1.You Should Have A Cell Phone
My mother-in-law is concerned that I hike without a cell phone. That I, in fact, live all parts of my life without a cell phone. You should have a cellphone, she says. When I go for a hike, I bring a map, my car key, and a bottle of water. I study the map before leaving and consult it as I hike to compare the map to what it is I am seeing. When I reach the summit, I stop and look about. I try to identify the surrounding mountains, the direction I am facing, the birds buzzing the low brush. I do not take pictures of the view or of me looking at the view or sit and stare at a small screen. I do not listen to tunes with buds in my ears. Sometimes I sing. Especially if I am on a section of trail that looks like it might be popular with bears, I sing. I have seen ten bears this year hiking and that is more than enough.
Back home I also do not take a cellphone grocery shopping. Or to work. Or for a walk around the local pond. I am not sure why anyone would need a phone to do these things. What do people need to say that is so urgent or important that they must have a phone with them at all times?
When at work, I turn on my desktop and answer any emails. I have a desktop at work and a laptop at home and that, to me, is enough. I teach three classes in a row, check email between each, and once more at the end of the day. If students want to stay and talk to me after class, I stay and talk to them. If this means I will arrive home a half hour later than usual, I arrive home half an hour later. I do not call my husband to tell him this. I arrive home when I arrive home.
My husband is a carpenter who makes his own hours so I never know when he will be coming home. And that inexactness is exactly fine with me. If he did call me throughout the day to tell me where he was and what he was doing, it would probably drive me crazy.
We still have a land line and when my mother-in-law calls we pick up every time. And we call her before leaving to visit, saying we’ll be there in about two hours. And when we arrive about two hours later she is ready for us.
We sit and listen to her concerns, which are many because she is 90. I try to console her that my hiking without a cellphone should not be one of those concerns. I do not tell her about the ten bears I have seen hiking this summer or ask her how a cellphone would help me encounter fewer bears.
You got along fine without a cellphone when you were 58, I say to her. But she does not want my arguments. She wants me to be safe. And I want me to be safe. Which is why when I go hiking the next day I bring my eyes, my ears and my voice. I want to be looking out not down. I have surprised a mama bear and her two cubs already once this summer and I do not want to do that ever again.
2.Chubby Little Dog
I started hiking when a friend had a chubby dog. She worked 9-5 so she and her dog got little exercise. Both friend and dog enjoyed hiking so on Saturday afternoons they would hike up Norwottuck Mountain in Amherst MA. One Saturday, she asked me along and I’ve been hooked ever since.
The friend, and dog have since moved on but I continue to hike every Saturday afternoon. And Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons. Any day I can actually.
One afternoon, at the top of Norwottuck, a local college student was taking a survey on why people hike. I was there with my friend and her dog that day and we looked at each other. It could be for the light in the trees, how it is both calming and energizing exercising our legs and lungs. But really it’s because she has chubby dog, we say.
I’ve thought a lot about “why I hike” since. Sometimes I think it’s because some days I really don’t like it. Most times I get tired and hot or cold and achy. That’s when I know it’s a good hike and I’ve really earned the view at the summit.
Sometimes I think it’s because of the people I meet. The guy halfway up Mt. Greylock who asked if I was there to see the rare blue butterfly. The guy running toward me at the top of Greylock asking if I’d take a video. Sure, I said, and watched as he dashed over to his girlfriend, bent down on one knee, opened a black velvet box and how she pressed both palms to her cheeks—the international sign for yes.
Sometimes I think it’s for the people I don’t meet—the ones who cut the trail, who maintain it, who built the stone walls that run like sentences through the woods. And all the people who are doing something else that day so I have the trail to myself, mountain to myself—trees holding on to ledges, ledges holding on to trees.
Mostly it’s for the scenes in my mind after. The ruffed grouse crouched mid-trail at the beginning of the hike and amazingly still there hours later when I return. The trail opening to a field full of light like solid becoming liquid. And at the summit how it opens up like liquid becoming air, so you can see not just across state lines but with a different state of mind. How what started as a walk for a chubby dog has become a completely different sort of exercise.
3.Reading Mountains
When I reach the top of a mountain and look across to the next, I want to climb that mountain too. It’s the same when I finish reading a chapter; I want to move on to the next.
Standing on top of Mt Holyoke, I can see Mt Greylock to the west and Mt. Monadnock to the north. In a biography of Thoreau, the author says he walked from Concord MA to Mt. Monadnock in NH, hiked up, and looked across to Mt. Greylock.
And then, because he was Thoreau, he hiked down Monadnock, walked all the way to Greylock in North Adams MA and hiked up that. Then down to Pittsfield.
Mountains, like books, mean different things to people. Some plots of land have more layers than plots in a novel. But both tell stories and offer different points of view so we walk away changed, carrying our impressions with us.
When Melville lived and wrote in Pittsfield he could look up and see Greylock. Some think it was metaphorically his whale—a giant presence on the horizon that held his gaze. When Thoreau slept on top of Greylock he wrote that he woke surrounded by “an ocean of mist,” as if he had washed up on a deserted island.
Last summer I hiked up Greylock ten times, on seven different trails, not out of some obsession, but to experience it myself, to “read” it like a novel you have heard about and what to turn the pages first hand.
Each trail has a different name and personality. Bellows Pipe is the trail Thoreau supposedly took, named for the wind that hustles down the mountain. The first two miles are gradual, then it hits you with a crazy-steep ascent. It’s like a character that plods along, then suddenly accomplishes everything all at once.
Jones Nose is the opposite. I don’t know who Jones is and I know even less about his nose, but this trail ascends steeply right away before leveling off, rolling over the whale’s spine, like someone who rushes to get somewhere and then is content to amble on.
Each ends at the summit where you can now climb 89 steps to a glassed-in view. Looking north I see Stratton Mountain and after hiking up Stratton, I see Bromley and from the top of Bromley, I see Killington and at the top of Killington I stop to catch my breath.
This is a book I want to keep reading, not to see how it ends, but to see how it doesn’t end.
4.Nature As Hospital
After I broke my leg mountain climbing, a search and rescue team carried me down on a stretcher, hoisting me high up into the trail’s hemlock and spruce so I was surrounded by their needles and resin. I used to climb trees a lot when I was a kid, but I hadn’t been up in their branches for years and I’d never ridden through a forest so I could reach out and touch the limbs if I’d wanted to, if my own limb hadn’t been injured. It was a remarkable vantage point and one I will remember.
Especially because I would end up spending the next five days inside a medical center–the most time I can remember being continuously inside.
The day I was released, I happily wheeled myself out into the rain. It was only a parking lot, but I was outside!
Nature makes for a terrific hospital, using hospital in its original sense, a place that is hospitable, that welcomes and entertains.
Once I was able to walk around our local pond, I was welcomed by a great blue heron that landed so close I thought it was going to wrap me in its wings.
And I’ve been entertained by Cooper’s hawks flying tree to tree over head as if leading me on with an invisible string, by a young fox that beat me in a staring contest, and by a big old porcupine that just wanted to amble along, thank you.
Nature makes for a terrific hospital in our current usage as well, a place that heals. A long wide river turns a slow bend two miles from our house and when my leg had mended enough, I walked down to its banks to look up at its shining between the cliffs it had carved out. And was still carving out as it flowed south to where its mouth was in constant conversation with the ocean.
After I fell mountain climbing, my world was reduced to the damp rock I sat on for three hours unable to move. Now I had this gleaming vista before me, in motion, motioning me on.
Though I am certainly grateful for the medical staff and my husband who tended me, it was getting outside that restored me. Stocked my shelves.
People ask if I will continue hiking given that hiking led to me breaking my leg. Of course, I say. What better way to mend a leg than take it outside, up a mountain side, to push the pain aside.
5.Winter Birds
It’s easy to love birds in spring with their flutes and bright plumage, but I’ve come to admire birds in winter because, like us, they are here for the duration, no matter how gloomy it gets.
Winter birds may be drab, but they are there. Here. Outside my window right now a barred owl perches in an oak, its feathers streaked gray as the bark it leans into, its eyes blinking and alert, its ears taking in every movement.
Hiking the Holyoke Range I pass a male downy woodpecker knocking on a hemlock just a foot away. He is black and white like many birds this time of year, but also has a red dab on the back of his head. It isn’t much, but it provides some needed contrast to the brown on brown, as does his constant activity.
Further on I hear a raven before I see it, its deep croak resonating against the cliff. In college, I entered a live trap full of ravens. My task was to grab each, band its leg, and then measure the flight feathers to record the stage of molt, as glossy new feathers replaced the worn ones—part of the process of surviving the seasons.
Now my task is to just listen and look as one raven flies overhead. Wait, there’s two conducting a call and response with me in the middle. They aren’t exotic birds but they are essential as they remind me that though the woods seem barren in winter, they aren’t. They are very much alive.
At the river two crows call out at a red-tailed hawk, all sitting in the same leafless tree under which water freezes and thaws, and mallards come and go. With so few birds around, they stand out not for their beauty, but for their community. We are all in this together they seem to say, sticking it out through the harsh cold.
Last October I took my mother-in-law to the Cape Cod canal bike trail. She liked getting out and seeing the kids on their scooters, but she really enjoyed the birds. There were only gulls and cormorants but that didn’t matter. What did matter was they were there and she was there and the sun was shining as the birds flapped their wings, circling, like small boats adjusting their sails.
Back in her room she asked what that bird was out her window. That’s a female cardinal, I said, not as colorful as the male, but she’ll be out there all winter.
6.Dead Wood
In some businesses, the phrase “Dead Wood” is used to describe someone who is no longer productive. Or at least not as productive as they once were, not contributing to the company’s bottom line. But I’ve come to think of Dead Wood not as use-less but as some of the most use-ful material around.
Walking in a forest on a gusty day I see a lot of dead wood—branches snapping off trees, trees snapping in two—and I think of how productive these trees are. Inside one fallen trunk, the sapwood is granular—already eaten by bacteria which have been eaten by insects which have been eaten by woodpeckers. One tree has so many holes drilled in it by a pileated it looks like a flute—for someone with giant hands.
The wind acts like giant invisible hands pushing at trees so they sway like ships’ masts. Some topple over and will soon become homes to chipmunks and mice. They’ll blossom with coral-colored fungus so they resemble a coral reef. Others will harbor beetles and ants, bears and bats, moss and lichen. All will contribute to the forest’s bottom line as the rotting pulp becomes soil giving rise to a whole new generation of saplings.
And it’s not just wind falls. Sitting on an old stump I’m aware of how trees age at a different rate than us. The stump may appear dead but its hundred year old root system is connected to neighboring trees which are connected to vast networks stretching for miles, for decades.
And it’s not just woods. Canoeing, we paddle around downed trees whose branches provide shade for fish. The same log can be lunch for a beaver, a bridge for a mink, a bench for roosting ducks, and a platform for a hungry heron. As the tree rots it will feed mayflies that feed trout that feed the osprey circling above us.
Walking on a summer day I hear a strange squeaking noise and turn to see a baby raccoon making its way down a tree followed by its sibling close behind. Soon an adult fetches each and carries them back up into the hollow trunk of an old sugar maple I have walked past a hundred times assuming its productive days were over. Dead wood, indeed.
7.Bears
“There are bears in those woods” a farmer once told me, “I wouldn’t go in if I were you.” So of course I went in—again and again.
Nothing plunks me into the present like a bear. It’s both very real and surreal seeing such a large, powerful animal so close. My mind tends to stroll as much as my legs when I’m walking. I think about an incident from yesterday, plans for today, that I’m low on milk. Then bam. It all vanishes to be replaced by this enormous mammal.
Seeing a bear also makes me realize how little I know about the forests around me. I need marked trails to find my way, but bears make their own, following paths I can’t see, living lives I’ll never fully understand.
Once climbing Mt Greylock I saw something romping in the trail ahead and suddenly realized it was a cub. It was both one the cutest and one of the scariest things I had ever seen. Its mother had to be near. It was so small. And between a mother bear and her young is not the wisest place to be. I picked up my pace and so did it, climbing a tree. I don’t remember the rest of the hike, but when I think back to that day all I see is that cub.
And once at the top of Pico near Killington I was going to sit and rest where the trail opened to a field of wild flowers and blue sky. After hours of hiking in shaded woods it looked inviting. And was. To an enormous bear. It didn’t linger and neither did I. I didn’t get to enjoy the far off vista but I did enjoy a close up view of a mighty bruin with a button nose. It wasn’t interested in me but I was very interested in it crossing in front of me, our lungs breathing the same air.
Sometimes I feel like Goldilocks. I don’t sleep in bears’ beds or eat their porridge, though I do stroll through their backyards and into their homes without knocking. But then I move on. I don’t want to get caught napping.
- Wild Thing
Has this ever happened to you? You’re walking on a trail and there’s a deer off to the side and instead of leaping away it turns and starts walking toward you, taking its time but progressing nonetheless, step by step, looking right at you, titling its head the way deer do to assess shape and shadow, to take you in, this thing in the woods, their woods.
In the past I’ve written about deer parading up my driveway after a heavy snow storm. It seemed like a visitation from beyond because it’s rare for me to see deer in my yard.
It’s less rare for me to see deer when I’m hiking and more often than not those deer start walking toward me, as if to determine what I am. Friend? Foe? Neighbor? Intruder?
What is it the deer sees, perceives? Obviously it doesn’t take me for a predator for no animal approaches a predator.
And though admittedly I am a little deer-like, being roughly the same height, with similar hair and eye color, I am no deer. I walk on two booted feet and dress in clothes of wool and cotton.
It’s not just deer that do this. When I lived near Quabbin Reservoir, I would regularly come across moose in the woods. They too would stop and stare, and then step closer, angling their gangly heads.
Just what are you? They seemed to ask. What are you doing here?
Good questions.
When I hike I keep a mental note of all the critters I see and hear. That’s a pileated woodpecker swishing by. That’s a red squirrel recharging its batteries.
It’s good to know whom I’m sharing the woods with; it’s good to keep track. Animals need to know too, need to be vigilant about their surroundings. And just as there’s people that bird watch, there are probably birds that people watch. Ungulates as well.
For many years humans have had uneasy relationships with wild animals. We cut down their forests; they eat our crops. But these deer encounters make me feel uneasy in a different way.
Though admittedly I find such attention pleasing—that I’m interesting enough for them to investigate makes me feel somehow special and singled out—it is also deeply unsettling and against what I consider the norms of nature. Deer should leap away. There’s an invisible boundary between us I want us both to maintain.
When my cat runs toward me and hops in my lap, it’s all good. She’s tame. We sit together in a rocking chair, faces warmed by woodstove and sun.
But out in the woods I want what’s wild to stay wild.
- Erratics
When I was a kid, I’d find all sorts of tools in the woods. It always seemed strange. Why would a farmer leave behind a rake in the forest?
It wasn’t until I was older that I understood that tools I found in the woods had been left behind from when the land had been a field—that where I was standing had once been devoid of trees and could be again.
In the 1800s western Massachusetts was mostly fields. Forests had been cleared for pasture, turned into lumber and firewood. A neighbor once showed me a painting of her farm from that time. Instead of hills with mixed hardwoods, they were bald as a baby bird.
All this makes me want to know more about the people who farmed the land—and more about the land. What else is buried here that I can’t see?
It also makes me realize that I’m part of this constantly changing landscape. The forest continues to grow as I stride through it and I am part of that growth. What is it that I’m leaving behind? Carbon? Plastic micro-beads?
In 1790, in South Hadley, Pliny Moody came across dinosaur prints while plowing a field. I can imagine him asking: Who left these behind? Some giant bird? Some thing Moody used that dinosaur printed stone as a door step.
Once, walking around Quabbin Reservoir, I came upon a large smooth slab framed by flowers—in the middle of a grove of beech and birch. It looked like the front step of a farm house and probably was.
Quabbin is full of remnants of past lives before the towns were drowned and the forest took over. Actually it’s really us who took over, damming Swift River to create the reservoir.
I think my favorite things to find while walking in the woods are erratics—the big boulders left behind when the glaciers retreated. They look like pre-historic eggs laid by one of Pliny Moody’s imaginary birds. I love how they seem so out of place when actually they are solidly in place as trees figure out how to grow around them.
It’s we with our changing ways who are the erratics.
- Fear
I was hiking in the woods one day when a large dark cloud passed over the sun rendering the woods full of shadows and foreboding. I had to remind myself not to be scared, that I loved this trail, and would not want to be anywhere else at that moment.
Sure enough, soon the cloud passed and the sun pierced through, turning the beech trees into solid gold. Pure alchemy.
This got me thinking: why had I been so suddenly afraid? Why this idea of forests being foreboding places? Was it left over from childhood stories of Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood where woodlands were made to seem inherently dangerous, rather than inviting?
This also got me thinking that maybe there were truly dangerous things we were overlooking.
I’m not sure why but when I was a kid, quick sand was the most perilous thing. When I rode my bike in my neighborhood park in the Boston suburbs I knew to stay on the path because if I went off, I might plunge into a deadly pool of it, which I envisioned as an all consuming pit of cream of wheat. If that happened, I knew you were to stay very still because struggling Only Made It Worse! Needless to say there was no quick sand in that park.
There were trucks with vats of pesticides, however, that they sprayed into the park to kill mosquitos. I loved those trucks and would ride my bike as fast as I could to keep up with them, to immerse my lungs in that toxic cloud. They were a thrilling novelty and drove slowly enough so you could keep up, as if tempting us to try. I don’t remember anyone warning me to stay away from them.
There weren’t any dense forests in my hometown, either. They’d all been clear-cut for houses and malls. No one at the time found this alarming. Pavement was a positive thing—a sign of prosperity.
Now I know clear-cut forests have led to decimated populations of insects, amphibians, and song birds. Have led to an increase in floods and droughts. To truly terrifying consequences for our planet.
So the next time I’m in the woods, when it clouds up, instead of being fearful of the forest, I think I should be fearful for it.