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 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

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
– William Shakespeare, in As You Like It

The groves were God’s first temples.
– William Cullen Bryant, in A Forest Hymn

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There is no book like that written into the heart by the voice of the forest. Human nature, if allowed, can be the tablet on which the forest writes her instructions, songs, and inspirations.

Aranyaka is a Sanskrit term referring to trees, forest or wilderness (ara, aran, aranya) and scripture. It can be loosely translated “The Wilderness Books.” It may also connote forest monks or their writings. The Aranyaka is part of the ancient Hindu texts contained in the Vedas. The Princeton University lexical database WordNet defines it as “a treatise resembling a Brahmana but to be read or expounded by anchorites in the quiet of the forest.” For more information, see the Wikipedia article about the Aranyaka. There is also a Hindu scripture known as the Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad (“great forest book”), regarded as one of the oldest texts of the Upanishads.

(For more about the Aranyaka, see this search listing at sacred-texts.com, or go to www.sacred-texts.com and click on Search.)

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Did you ever come upon a place and felt that there was “something special” about it, but you could not say specifically why you felt that way?

This is how the owner of Balsamea Forest Refuge felt about a certain stretch of land many times while driving by it. After about two years of being only generally familiar with it as viewed from the road, an opportunity arose to purchase a piece of that land. That piece is now called Balsamea, or Balsamea Forest Refuge.

What does this have to do with Aranyaka? Actually, nothing, except in our imaginative pleasure with finding words for what we feel at Balsamea. We chose the name “Aranyaka” as a way to refer to the spiritual enrichment of communing with the forest. More specifically, it is the name we gave to a special location within the Balsamea Forest Refuge, located in the heart of its denser balsam fir and spruce stand, at the feet of three giant pines (two white and one red) that are among the oldest on the property. We are slowly, carefully developing that spot into something like a natural chapel, as a hub of special refuge, with trails extending out from it in four directions. It is just one of those spots in the forest that somehow “speaks to you,” if you happen to be someone susceptible to hearing its particular voice.

Because they are primeval, because they outlive us, because they are fixed, trees seem to emanate a sense of permanence. And though rooted in earth, they seem to touch the sky. For these reasons it is natural to feel we might learn wisdom from them, to haunt about them with the idea that if we could only read their silent riddle rightly we should learn some secret vital to our own lives; or even, more specifically, some secret vital to our real, our lasting and spiritual existence.
– Kim Taplin, Tongues in Trees, 1989, p. 14.

One day after meditating on the pine needle laden floor of this special three-pine Aranyaka natural chapel, the Balsamean took a notion to remove some trees to make space for sharing it with friends. He walked slowly amidst the open spaces under the three great pines, carefully considering which to cut down of the smaller trees growing densely around the perimeter, and how they might be used to make things for the Aranyaka natural chapel, or just stacked as firewood.

For an unknown reason he looked up into a tree as he stood thinking on the east side of the three-pine Aranyaka chapel site. He found a small owl quietly watching him from a balsam fir branch only about two feet above his head. They studied each other intently until the Balsamean slowly stepped away. The owl did not move.

“Okay,” said the Balsamean, “I will not cut down your trees.”

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In the sense that aranya means “belonging to the wilderness” or forest, we enjoy the feeling of belonging, of being truly “home,” of being solidly grounded and safe in the forest, among friends, even while “alone” in terms of having any human company. Our reverent feelings for the forest make us never lonely there.

We don’t quite think of the forest, our aranya, as something to worship, but as a community of peaceful fellowship with the nature of things as they are. Although we do not institutionalize this sense of reverence in any specifically religious way (though friends among us may, and can if they wish), for all Friends of Balsamea the forest — at Balsamea and everywhere — does involve some degree of recognition of Nature as sacred.

Balsamea is our Aranyaka because we find written in its nature, and arising from our immersion in that nature, a kind of “scripture” or “writing” or teaching. It is the ineffable soul of Nature inspiring the souls, hearts and minds of people.

Lead Us From the Unreal To Real,
Lead Us From Darkness To Light,
Lead Us From Death To Immortality,
Aum (the universal sound)
Let There Be Peace Peace Peace.

- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.3.28.

Immortality? Is there such a thing? We don’t know, and don’t really concern ourselves with it. We know only that through immersion in the natural Aranyaka, breathed continually in and out by the forest, we enjoy a sense of the interconnectedness, the “interbeing” of everything, and the continuity of life streaming from long before us, through our present moment, into whatever comes next, not as separate times but as a continuum solidly grounded in the earth.

What we write at Balsamea is our Aranyaka, our forest-inspired book. Thus, we arrive at the name of this blog, Balsamea Aranyaka.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the ages can.
– William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned

By the way, when contemplating names for this felt-sense of harmony with the forest, we also contemplated a concatenation of two German words, Kiefer (pine tree) and Zuflukt (refuge), for the term “Kieferzuflukt.” We just like the sound of the word! Some day we may use it to designate another special spot in the forest, perhaps one to be known for a spirit or sense of playfulness.

- The Balsamean

… the place …

Balsamea: a bit of Adirondack forest

The Balsamea Forest Refuge (BFR) is a privately owned 19-acre forested lot located in the northern reaches of the Adirondack Mountain region of northeastern Upstate New York, west of Lake Champlain and Vermont, within about an hour’s drive from the Canadian border and Plattsburgh, NY.

Regrown from original forest cleared in the 19^th Century, Balsamea is now the home of (in estimated order of population density) balsam fir, white pine, maple, birch, beech, red pine, spruce, aspen, a rare few oak, cedar, and scotch pine, and a few yet unidentified species of trees, and the wildlife they support.

Among animals sighted in recent years there are whitetail deer, fox, turkey, red squirrel, porcupine, rabbit, and a variety of birds such as finches, chickadees, sparrows, robins, blue jays, woodpeckers, doves, crows, and hawks. Though eastern coyotes and black bears have not been seen or heard lately at Balsamea, they are in the area, and a very rare moose may wander through from time to time. A few harmless snakes are around, all manner of northeastern forest insects, and mice, of course, and the resident game warden, Dr. Buddha Buddy The Miracle Dog. We are not aware of any invasive species, but are concerned about encroachment by the pine-killing Sirex Woodwasp, and suspect that Spruce Budworm takes some firs and spruces to make room for our developing hardwoods.

A variety of shrubs, berries, grasses and flowers grow throughout, especially many wild blueberries. About a dozen pink ladyslipper orchids have been spotted, and there are sure to be more decorating the land with their delicate June blooms. The soil is mossy, acidic and rocky.

The property is very flat throughout, with no surface water or wetland features, sitting on top of something like a plateau half a mile above a major river. Although we have a share of black flies and mosquitoes in season, the lack of water features helps make them less a nuisance than in other areas.

Four rock walls run through the property, ranging from 1 to 4 feet high and from 3 to 6 feet wide. Part of the property near the road frontage was once the corner of a farm field long ago abandoned to nature, now overgrown with trees. Guessing from the existence of the rock walls, the property may have been used for farming, livestock grazing, or maybe housing for a nearby iron ore mining village (extinct since the late 19th Century). No old wells or building foundations have been found on the lot. There is no evidence of mines or mining equipment on the lot, either. The mines are located a short distance away, and have, to our knowledge from historical accounts, all flooded and caved in long ago.

Except for a small camp established by the current owner, and some selective logging of the largest, oldest trees by the former owner around 2002, there has been no human development on the lot since approximately 1890 when the mining village closed down.

The lot is currently surrounded by other forested properties except for one house across the road.

The Adirondacks

The Adirondack Mountains of Northeastern New York State are part of the Laurentian Mountain system of Canada, not the Appalachian chain as many mistakenly believe. Balsamea Forest Refuge is located within the Adirondack “Blue Line,” denoting the roughly six million acre region under the jurisdiction of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) created in 1971 by the State legislature “to develop long-range land use plans for both public and private lands within the Park.” The so-called “Park” was originally a forest preserve created in 1892 by amendment to the State constitution, first denoted on a map by a blue line drawn around the preserve (thus the “Blue Line” name). Today about half of the “Park” is public forest preserve, the other half privately owned lands highly regulated by the APA. Refer to the Adirondack Forest Preserve page of the NY Department of Environmental Conservation.

- The Balsamean