The gift of the Magicicada

This is the year, this is the month; indeed, these are the days of the emergence of the 17-year Magicicada.

This genus of cicada is found only in eastern North America. Although there are 7 species, just 3 inhabit New England.

Once every 17 years, the nymphs emerge from the ground to shed their exoskeletons and emerge as winged adults, ready to mate. Males court females in choruses of song. There are three distinct types of calls, the most famous being the pharaoh call of the septendecim. One musician has actually harnessed them in concert.

Periodical cicada populations have been in decline, perhaps a reflection of climate change or land development.

The oldest known cicada specimens, dating back to 1843, are housed at the Peabody Museum in New Haven, Connecticut.

Thoreau makes mention of the 17-year “locust” (a misnomer) at the conclusion of Walden. He writes: “If we have had the seven-years’ itch, we have not seen the seventeen-year locust yet in Concord…Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will next come out of the ground?”

He goes on to relate the story of “a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts,—from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who des not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb,—heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board,—may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society’s most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!”

Thoreau knew something of the magic in the Magicicada.

One hundred and sixty-eight years later, would we could tune our ears to hear what this bug might be telling us.

The heart-berry

Thoreau tells us that the Native Americans of the eastern woodlands called the strawberry oteagh-minick. The Cree referred to it as oteimeena, while the Chippewa named it o-da-e-min. All are variants of the same word, which describe this red fruit as that resembling the heart.

“Let us not call it by the mean name of ‘strawberry’ any longer,” he writes in Wild Fruits. “[B]etter call it by the Indian name of heart-berry, for it is indeed a crimson heart which we eat at the beginning of summer to make us brave for all the rest of the year, as Nature is.”

I was pleased to learn the results of a recent study of the strawberry and its nutritional benefits. This common red berry — the first wild fruit of spring — carries substances which stimulate the production of NrF2, a protein which protects the human heart by bolstering antioxidants and helping to lower blood lipids and cholesterol.

The latest research on the heart-berry hearkens back to the Doctrine of Signatures, a 19th century idea that the shape of a plant determined its medicinal properties. For example, the tri-lobed leaf of hepatica (Hepatica nobilis) was said to be useful in treating ailments of the liver.

Now it appears as though the heart-berry might indeed be good for the human heart.

“Fragaria vesca,” Otto Wilhelm Thomé in “Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885″

Mus leucopus

The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native kind not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much.  —Thoreau, “Brute Neighbors,” Walden

“Something’s moving inside the walls of the family room,” my wife says. “I can hear it scratching when I’m watching TV.”

“Maybe it’s a bug of some sort,” I say, thinking of various beetles, carpenter ants and termites.

“No, it’s too big for a bug.”

“You think it might be a squirrel?” I say, recalling similar sounds I’ve heard in the attic late at night.

“It might be. It makes quite a racket.”

I retreat to the computer, google “crunching sounds in the wall” and pull up 20,300,000 hits in 0.30 seconds.

One post describes the likely source of such sounds:

“Mice are mainly nocturnal, so you are probably dealing with mice if only at night. I say whatever you think you have, you’ve got something smaller. So if you think it is a hippo, it is probably a raccoon. If you think it is a raccoon, it’s probably a squirrel. If it sounds like a squirrel, it’s probably mice. Everything sounds louder at night when you’re trying to sleep.”

As I read through several additional posts, I hear a munching, crunching noise in the ceiling overhead. Whatever it is that’s making these sounds, it’s a good bet that there is more than one of them.

I retire to the basement to find my Have-A-Heart trap resting on the window sill. I pick it up, dust it off, check the mechanism to see that it still functions properly and traipse upstairs to the kitchen.

I find an unopened jar of natural peanut butter in the larder and break the seal, stirring the oil into the thick peanut paste. I use a kitchen knife to scrape a small amount on the treadle inside the trap.

I find an electric lantern and ascend the stairs to the attic, trap in tow.

The attic is cold and cluttered with bags of old clothing and boxes of books. I move a few items to make a pathway to the back corner and gently rest the trap on one of the floor boards. Then I retreat down the hatchway and let the wooden stairs fold back up into the ceiling.

That night I waken to a scratching sound in the ceiling above the bed. The sound does not travel, but stays in one place. I drift off to sleep. If something is in the trap, it can wait until morning.

I rise early, before first light, pull down the hatchway and climb the creaking wooden stairs to the attic. I hold the electric lantern high to illuminate the path through the clutter. Both doors of the trap have been tripped.

I pick up the cage and peer through the mesh. There, huddled in a corner, a white-footed mouse hunkers down.

I carry the trap with the mouse downstairs to the kitchen and place it on a wooden stool. I brew a cup of coffee and sit watching the mouse. It wiggles its nose; its whiskers tremble.

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous, beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!

Coffee mug in hand, once again I ascend the stairs to shower and dress. I tie a bow around the collar of my shirt, pull on my grey tweed coat, and regard myself in the mirror for a fleeting moment before descending to the depths of the kitchen, where the mouse waits, shivering in the trap.

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve.
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ request.
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
And never miss’t!

I pull on my coat and cap and step out of the back door into the cold, carrying the trap in a gloved hand. It’s a fifteen minute drive to the other side of town across the river. I stop by the woods and unceremoniously open the trap. The mouse leaps to the ground and scurries away beneath the leaves, making one last brief crunching sound.

Now thou’s turned out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!

But, Mousie, thou are no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft a-gley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain,
For promised joy.

Big Clear Lake

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. —Thoreau, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” in Walden

At twilight I stood on the dock, looking out over the lake. Off in the distance a loon sounded its hallowed haunting cry. Overhead, the first of the evening stars appeared. The steady light in the western sky I judged to be a planet — most likely Venus.

“Permission to come aboard.” A low voice sounded behind me.

I laughed and greeted my host and friend: “Permission granted.”

The dock rolled slightly with his step; I flexed my knees to keep my footing.

“How about a night-time paddle on the lake?”

“Sure; let’s go.”

I undid the bow painter from the cleat; and we stepped into the canoe, pushed off and slipped out into the still water.

Between the rhythmic paddle strokes you could hear tiny wavelets gurgling at the bow as they rushed along beneath the boat. As the band of light on the western horizon grew more and more narrow above the silhouetted pines, the stars came out in the broad expanse of sky.

“There’s the Big Dipper,” I said, pointing up ahead.

“Did you see the recent supernova?”

“No, I didn’t get out, but it’s supposed to be visible with binoculars. There’s Polaris and the Little Dipper.”

“I can’t make it out.”

“It’s upside down. Imagine it pouring into the Big Dipper below.”

“Now I see it.”

We continued along in the darkness into the widest part of the lake. Stars were visible at the horizon, points of light I had never seen back home, where the light pollution from our towns and cities puts out the dimmer stars.

We sat in silence on the still water and marveled at the splendor of the night sky. The notes of an owl sounded from the shore; a loon laughed in the darkness. Slowly, the canoe drifted around. Above the southeastern horizon the teapot of Sagittarius tipped toward Scorpio’s fishhook tail.

We navigated back to the dock in the dark, following the Milky Way.

“Look, you can see the stars reflected in the lake!”

We studied the points of light strewn like diamonds below the gunwales, precious gems shining in the black water. The heavens were visible under our feet as well as above our heads.

We passed the island in the dark, taking care to avoid the rocky spine that traversed the length of the lake. Shortly, we bumped against the dock. Securing the canoe to the cleat, we stood up, feeling the dock bobbing beneath our feet.

Nearby, in the woods below the cottage, whip-poor-wills began their nocturnal serenade.

Cleaning out the garage

The nation itself, with all its so called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it as for them is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. —Thoreau, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” in Walden

Hurricane Irene seems to have ushered in the fall, that season of the year punctuated by cool breezes and colored leaves. The hummingbirds have made their departure, no longer to be glimpsed hovering at the red feeder on the front porch. The titmice have largely replaced the goldfinches at the sunflower seed feeder in the yard. High in the tops of the towering maples the first leaves of autumn have turned a jaundiced eye.

These are the days when a man steps out onto his back stoop, looks up at the sky and feels a certain stirring within his breast — the call to clean out the garage.

It’s a chore we ponder all summer long. With purposeful arm we raise the garage door, survey the acreage of junk, rub our chins — and gently lower the door again. Summer days are hot and too close for such work; better to wait until the cool fall weather.

I called the local refuse company to inquire about terms for renting a dumpster. Of the various sizes available, I settled on the 12-yard. We could have it delivered by the end of the week. That would give us the 3-day holiday weekend to get a head start. It seemed like a good plan.

Friday evening I returned home from work to find the massive steel structure parked at the head of the driveway, several yards from the garage. The men had leveled the dumpster on wooden blocks. You could undo the catch and swing the rear door open to facilitate loading. I glanced up at the blue sky, felt the cool air on my face and a twinge in my stomach.

It was my Saturday to work at the office. By the time I returned home, my wife and older daughter had begun the laborious process of sorting through the contents of the garage. Several items had already been tossed into the dumpster: broken chairs, metal stands, pieces of splintered wood and glass, old pillows.

My wife beckoned me to the basement, where she had already removed nearly half of the junk we had stored there. “You have to go through what’s left and decided what you want to keep — I didn’t touch your stuff.” Slowly, I nodded my head.

We walked up and out through the open hatchway and retraced our steps to the garage. “Do you want these?” my daughter asked, holding up two books in her hands: Leaves of Grass and an Easy Reader paperback from my elementary school days. “Keep them for now,” I mused, and ducked into the house to change into my work clothes.

I lifted the bow saw off the nail inside the garage and commenced fishing out a few of the wooden chairs from the dumpster. “What are you doing?” my wife asked. “Sawing them up into smaller pieces,” I said. “Why?” she asked. “So they don’t take up so much room. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to fill it up in short order.” She shook her head and returned to the garage to help my daughter.

I finished with the chairs and set to work dismantling the plastic table lying in the back yard. After that I tackled a broken plastic lawn chair, green with lichenified mold.

My son-in-law appeared in the driveway. “Just got a small landscaping job from your neighbor,” he said. “Pocket money for the week.” He pitched in, helping to break up some of the bigger items.

“Look!” my daughter exclaimed. “The doll house we got for Christmas when we were little.” The wooden shingles and clapboard veneer had peeled off in places, but the structure was still intact. “What should we do with it?”

“Put it on the workbench,” my wife said. “I want to keep it.”

Several distinct piles had begun to take shape at the head of the driveway. “These can be donated to the Salvation Army,” my daughter said, pointing to the plastic basket full of basketballs and soccer balls. “We started a pile of clothing as well.”

I threw the remnants of the plastic chair into the dumpster and sat down on the back stoop. My younger daughter appeared with cold drinks. “Want an orange juice?” she asked, handing me the chilled plastic bottle. “Lotta stuff, huh?”

I surveyed the paraphernalia strewn about and nodded my head. How many things we collect over the course of our lives, I thought. We spend our hard-earned money to buy them, finagle the space to store them, and then expend precious time, energy and more money to get rid of them. Much of the labor of our lives ends up on the ash heap at the dump.

I rose to my feet, drained the dregs of the orange juice and tossed the empty container into the dumpster. It struck the side and made a short hollow sound that quickly dimmed and faded away.

Fundamental Questions

Since the beginning of recorded history philosophers have postulated our origins and reasons for our existence.  More recently, they have highlighted concerns for the survival of our species as well.  Their inquiries can be distilled down to three fundamental questions: Where have we come from, what is the nature of our essence, and what is our destiny?

Modern scientists have attempted to answer these questions through empirical research.  Although the Darwinian theory of natural selection is now universally accepted within the scientific community, in itself it can not address the ultimate origin of our species any more than it is capable of predicting our future evolution.  As to the nature of our essence — what it means to be human — the most Darwinian theory can offer is that we exist in order to reproduce, thereby insuring the survival of our genes.

As Darwinian thought was being formulated in the 19^th century, two philosophers — one a transcendental naturalist, the other an avant-garde artist — continued to explore these same questions.  Curiously, though their lives overlapped by a span of some fourteen years, and chances are that neither knew of the other’s work; both formulated similar, if not identical, fundamental queries.

In 1846 Henry David Thoreau encountered what he would allude to as the wildness of nature on his first excursion to Maine’s Mount Katahdin.  In what scholars refer to as the “Contact!” passage in his essay Ktaadn, Thoreau attempts to elucidate the mystical experience he had while standing “deep within the hostile ranks of clouds” on the summit:

I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one,—that my body might,—but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries!—Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?

Who are we? Where are we? Thoreau ponders, echoing the cry of the natural philosopher.  What are our origins, our nature, our destiny?

Unable to articulate a precise response, Thoreau resorts to poetic prose in an attempt to explain his experience.  Astute readers recognize that Thoreau has passed through some sort of transcendental boundary, although it remains mostly undefined.  As Thoreau scholar Bradley Dean has written:

“The carefully crafted prose of the ‘Contact!’ passage reflects not emotional turmoil but the finer frenzy of Thoreau the transcendentalist prophet straining the capabilities of language to describe the ‘original relation to the universe’ he experienced atop the mountain.”

Dean continues: “A seemingly paradoxical sentence in Walden precisely explains his experience on the mountain: ‘Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations’ (my emphases). The mountain taught him what he clearly believed all of nature teaches if properly perceived: that each of us is a spirit in a world of matter that we have contact with through the agency of a body. This trinity of spirit, matter, and body — and ‘the infinite extent’ of the relations between them — comprises for Thoreau the Great Mystery.”

In contrast to Thoreau’s excursions from Massachusetts to Maine, the French artist Paul Gauguin traveled half way round the world to paint the colors of Tahiti. In what is perhaps his most celebrated work — certainly the one he regarded as his best — Gauguin inscribed these words in the upper left-hand corner of the canvas: “D’où venons-nous?  Que sommes-nous?  Où allons-nous?” (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?) — questions similar to those posed by Thoreau on his Katahdin ascent.

Gauguin was introduced to a variation of these queries during the his formative years at the Petit Séminaire de La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin by his teacher, Bishop of Orléans, Félix-Antoine-Philibert Dupanloup.  Dupanloup’s three fundamental questions were: “Where does humanity come from?” “Where is it going to?”  ”How does humanity proceed?”  Evidently, Gauguin revisited these queries throughout his life, electing to record them at last in his masterpiece D’où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous.

In his description of the painting, Gauguin indicated that he intended it to be viewed from right to left.  The three major figure groups illustrate the questions posed in the title.  According Gauguin, the white bird at the feet of the old woman at the left of the canvas “represents the futility of words,” inferring that written or spoken language is apt to fail us when we attempt to explain those mystical moments we encounter in our lives.

After his experience on Mt.Katahdin, Thoreau determined to dedicate his life to “detect some trace of the Ineffable” in his daily saunterings; Gauguin elected to capture such “traces” in color on canvas.  Both attempted to realize the same end through the use of different media.

What is required to achieve these ends, of course, is attentiveness to the moment in the natural world.  Gauguin found the wild in Tahiti; Thoreau encountered it atop Mt.Katahdin.

The ability to see

“Here is my secret. It’s very simple. One only sees rightly with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine St. Exupéry in The Little Prince

In keeping with the theme of this year’s annual gathering of the Thoreau Society — Thoreau’s Environmental Ethos — Aldersgate United Methodist minister Greg Martin proposed a new ecologic paradigm for the 21st century. Using Thoreau’s poetic description of Walden Pond as the eye of the earth for a touchstone, Martin developed the idea that we need to cultivate an essential ecological lens through which we can begin to view the planet as a living, breathing organism, one to be cared for rather than exploited.

As the late Bradley Dean, editor of Thoreau’s posthumously published Wild Fruits, has suggested: “If we can realize that we are mysteriously related to matter, we will act to preserve the world because human beings protect what we love or feel related to.”

“[Walden] is earth’s eye,” Thoreau writes, “looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”

In “The Ponds” chapter of Walden Thoreau builds upon this poetic vision of Walden. “The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.”

Thoreau describes the Walden water as “a vitreous greenish blue…like those patches of the winter sky seen through cloud vistas in the west before sundown.” “Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view…Such is the color of its iris.” (my italics)

In the midst of such poetic prose Thoreau interjects scientific observations. In one paragraph he records the temperature of the pond on a given day (the sixth of March, 1846) as 42 degrees, “one degree colder than the water of the one of the coldness wells in the village just drawn.” He comments on the rise and fall of the water level, noting that it corresponds to that of nearby Flint’s and White Pond. He describes the sandy terrain of the bottom near the shore, and publishes his soundings of its depths.

Thus Thoreau the writer couples his poetic vision with that of a scientist. Each perspective nourishes the other. At times it is difficult to separate the two.

At the end of Martin’s presentation a man in the middle of the audience remarked that he had always been of the same mind. “I am a physicist,” he said. “When I do science, I rely heavily upon my poetic insight. Those of us engaged in scientific research treasure the sense of mystery; it pricks our curiosity and generates a sense of awe for the unknown. Any scientist worth his salt will tell you the same. You can’t do one without the other.”

As I turned in my seat to better hear his remarks, I noticed his head cocked to one side with his chin slightly elevated. Even though we sat in the cool basement of the Masonic Lodge, he wore dark glasses.

As the workshop disbanded and disbursed I noticed this man shuffling along hesitantly behind the woman he had been sitting next to. His extended hand clung to her sleeve.

It was only then that I realized that this scientist who was capable of seeing what Thoreau saw was blind.

Sometimes the ability to see is not dependent solely upon our eyes.

Revisiting Walden

The day dawned to overcast skies. I grabbed my raingear from the knapsack and headed out to the rendezvous site. Only a handful of people showed up. The leader arrived as the first raindrops started to fall. Shortly, a bolt of lightning followed by a brisk thunderclap canceled our early morning excursion to the great blue heron rookery. “Too risky,” the leader said. “Maybe we’ll try to work it in to the nature walk tomorrow morning.”

I headed back to the hotel, then decided to drive out to have a look at the pond instead. It was early, it was raining; I was certain that no one else would be there.

Cars lined the side of the road along Route 126. There was not a space to be had in the small lot at the Shop. I pulled into the unmarked driveway and parked by the house at the end. Barbara was in her kitchen, busy with breakfast preparations for her house guests. She greeted me at the door.

“Well, look who’s here. Come in, come in! Sit down; how about a cup of coffee? You’re just in time for breakfast.”

“I’ll take the coffee but I have to take a rain check on breakfast,” I said. “I just ate.”

“Ah, you should’ve let me know you were coming.”

I explained about the rain and the canceled birding excursion. “They’re calling for severe thundershowers,” she told me. “Too bad the weather isn’t cooperating.”

I looked out the window. “If it doesn’t downpour, I thought I might try a walk around the pond. Could I leave my car here for an hour?”

“Certainly. You need a refill on the coffee before you go?”

“No, thanks; I’m fine.” I handed her the empty cup.

“Be sure to stop by again before the end of the weekend.”

I stepped out into the drizzle and pulled the hood of my raincoat over my head. I was glad I had thought to put on the rain pants. I might roast inside the plastic, but I wouldn’t get soaked from the rain.

A lone swimmer toweled off near the stone wall as I descended the long concrete stairway. The water table was high this year; only a short stretch of sandy beach remained below the bathhouse.

I struck out along the north shore, heading west along the ancient path now bounded by wire fencing on either side. Periodically, I passed a break that allowed direct descent to the water on large natural stone steps. Mist was rising from the surface of the water, stirred by a slight morning breeze.

The sandbar at the entrance to Thoreau’s cove lay submerged in the grey-green water. As I paused on the newly constructed wooden bridge to survey Wyman meadow, now flooded, its surface scattered with islands of lily pads, a train sounded in the distance. I turned to glimpse it rolling by through a break in the trees at the southwest corner of the pond.

A short stretch brought me to the house site, where I stepped through the two granite pillars to read the inscription on the stone that marked the location of Thoreau’s chimney.

From there I walked back to the water’s edge and sauntered south along the cove. Out in the water a few yards from shore a lone kingbird perched on the top branches of an alder, preening its breast.

Further along the trail near ice cove I found a stand of four granite markers of varying heights buried in the forest floor. A bit beyond them I passed a grey-haired man standing knee-deep in the water tending his fishing lines. By his single word of greeting — Maanin’ — I judged him to be a New England native.

I climbed the bank and paused by the railway, looking first south and then north to Concord. I marveled at the clean glistening steel rails winding off into the distance. Here I stood in a moment of time, a mere passerby reflecting on the distance I had traveled and the trek that lay ahead.

I turned west and ambled along the trail, pausing by a dark pool adjacent to little cove. Tiny rings dappled its surface above a submerged log — ephemeral footprints of water striders. Just ahead I stopped to examine a stand of spotted wintergreen on the moss-carpeted forest floor, each plant bearing a tiny stalk of white nodding bell-like flowers.

Two pairs of mallard ducks paddled about in long cove. Each in turn dipped its bill down into the clear Walden water. I thought of Thoreau and the dipper which two visitors had borrowed to get a drink from the pond and never returned.

My eye caught site of several low bushes along the trail near the southwest section of trail. I stooped low to search along the leafy stems and found one solitary round green berry, happy to have satisfied my curiosity that the low-bush blueberry still resides in Concord.

Humane Medicine — Faith in a Seed

Every seed germinates in its own time. Some of the seeds that we plant might lie dormant for months, perhaps even years. Sometimes we might even forget that we planted them. But then one fine day suddenly we see the first tiny shoots unfolding in the light. more»

Interested readers can now access my latest Humane Medicine column — The art of medicine: Having faith in the seeds we plant — recently published in the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants.

Two nights in the woods

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach…I wanted to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world.   —Thoreau in Walden

As I read through the five-day forecast, my spirits sank.  A winter advisory was in effect: perhaps three to five inches of snow, giving way to a wintry mix of sleet and freezing rain, high winds and thundershowers—not the best prospects for cooking over an open fire and sleeping in a tent on the forest floor.

Still, I had taken the time.  Already the clocks had been set; there was no turning them further forward or back.  The time was now.  We decided to proceed with our plans.

The snow fell that Friday, swirling down in buckets from the sky all along the highway from the grey rocky cliffs at Matamoras to the great interstate merge just east of Scranton. Eventually, the snow gave way to heavy rain interspersed with pockets of hail as I headed first south, then west.  Saturday dawned clear and cold.  A brief shower produced the ephemeral blush of a rainbow in the late afternoon sky.  A bright Sunday morning faded to an overcast afternoon, although the sun was still shining as I pulled into Little Pine.

My friend had arrived two hours before and was just coming back from a short trek to survey the lake from the dam breast.  He had set up the tent and stowed the gear in the center of the site.  After a quick lunch we set out in search of firewood and returned with two sizeable logs.  The pine proved to be green, burning with a smoky flame.

By late afternoon the rain began to fall.  We heated our one-pot meal on the Coleman camp stove under the dining fly as the ground turned muddy beneath our feet.  Afterward we hovered around the smoky campfire as it sputtered and hissed in the steadily falling rain.

Temperatures dropped into the 20s overnight.  We pulled stocking caps over our heads and crawled into our bedrolls, shedding only our shoes.  I drifted off to the sound of rain drumming against the nylon tent. When I awoke in the middle of the night, only the nearby rushing stream resounded in my ears.

The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis….Suddenly an influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain.

We awoke at first light to a backdrop of calm overcast skies against the tall wispy pines.  We split the sawed sections of pine logs and coaxed a stubborn fire first to flame and then to coals, enough to cook a hearty breakfast of fried potatoes, bacon and eggs.

At Little Pine Lake across the water we spotted a bald eagle perched among the gnarled branches of an ancient tree.  I fancied I had seen an eagle earlier that morning soaring above the pines against the far mountain, and this sighting confirmed it.

The sun broke through, sending mists sailing up the mountain sides dappled in dashes of snow.  We drove to English Center, headed north to Morris, then turned west along Babb Creek to Blackwell, where we disembarked to hike the old railroad bed that borders Pine Creek through the canyon.

Red-wing blackbirds announced our arrival as we crossed the village green.  The pea-green Pine slipped by as we strolled northwest past the fishermen’s bungalows and cabins.  We paused to photograph a cataract as it cascaded down the mountainside and watched two male Mergansers bobbing in the creek.  One dove deep and surfaced further downstream, choking a small fish down its throat.  Then the two of them beat their wings against the water and finally broke free, like small aircraft taxing in tandem down a grassy airstrip.

Lightning and thunder heralded the downpour that drove us back to the village, but the storm was short-lived.  We headed down the winding macadam road through Slate Run and Cammal to Waterville.

I knew that it would not rain any more.  You may tell by looking at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its winter is past or not.

That evening we burned the last of the fat oak logs that my friend had brought from home.  Most of the piles of snow along the access road had melted during the day.  We sat under the dining fly and watched the flames as they danced in the rain.  The area around the fire circle had turned into a small shallow lake.  We pulled a few flat rocks from the stream and laid them down in the muddy mess: tiles on which to rest our cold feet.  A cacophony of spring peepers rose in the night air.

The following morning we were up at five.  It had rained heavily through the night.  We rolled up our bedding inside the tent and stowed it beneath the dining fly.  The charred logs lay wet and cold in the fire circle.  We boiled a pot of water on the camp stove and used it to make oatmeal and hot tea.  Momentarily, the rain ceased; and we quickly broke camp.

We followed Route 44 south along Pine Creek.  The river had surged with the overnight rains and turned a coffee-milk brown, overflowing its banks in its harried descent.

As we headed east on the highway, I glimpsed the distant mountains silhouetted against the grey morning sky, and paused to turn their mysteries over once more in my mind.

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

(Author’s note: With the exception of the introductory quote, all subsequent italicized passages are quoted from the “Spring” chapter in Thoreau’s “Walden.”)