Dark green Norway spruces bordered each side of the abandoned road.  The trees, planted by design many years ago now reached sixty feed up into a leaden April sky.  The upsweeping branches arched over the road creating the quieting effect of a cathedral nave, an entranceway into the sacred realm of nature,  a realm I wanted to wander in , a realm I needed to connect with. 

Walking beneath the spruce boughs I recalled something I had recently read in Erling Kragge’s book Walking: One Step at a Time, the idea that you are a different person at the end of a walk than at the beginning.  I slowed my pace and opened my senses.  Immediately. I felt the touch of the wind on my face and heard the sound of my footsteps crunching across the gravel.  A gust of wind whooshed through the spruce limbs above me.  A flock of chickadees squeaked and chattered from deep within the branches.

I was on a wander walk.  Six weeks ago I had gone birding with my friend Chris in this state game land.  While we both scanned the sky, trees, shrubs and fields for resident and newly-arrived migrating birds, a part of my mind surveyed the terrain for spots of interest, spot that spoke to me.  Ever since I spent a year going to the woods once a week to visit the same spot for a full hour, some part of my mind was always clicked on, always scanning for, and often finding, locations that invited nature exploration and connection.

On the day of the bird walk  four spots had registered; an old farm pond, a verdant patch of forest floor, a tiny stream, and an empty field surrounded by woods.  I promised myself I would return.

But my return was delayed by the Covid-19 crisis.  Even though the guidelines to shelter at home, practice social distancing, and walk alone should have been the perfect prescription for a nature writer, I found myself strangely paralyzed, frozen in place by anxiety and whipsawed by the avalanche of news, most of which was bad. 

Finally, today, I gathered the initiative to return.  I drove back to the game land under a sky filled with dark, gray, heavy roiling clouds.  I listened to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, music that had been my theme song during my year of weekly sit spots. music that on different mornings had sounded reflective, inspiring, even triumphant now sounded unbearably melancholy.  With each discordant plink and plonk of the piano I saw the faces of those who had died due to the Coronavirus, most of them isolated and alone in a sterile hospital room separated from their grief stricken loved ones.

I thought I should turn around and go back home.  After all, who  needed nature reflections right now? Then, ahead, I saw a break in the clouds, a flash of sun, a spot of blue, signs that encouraged me to continue.  I knew that I needed to restore some sense of normalcy to my life and I thought I could also use a good strong dose of nature medicine.

Perhaps sharing my experiences would be a way to reach out to others, to encourage them to (re)connect with the healing power of nature.

The Old Farm Pond

The pond, set in a low area was surrounded by open fields dotted with shrubs and second growth trees and was about the size of two football fields.  Marsh reeds and field grasses grew along the edges.  The surface of the pond was broken here and there by occasional stumps, snags and mud patches. An earthen dam at one end meant that the pond was man made pond, probably an old farm pond before the Game Commission bought the land.  On maps the pond had no name, but I believed the ducks, shorebirds and song birds knew this pond well.  I thought that if I sat along the shoreline for a while I too might get to know this pond.

Turning off the road, I walked down a gentle hill, through tan grasses and goldenrod stems, past purplish blackberry canes to a level spot with a good view. I set up my camp stool, sat down, settled in, and began to listen and look.

Birds fluttered, called, and sang all around me, so many, and so active that I found it impossible to identify them all.  Sometimes it happens that way. I took a breath, brought up my binoculars and tried to focus on one bird at a time.

First I focused on a trio of black-capped chickadees flitting from branch to branch. Then I got a clear view of a tufted titmouse perched on a branch, but I couldn’t identify the small active birds that darted in and out of the tangled limbs of a fallen apple tree. 

Suddenly I heard a rich, lively, melodious song, a jumbly trill of warbled notes ending with a high pitched almost inaudible tsee, tsee, tsee.  The song was familiar.  I had heard it on a bird song CD and remembered that it as a remarkable, complex and beautiful bird song, one that I wanted to hear live.  I scanned my memory bank.  What was it?

The bird darted from branch to branch offering only brief glimpses.  My frustration grew. Then, a soft fluttering of wings nearby.  Turning slowly I saw a tiny olive gray bird perched just five feet away.  It had white wing bars, a white eye ring and a bright ruby crest on its head. It was a male ruby-crowned kinglet.

It felt like a magical moment; the proximity of the bird, its delicate plumage, the brilliant ruby of its crest, and the richness of its song created a portrait of beauty, a portrait that to me was in the same league with Titian, Michelangelo and Renoir, a portrait that was instantly seared into my memory.  I also felt a sense of connection, a moment of synchronicity between the observed and the observer, a moment when it seemed as if nature was actively and purposefully revealing itself to me in return for my willingness to sit still with an attentive mind.

My birding friend Chris knows these moments, but sees them in more objective terms.  His idea is that when you spend a lot of time birding you train your eyes and ears and later at home you build your background knowledge by studying bird guides.  The formula is that the more time you spend birding, the more you see, and the more you do your homework, the more you are able to see.  It is acquired acuity, earned expertise.   I am sure he is absolutely right about this.

Yet I can’t completely dismiss my squishy, romantic, mystical thoughts that these moments might fall into the category of what Jung called “meaningful coincidences,” events that produce psychological growth and that are caused by the affinity of what likes to cluster with what.  Whenever these luminous moments occurred I always felt grateful, felt changed and believed that nature was a most generous teacher.

The kinglet darted back into the branches and resumed singing its rollicking song.  From across the pond a mourning dove cooed a melancholy coah, cooo, coo, cooo.  A robin sang cheerlily, cheer-up, cheerily, cheer up, a cardinal whistled a melodious birdy, birdy, birdy, birdy, and a red-winged blackbird called conk-la-ree, conk-la-ree.

Solo performers added to the chorus.  A Canada goose honked as it flew in and splashed down.  I heard a bright, loud tea-kettle, tea-kettle and thought it might be a Carolina wren, but then the following cheedup-cheedup, deek-deek told me that it was a brown thrasher warming up its two phrased mimicry.  A female common merganser called a raspy croak, croak, croak as it swooped down and skittered to a splashy landing.

The wind blew through the long needles of tall white pines on my left creating a soft sighing.  When the same gust hit the short dense needles Norway spruces on my right, I heard a deeper, denser, whooshing. Each evergreen seemed to have its own unique wind song.

The bird song chorus slowly wound down.  Intervals of quiet grew longer yet were still interspersed with more songs and calls, the cry of a blue jay, the aria of a song sparrow, the hollow, mechanical trill of a dark-eyed junco.  A mallard quacked from the far side of the pond.  A trio of wood ducks dropped out of the gray sky, set their wings and splashed down.  Two minutes later a pair of mallards angled in and landed.

This was a busy pond with lots of avian life; ducks coming and going and songbirds singing along the shoreline. There must be things about this pond that I couldn’t see but that the birds readily recognized.  Perhaps they perceived an abundant, promising, life sustaining blend of shelter, food and nesting opportunities. 

I packed up my gear and stepped quietly back to the road so as to not disrupt the life of the pond.  I was on my way to my next wander walk destination, a unique chunk of forest habitat.

Moss Hill

Continuing down the road I turned onto a grassy snowmobile trail, walked through open fields, past an abandoned apple orchard, and eventually entered the woods. This time of year the forest floor looks like a vast carpet of brown, tan, and beige, last year’s leaves.  But six weeks ago I had been surprised to see a little hill top where the forest floor was bright green.

I found the hill top again, stepped off the trail and began to explore. Tubular-leafed, lacy green plants about ten inches tall covered the ground.  I snapped a photo, ran it through my Picture This app and learned that I was looking at a patch of Fan Clubmoss also known as running cedar.

On the north edge of the hill I discovered a patch of different green plants that looked like miniature Christmas trees.  I fed another photo into the Picture This and discovered that this plant was known as Rare Clubmoss or princess pine.  I kneeled down to ground, looked at the diminutive pines and felt as if I was gazing into a miniature pine forest.

I wandered further and found tufts of bright green star-shaped plants hugging the ground. Picture This told me they were Common Hairmoss.  A few steps further I noticed a similar plant that grew on a long vine. This was Stags-horn Clubmoss.

I wondered why this hilltop was so thickly covered with such a rich variety of green mosses.  An old stone wall ran along the edge of the hill.  Perhaps this was disturbed ground.  The elevation would provide good drainage.  Other than one large white pine there was just a scattering of young beech and red maple trees so the mosses would receive adequate dappled sunlight.

I sat down on a fallen log and took a few minutes to gaze at this diverse and verdant collection of mosses.  In early spring on a gray chilly day, in the midst of a deadly pandemic it felt cheerful, even life affirming, to be surrounded by a thriving community of green.

                                                                  Source

In Crossing Open Ground Barry Lopez wrote that a good way to view a landscape is in terms of its watershed.  The idea is that land might best be defined by drainage, that watersheds form organic life units, and that these life units might be the best basis for geopolitical entities. 

His explanation planted a seed in my mind. I realized that I usually drove over streams and rivers with a little regard for where they went and almost no regard for where they started.  When I had walked past a tiny gurgling brook six weeks ago I saw an opportunity to follow it to its source, to see a beginning point of a watershed.

The task proved much more arduous than I imagined. Thirty feet in from the road the little brook became a proper bog; a maze of dark pools, strewn with moss covered rocks, half submerged clumps of grass, skeletal fallen trees and an array of protruding branches. I grabbed a stout fallen branch, broke off the top, and employed it as a walking stick to keep my balance as I stretched, hopped and jumped back and forth between rocks, fallen tree trunks and solid ground.

Fifty feet into the bog the barely moving water divided into a left and right branch.  I headed up the right branch scanning for the slightest hint of moving water.  I worked my way further and further into the bog stepping slowly, carefully and laboriously.  A pool bounded by a log looked like it might be the source, but when I got closer I saw tiny riffles of water squeezing under the log.  I walked my further and eventually came to a tiny pool coated with bright green cress where a slender ribbon of moving water seeped out from under dry grasses.

With a feeling of triumph I thought I had found the source.  But when I looked around I saw that the left branch penetrated much further up into the woods. I had to back track and start over.  The left branch seemed even more of a maze, more of an obstacle course, more of a no man’s land. I found myself climbing over slippery dead trees, detouring around pools, and weaving back and forth as I worked my way upstream.

Ahead I could see dry woods so I knew the source must be close. I turned down a few dead ends and backtracked always scanning for shimmers of moving water.  And then finally, there it was, a moss coated rock wedged against dry ground with a trickle of water seeping out. I had finally found a single source, although when I reflected on it the source was really the whole bog, a web of capillaries merging into a vein.

Back at the snowmobile trail I paused and gazed at the point where the bog strands joined to form a real creek, where the silent water suddenly acquired a current and a voice.  I crossed over the trail where the little creek emerged from a culvert and was surprised to see how quickly it grew wider, stronger and louder as it flowed down hill bending and weaving over and around the rocks.

As I gazed at the stream a map of the watershed came to mind. I traced this little unnamed creek flowing downhill joining the West Branch of the Dyberry Creek, merging with the East Branch of the Dyberry, flowing into the Lackawaxen River, into the Delaware River, into Delaware Bay and ultimately merging with the vast Atlantic Ocean.  What happened in this little bog, where this stream was born, was much more connected to the Delaware Bay than it was to Pittsburgh way across the state of Pennsylvania.

                                              A Field in the Woods

Why was I intrigued by an empty field surrounded by trees?  It was an unusual sight and six weeks ago when I looked at the field I sensed that it had a story to tell.

Sitting on the ground I looked out an open area about the size of two football fields set side by side covered with last year’s tan grasses and surrounded by second growth ash, maple and beech.  Old stone walls edged the perimeter.  There was another open field beyond the far stone wall.  A quick check on Google maps revealed a series of fields that eventually reached and crossed an old farm road.

I sat still, settled into silence, gradually becoming more mindful of my surroundings. The wind sighed through the branches of a nearby white pine.  A solitary robin sang cheerily-cheerup.  A woodpecker hammered on a hollow resonant tree trunk, a ploy to demonstrate his prowess and advertise his availability to any girl woodpeckers that might be in the area.  A crow cawed and then a minute later flapped over the field, a black silhouette against a gray sky.

I began to perceive the contours and details of the field.  Most likely it was mowed by the Game Commission to keep it open.  There were lanes of tan grass that appeared to be mowed yearly, but much of the field was covered foot high stubble of invasive red osier dogwood.  In these less frequently mowed areas I could see colonies of plants setting up shop in their preferred habitat.

Clumps of green tubular common rush grew in a low wet area.  In another area I spotted a dark brown fern fronds, last year’s remnants from a patch of sensitive ferns.  Scattered around the field I saw occasional gray birch and red maple saplings, quick growing invasive species.  I marveled at how fast nature was reclaiming this field each returning species finding its favorite ground, it’s just right conditions.

A deer stand, really a tree house the size of a privy, was attached to a big ash at the far end of the field.  While it had the modern luxury of Plexiglas windows it was also dilapidated, a few loose siding boards, the roof caving at one corner.  Through my binoculars I saw that the tree trunk was growing around the metal supports that held it up.  This hunting stand had been here for many years. At least several generations of deer hunters had sat in silence watching the field hoping to bag a big buck.

In the middle of the field stood an old stump surrounded by saplings, shrubs and raspberry canes.  This was probably a spot with a big rock surrounded by discarded stones, a spot that farmers in horse drawn plows had simply steered around. I noticed another brushy spot, another rock pile.  I looked again at the old stone wall surrounding the field and realized that it had taken the labor of many hands over many years to tame this field to agriculture and now nature was eagerly and quickly reclaiming it.

The field told stories of past, present and future.   I wanted to walk across the field, step through a gap in the stone wall and explore the next field.  These wander walks, I realized, really have no end.  There is always something more to see, always another stories to uncover.

But I had been wandering for five hours and it was time to return home.  I left the field, stepped back on the trail and began to hike back.  Crossing over the little creek I thought that next time I needed to follow it downstream to its union with Dyberry Creek.

I glanced down and saw tiny pink and purple wildflowers.  I knelt for a closer look.  Each diminutive flower had five petals, and each petal was veined with strands of dark pink.  Picture This identified the flowers as Carolina Spring-beauties.

Walking beneath an archway of white pine branches I noticed how the layers of fallen pine needles cushioned and muffled my footsteps.

How had I missed these little flowers?  How had I not noticed the sound and sensation of the pine needle carpet when I walked this way earlier?  Maybe Kragge was right.  Maybe I was a different person now.

This wander walk took place in Wayne County, Pennsylvania on April 8, 2020.

You can read about more wander walks and sit spots in my book, The Stillness of the Living Forest:  A Year of Listening and Learning available at Amazon.com and directly from Shanti Arts Publishing.