When I started walking three miles a day, I walked in the
unbuilt two hundred acres around my house, where the foxtrails and deer paths
are the I-90 and Route 66 of the animal world, but there are no people. But as I get older, I decided I’d better walk
in a place that if something went wrong, someone more helpful than a coyote or
black bear could find me. At first, I
worried about stepping into a skunk hole in the woods and spraining my ankle;
now I’m thinking more about strokes and heart attacks. Either way, now I walk
on a paved road, that isn’t heavily travelled, but if I keeled over someone
would see me within two or three hours (unless it’s Sunday morning and then I’d
be in good shape because of the church on the corner.) At first I found walking on the road boring. Now I can’t understand how I could make any
progress in the woods; there’s so much to see.
This morning I was often stopped in my tracks by the drama
of the ferns in the various stages of their unfurling process. Some were still in the fiddlehead stage; some
were upside down tripods with dots; some were already feathery fronds. So improbable a process, I can never really
believe it. This is magic I can pay
attention to, unlike the numerous popular movies and shows on TV about
vampires, ghosts and fairy tales, which slide past my brain like they were
coated with Teflon. The work of Mother
Nature is always more strange and beautiful than you can possibly imagine.
I always think wild flowers must have been named by poets,
or by people indulging themselves with a little poetry. And certainly the names of things came about
when people still travelled slowly, with time to think uninterrupted, either
walking or riding. “Lady’s slipper, columbine, trillium,” I recall
the names of my old friends every spring and hope I don’t sound like Ophelia,
or worse, Simon and Garfunkel. “Trout lily, Solomon’s seal, Indian pipes.” This far north my gentle friends appear in
mid May or June, not in April or early May as their southern relatives do. “Forget-me-not, cowslip, jack-in-the-pulpit.”
Our beautiful English language is quirky and xenophobic,
particularly with the French imports so humorously mangled that they no longer
sound anything like the original. I’m
thinking of dandelion, or “dente de lion” (tooth of lion), which perfectly
describes the notched leaves we see so often.
It’s interesting that the loss in translation of the teeth didn’t
include ditching the lion idea; possibly the poetry in language is as hard to
kill as dandelions. My favorite English
mangling of French has always been “Marylebone” which call to mind a foul,
whiskered bone collector, instead of “Marie le Bon”, Mary the Good and
Beautiful, dressed no doubt in blue.
Accused of being a recluse and a hermit, I admit I find refreshing
company in the woods – no political, religious or philosophical opinions ever
intrude. Solitude is not loneliness. The deer, rabbit, fox, woodchuck, skunk and
porcupine enliven my days, not to mention the pine snake, mouse, vole, tree
frog, dragonfly and bee. I enjoy the antics of the blue jay, thrill to the
exaltations of skylarks and ponder the business of crows. Hawks amaze me with their spiraling and
effortless gliding; eagles inspire us all.
Owls, doves, bluebirds, and robins – all have their virtues. But I’m worried about the bluebirds because I
haven’t seen any this spring.
“Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.”
The Garden,
Andrew Marvell, 1681
I love the spring wildflowers best, so joyous of life and
so fierce in their survival. When late
frosts have killed the tips of wild asparagus and the buds of my favorite iris,
the wild flowers are untouched. It’s a
good thing that Congress isn’t in charge of spring; they’d really mess it up. I
have to admit that the spring version of my behaving badly is a longer and further
walk, whereas during high summer my worst behavior is torpor and indolence,
when it’s all I can do to turn pages of a book.
Soon enough will come the Shakespearean sounding mid-summer wild flowers
“toadflax, Queen Anne’s lace, bellflower” when the sun is too hot for anything
but an early morning or evening walk. And a daydream.
“Tell me where is fancy bred,
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Or in the heart or in the head?
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How begot, how nourished?
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Reply,
reply.
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It is engender’d in the eyes,
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With gazing fed; and fancy dies
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In the cradle where it lies.
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Let us
all ring fancy’s knell:
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I’ll
begin it,—Ding, dong, bell.
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All. Ding, dong, bell.”
Merchant of Venice,
Scene 3, Act 2
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