Patience of the Predator

Yesterday was a day for wild things. I spotted a doe and a box turtle in the woods, and then, while dining al fresco last evening, was visited by a red-shouldered hawk.

The bird landed on the deck railing, just a few feet from the dinner table, and scanned the landscape. I suppose he was wanting his own dinner, perhaps a chipmunk or squirrel. For a few chilling moments I wondered if it might be me. 

The hawk perched for what seemed like forever, long enough for me to slowly turn in the chair and keep my eyes on him, long enough for me to become restless. I had finished my dinner; he'd yet to have his.

My phone was inside, so I missed the chance to photograph him. Instead, I tried to memorize his details: the long, substantial chest; the yellow legs, hooded eyes and beak that meant business. He was completely still as he surveyed the terrain, able to spot the faintest trace of movement. 

What impressed me most was his patience. He was prepared to wait all night if need be. His was a patience born of need, the patience of the predator.

(A hawk I photographed several years ago. Last night's visitor was much closer.)

Lovely, Dark and Deep

It's less than three weeks till summer solstice. By 5 a.m. the first birds are singing, and darkness doesn't fall till almost 9 p.m. At this time of year, light is our constant companion. 

Perhaps that's why the woods appeal. They are, to quote Robert Frost, "lovely, dark and deep." Though he described a winter landscape, mine is a summery one: oaks, maples and sycamore in full leaf, the path that winds through them sheltered and shady.

What mysteries lie down these trails? What refreshment will they bring? Will the woods be cooler than the street? These are questions I want to answer — and will. 

Woods in White

The main roads were plowed by Saturday, but wind chill kept me inside. By yesterday, though, temps edged up to the high 30s, and I was itching to leave the house. Would the Reston trails be clear? 

Some were, and those that weren't I avoided, snapping a photo instead. 

I trod paths I haven't walked in a while, passed the "laughing tree," which now sports a white mustache. 

There was a thin layer of frosting on bowed limbs, like a squiggle of toothpaste on a toothbrush. 

I hiked for more than an hour. I was not alone. 

Wandering Home

As much as I extoll the practice, walking in the suburbs is largely for exercise and mental refreshment, for perspective. It's difficult to run errands or visit folks without jumping in the car.

But yesterday I had time to amble through the woods to meet a friend, who lives on the other side of a county forest.

On the way there I had my eye on the clock, picking up the pace to reach her house more or less when I said I would. But on the way home I savored the green splendor of the stroll, birds ruffling the underbrush, stream water pouring over and around a flat rock.

It felt like rain, clammy and portentous. I took my time, reveled in the mood and the moment. I wandered home.

Loop Walk

Can confusion be knit into a landscape? Is there something about a particular topography, no matter how serene it appears, that can turn our heads? Would I be asking these questions if I didn't think there was? Yesterday I took a path I've hiked several times before. Once again, I paused at the juncture of three trails. Once again, I chose the "wrong" path.

Or was it? This trail led me into a cool green forest along the Snakeden Branch. I took deep breaths, heard a bird I didn't recognize. I knew approximately where I was. No need for panic. In fact, when the trail spit me out on a major thoroughfare, I realized there was circular potential.

The rails-to-trails marvel that is the W&OD was nearby, and the path I missed intersected it. If I could find that juncture, I could take a loop walk. The W&OD was sunny, and I wasn't sure how long I would be on it. Just when I thought I'd missed the crossroads, I saw the sign and escaped through a bright meadow into deep shade.

It was a different walk than the one I meant to take, but a good one just the same.

A Benediction

The first thing I notice is the scent. The air is perfumed, mid-May incarnate. Early honeysuckle? I don't think so. Viburnum perhaps?  I inhale as I walk, which supercharges each step. 

The next thing I notice is the mud. It's been only a few days since I last walked in the woods, but it's rained hard since then, and paths that were packed are now spongy, pliable.  My boots leave an impression. 

The stream is gurgling. The forest has greened and expanded with the much-needed moisture. It has moved up and out. It holds me as I walk, sifts its stillness down, a gift, a benediction.  

Wiki Woods

It has much in common with a wiki site, this woods I walk in; it's the work of many. The invasive plant eradication I mentioned yesterday is part of it. But even the paths themselves are forged and kept alive by many footfalls. Given the amount of undergrowth out there, it wouldn't take long to lose the trail. 

And then there are the bridges, a motley crew if ever there was one: A clutch of bamboo poles, handcrafted spans made from planks and two-by-fours, and then the places where it seems people just laid down a few pieces of lumber. 

Some of the bridges are for crossing Little Difficult Run, which meanders through the woods, steep-banked in spots. But others are for navigating the hidden springs and muddy parts of the trail. All of them necessary. All of them welcome. 

It takes a village to make a woods walk. 

Protecting the Forest

I'd resisted for days, but today I gave in. I reached down and pulled up a few garlic mustard plants, an edible but invasive species I've learned of recently, mostly from seeing pulled and trampled stems on the trail. 

It's tall with a few delicate white flowers. At first, I admired it. But then I learned how it can dominate the ground cover in a forest, driving out the natives.

Walks are when I think and listen to music, when ideas percolate. I don't want to wear garden gloves and trudge through the woods with a bucket and spade. But these plants pull up so easily that I hardly broke my stride getting rid of them.  If everyone pulled up a few stalks, there would be no more garlic mustard in our woods.

In the end, it's elemental: When we notice, we care. And when we care, we protect. 

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Greening

When I walk through the woods these days, or even when I look out the window from my upstairs office, the world I see is a symphony of green.

It's happened so quickly, this greening. Less than two weeks ago, the forest was still a winter one, especially given that many of the early flowering trees are the ones people plant in their yards not the ones that grow naturally on their own. 

But whether cultivated or wild, the world is greening, and I wish I could hold onto it this way. 

Welcome Wreath

I began to spot them in the forest a few days ago, although from the looks of it they'd been there for a while. The wreaths seem homemade, maybe fashioned from local boughs. 

This one is special though, decorated as it is with an eagle feather. 

Welcome back, the wreath says. Welcome back to the eagles, more common in these parts than they used to be.

Welcome back to the foxes, who prowl and hunt and make their home.

Welcome back to the walkers, including this one. 

Hybrid Walk

It begins in the neighborhood common land, field and forest, and continues in the stream valley park that meanders through these parts. I cross a couple of bridges there that have seen better days, and once I'm over them, I make my way to another neighborhood street.

This one is hillier than ours. It reminds me of the great sledding hills of my youth, including one I heard about but never experienced, Banana Hollow. The slope begins on one side of the street and continues on to the other. You have to imagine the hill without the houses and lawns, see it the way it once was, part of the roll and sweep of western Fairfax County hunt country.

After 20 minutes on pavement, I'm ready to be in the woods again, and follow a well-marked trail most of the way home. 

The hybrid walk: it's good for what ails you. 

Deadwood

It's a cold, blustery day. The cardinals and sparrows that usually throng the feeder are tucked away in roosts and thickets. I can imagine them puffing up their feathers against the bitter winds. 

I have my eye on an errant limb dangling from a white oak by the fence. It seems to be attached to nothing from my vantage point (a second floor window), but must be be hung up on a branch at least 70 feet above the ground. I just hope that, when it falls, it doesn't take out part of the fence. 

The small forest that used to grace the back of the backyard is now a few paltry trees. But because they are paltry they are precious. Even care and pruning can't stop the deadwood from falling, though. It's what deadwood does. 

Woodland Guideposts

When walking in the woods, my eyes grow accustomed to the lack of signage and focus on subtler clues: boards along a muddy path, a dry gully, the curved white trunk of a sycamore.

Failure to notice these guideposts has consequences, like the boxy bridge I missed on Friday which meant I sidled right into someone’s backyard, complete with kiddie gym.

A woods walk sharpens the powers of observation. It keeps me on task, and for that reason, the thoughts that come seem more my own.

Before the Rain

On a woods walk yesterday there was not exactly a traffic jam, but there were more people than usual. 

"It's not raining ... yet," said a tall man in a lightweight jacket. (You could get away with one of those, though I was donned in parka and gloves.) 

It must have been the threat of showers that drove us out and into the forest, one last dash before the deluge.

This morning the drops move out and the wind moves in. I foresee a basement walk for me this morning. 

(A photo from the Blue Ridge, not my neighborhood stream valley park.)

Concentration

The old map showed it, clear as day, a trail angling off to the north from a paved path I usually take out and back. So we explored it yesterday, on a cold, cloudy afternoon when the leafless trees held no secrets.

It looked like little more than a deer trail at first, but the logs flanking it gave it respectability. Before long there was a sign: Pine Branch Trail. Thinking it might be a distraction from the ultimate destination — a Nature Center — we ignored it and pressed north. We made it over a bridge, down a paved path, back into the woods on the Snakeden Trail, then crossed Glade and into the forest where we started. 

I'm speaking as if great distances were covered, and they were not. But new territory slows the walk, makes one concentrate on the subtleties. And concentration refreshes the mind. 

The Sandwich Trail

You might call it the Sandwich Trail: a route that begins in forest, exits on the other side of the neighborhood for a mile of striding down a prettier-than-average suburban lane, then dips back into parkland again before returning. 

In the language of sandwiches, the woods is the "bread" and the long stretch of pavement in the middle is its filling. 

In the woods section I notice dry stream beds, new plank bridges, a path I thought I'd lost. In the pavement part I see houses with new siding, a massive and magical rubber tree, boulders in a garden.

Two parts trees and beaten-dirt trail, one part easy striding along a less-traveled road. A sumptuous repast. 

Almost Equinoctical Evening

A late walk yesterday, after I finished a class assignment. I drove to a favorite Reston trail itching to move through space after a computer-centric day. 

The path did not disappoint. There were the familiar markers of fern and stream and swamp. There were the dog walkers and stroller pushers and trail talkers, those who first appear at to be muttering to themselves but are revealed upon passing to be wearing those distinctive white ear pods.

The second leg of this walk is a segment of  the Cross County Trail, with its dips and valleys, already crunchy with brown leaves and blowsy with stilt grass gone to seed — but beautiful in its roughness. Laser-pointers of light struck the thin trunks of the understory.

Scampering through the lambent air in the almost-equinoctial evening was an excellent way to end the day. 

Monochromatic

It was just above freezing yesterday when I set off through the woods down a path that leads to our sister neighborhood on Westwood Hills Drive. I had walked there a couple weeks ago and admired the forest views, the courts and cul-de-sacs, the feeling of being on the other side of the looking glass. But I'd driven to that walk. This one was solely by shank's mare. 

Finding new ways to escape the neighborhood on foot is becoming a minor obsession. I enjoy the great suburban irony — driving to walk — but still like to subvert it whenever possible.

Yesterday's walk was a pleasing mix of sedate street and woodland trail. The ground was thawing in the latter and mud was a factor (my shoes were banished to the garage after the stroll). But I plunged on, making a large loop through the still, spare, monochromatic landscape. 

A Walking Trifecta

I'm filing this under the category of "books and book reviews I wish I'd written" — a single article in yesterday's print copy of the Washington Post that covered three books on walking — a trifecta of pleasure that has added three tomes to my must-read list.

In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration, by neuroscientist Shane O'Mara, describes the many benefits of walking, most of which I know but all of which I love hearing about again: how it helps protect heart and lungs and even builds new cells in the hippocampus.  

In First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human, paleontologist Jeremy DeSilva explains the importance of bipedalism to human exploration, how it made possible the longer legs and shoes that have taken us to colder climes and, ultimately, even the moon.

Finally, the reviewer, Sibbie O'Sullivan, discusses Healing Trees: A Pocket Guide to Forest Bathing, which explores the Japanese concept of shinrin-yoku, immersing oneself in nature:

"Every page of 'Healing Trees' reminds us how separated from the world, from nature, from the trees, we've become," writes O'Sullivan, who injects herself beautifully into the essay by describing her own walking, falling and resultant knee surgery. "Too often we take walking for granted," she writes, "but we shouldn't." 

A Constant

Morning on the Hunter's Woods Trail: Mozart in my ears, details in my brain, details I hoped would filter away like a dusting of snow through trampoline mesh. And the rhythm of footfall did clarify the day; it reminded me of what is most important, which is to live fully when and where we are.

I was aided in this by the appearance of wildlife: first, a fox sauntering down the trail ahead of me and then, on the drive home, a wild turkey beside the road, bobbing its head as it fled into the woods.  

The critters pulled me into the present and away from the fact that this is a departure day, which is not nearly as nice as an arrival day. 

But the warmth is finally here, and the day is as perfect in its way as the cold, windy Thursday that brought her here. Both days are required, one for coming, the other for going — with the walks a constant between the two.