I Have Always Loved the Woods
I have always loved the woods. Add a stream or a creek or a pond, and I can lose myself for hours. I have visited some of the most beautiful places on the planet and experienced their magic: the Waipeo Valley, Yosemite, the mountains of Colorado, Mt. Fuji, the cliffs of Moher, and the Burren on the southwest coast of Ireland. Yet, it is the distinctive woods of Pennsylvania and New York that have always held a magical allure for me.
While I was born in Philadelphia, I was fortunate enough to have moved with my family shortly thereafter to a bucolic town in Delaware County, which is famed hunt country. That area was, and is to this day, verdant and wooded. Ponds, creeks, and streams are abundant and each time I return, I am struck by the sheer greenness of the area, despite an increasing population. I moved to Staatsburg, New York in 1995 and purchased my current residence: a house, but also woods and a pond I could call “my own.”
I have always been an avid reader. As a child, I loved books about animals and nature. Recently, I went through an old trunk and rediscovered some of my favorite books from childhood. There was The Crossbreed, “the fascinating story of a fearless half-breed cat and his 2000-mile back to his birthplace,” whose greatest enemy was “Man”.[1] Another favorite was Braving the Elements, the 1967 Childcraft Annual, a blend of scientific fact and stories of humans “keeping (their) courage and protecting (their) live(s) in the face of violent storms, floods, forest fires, extreme cold, extreme heat, mountains, jungle-like rain forests, billowing seas – any danger that involves the ancient elements – earth, water, fire and air.”[2] Reading that now, it seems almost like a forty year old prediction of climate change. One of my prized possessions was a collection of pamphlets distributed by the state of Pennsylvania which were essentially field guides detailing the common mammals, trees, reptiles, and amphibians known to inhabit the state. Later, I enjoyed the books of James Fenimore Cooper, starting with The Last of the Mohicans, set in the New York woods not far from where I now reside.
Of course, there was the extensive collection of Boy Scout manuals and field guides, forty years worth, from my father’s childhood through my own. My father was an Eagle Scout who earned every merit badge available at the time. He has since been awarded the prestigious Silver Beaver for adult contributions to scouting. My brother is an Eagle Scout. And so, as tradition would have it, I was compelled to become an Eagle Scout. My Eagle Scout project was clearing an old railroad line for hiking, before this was popular, and that same old train line has since been extended and formalized for biking and hiking by the township. Scouting was rich with outdoor activity: frigid wintertime camping and hiking including much of Pennsylvania’s portion of the Appalachian Trail, and canoe trips on the Delaware River and in the Adirondacks.
It was my mother who first introduced me to the joys of foraging. She was, sensibly, not overly daring, she stuck for the most part with stuff she knew. My first foraging experience was “a-huckleberrying,”[3] as Thoreau would have put it, with my mother in the wild bird preserves on the Jersey shore. I don’t know if my mother had read Thoreau, though I would not be surprised to know that she had, since she had apparently read or knew about almost everything. I am not sure where she learned about foraging either, though I am almost certain she did not pick it up from my grandmother. It did not seem like the kind of thing my friends’ mothers were doing either, but that does sound like my mother. She knew many plants, was very fond of finding berries especially and was inspiringly curious. She often added dandelion from the yard to our salads. I recall wondering whether she really had to wade in the creek picking watercress rather than watching my Little League baseball games. Funny, I’m done playing baseball but foraging will be with me forever. Alas, there was, of course, the time when, with some dubious consultation from the supermarket butcher, she misidentified Japanese wineberries as Loganberries, resulting in what was perhaps the crunchiest, most seed-laden pie in history.
I can remember vividly the first Earth Day in 1970. I was nine. On that day I took water samples from a local creek and wrote an essay for school. I do not remember anyone even mentioning Earth Day again until either 1995 (the year I bought my property) or 2000, either the 25th or 30th anniversary. Now, just fifteen or twenty years later, forests are burning, temperatures and seas levels are rising.
Musings about a 2.08 acre patch of land may not seem important in a time of such environmental crisis. But, an ecosystem studied over time, particularly one with multiple habitats; pond, woods, marsh, and distinctive edges is a type of mimesis or model of the larger, global ecosystem, and can indeed provide clues and insight into the larger ecosystem. More important, is getting people to pay attention to those “musing.”
My premise, and my hope, hinges on two facts about humans. Humans tend to preserve and protect that in which they find personal value. Secondly, Cornell researchers have found that “Children who fish, camp and spend time in the wild before age 11 are much more likely to grow up to be environmentally committed as adults.”[4] So, if children’s interest in nature is fostered, beginning in their own backyards, the future of our planet may not be so bleak.
The land and pond in Staatsburg have rekindled for me a lifelong flame. If my writing can spark the interest of one young person, sharing with them not only the fascination, but a sense of biological diversity, conservation and a connection to nature then I have, in some sense passed on that metaphorical torch. Several times, Thoreau referred to a “child’s first excursions a-huckleberrying, in which it is introduced into a new world,”:[5] the past, the present, the future.
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[1] Allan W. Eckert, The Crossbreed (Toronto: Bantam Pathfinder, 1970), front cover.
[2] Robert M. Savage, ed., Childcraft Annual, 1967: Braving the Elements (Chicago: Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1967), editor’s intro.
[3] Henry David Thoreau, Wild Fruits, ed. Bradley P. Dean (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), 4.
[4] Larry J. Schweiger, “NWF View: Fostering a Sense of Wonder,” National Wildlife, August-September 2007, 9.
[5] Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 4.
Works Cited
Eckert, Allan W. The Crossbreed. Toronto: Bantam Pathfinder. 1970.
Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters. Common Trees of Pennsylvania. Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 1963.
Pennsylvania Game Commission (Conservation Education Division). 25 Well Known Pennsylvania Mammals. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Game Commission. Date unknown.
Savage, Robert M., ed. Childcraft Annual, 1967: Braving the Elements. Chicago: Field Enterprises Educational Corporation. 1967.
Schweiger, Larry J. “NWF View: Fostering a Sense of Wonder,” National Wildlife, August/September 2007: 9.
