otherwise.  Then I broke the night by turning on my flashlight, drowned the embers with water I’d brought along, saddled up in jacket, hat and backpack, retrieved my trusty piece of Ash, and brought her home.

On the way down the road in the car, about a quarter-mile from home, a large white owl descended to the middle of the road, pouncing on some rodent.  I stopped and shut off the car engine, watching the owl in my headlights as it watched me between gobbles of its snack.   After a while of gazing at each other, the owl flew up to perch on the roadside power line.  I started the engine and drove off, accepting this rare kind of encounter as a sign that I had spent the night wisely.

Zivara