Month: September 2020

Return of the pry bar

I had lost the pry bar. It went missing somewhere in the 40 acres of woods that is my outdoor sanctuary, where I cut wood and hunt for grouse and deer while watching the natural world pass by slowly and sanely.

The pry bar is 6 feet long, heavy at 16 pounds but lean and mean. I purchased it for $5 at a yard sale 20 some years ago, and ever since it has helped me argue with logs, urging them to roll over so I can reduce them to 18-inch chunks of firewood. The pry bar was my work companion and I’m sure would serve as a weapon in case of an unexpected attack.

I would normally set the pry bar against a tree when not using it, knowing full well if I laid it down it could disappear on the forest floor, which I feared had happened. So I searched that forest floor for nearly 2 years, before leaf fall and through deer hunting and early winter if there was no snow, and in early spring on the forest floor of flattened leaves. I even offered a cash reward during deer hunting for any family members or friends stumbling across it.

It didn’t turn up. I tried to remember every spot where I had cut firewood that fall, and I kept searching those areas. But nothing. I became resigned to the fact that I would never find the pry bar, or that when I did it would be 20 years down the road when I can only walk the woods, not work the woods. I promised myself I wouldn’t curse the late find, but instead pass the tool along to a younger woodcutter who could use it, who would be fortunate to have the same woodland opportunities that I have had.

But it was only two years down the road when one spring day, while surveying the woodlot as it rid itself of the last remnants of winter, when I saw the pry bar leaning against a tree. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Jubilation! I had set the bar so upright that it was hard to see against the big tree trunk, and it was on the opposite side of the narrow tote road that so many of us walked so many times during the hunting seasons.

Reunited, we went back to working together, the pry bar and me, last spring and now into this fall. My work companion had been faithful, staying right where I put it, waiting through the seasons for me to return. Someday someone else will own the pry bar, but not before they know the full story.

Sunsets and chestnuts

Through no wishful thinking or design on our part, others’ plight transformed into our delight as the red sun slipped toward the shores of Lake Superior. I walked the 30 feet from our camper door to where the water danced on the shoreline rocks of Chequamegon Bay, my camera in hand. I was not the only one. Half a dozen folks were being pulled to the lakeshore on this early evening in mid September, pulled by the show across the water on the western horizon.

The sun was settling down and taking on a complexion of orange and red, the color more intense as the horizon neared, belying the sun’s soft manner and silent slide at this moment. Filtered through smoky haze we could not easily see or smell, the pretty hue of the sunset was nevertheless the result of wildfires ravaging the West, nearly 2,000 miles away.

How could this be, this peaceful, pretty byproduct of the fiery destruction so far away? I felt guilty. “Did you get a winner?” a woman asked as I clicked through the images on my camera. Perhaps, but that sunset told a tale of tragedy. Nobody wins. The sun slipped away. 

Night came and so did the stars. Upon arrival at the campground I had taken a reading on directions, using my phone. I noted North, but now at night I wanted the stars to reaffirm it, for if I ever have to choose, I will take the stars over my phone. From the same spot I stood in the afternoon, I found Polaris, the North Star, with pointer help from the Big Dipper. Technology and the heavens were in perfect accord. Lights of a harbor town flickered across the bay; campfires flickered around us.  

The water was choppy the next afternoon as the wind picked up. The brisk breeze was from the west—no doubt carrying more smoke our way. My wife and I took the walking trail lined with trees and bushes that hugged the shoreline and hindered the wind. I turned my attention to the vegetation along the path. Soon I had a collection of plants and flowers in my mind and on my camera, including bur marigolds in yellow, touch-me-nots in orange, crown vetch in whitish pink, and milkweed, still holding green pods this far north.

From one small tree I picked its round fruit, the hull olive-colored and spiky. Later I split the hull open to uncover two dark brown, shiny nuts inside. The tree was a horse-chestnut, according to the resources I called upon. A new discovery for me. 

We returned to the campsite and began cooking outside. Another clear evening on Lake Superior, another sunset across the big water. Later, around the campfire, I stared into the flickering glow, thankful for flames that provide reflection, not destruction. 

An apple away

Five apples. That’s all I could count as I circled the tree, tucked away out of sight just off the trail in this woodland beyond the city’s edge. Low brush scratched my legs as I stumbled beneath the branches, my gaze upward. The apples were rather large, their species unknown to me. Now there’s only three.

I knew this tree was here, having taken photos last winter of its neglected apples, too high for deer to reach, brown and frozen apples wearing caps of new snow. Now in the heart of apple season there was only a handful of apples on the old scraggly tree, probably past its life’s prime of production.

I first saw this tree years ago while running through the woodland. The autumn discovery of an apple tree far away from buildings and roads always stirs my imagination. The red jewels of September are right there in front of me, but the tree’s history is not as easy to see.

Was I standing where a farmstead once thrived a century or more ago? Was the apple tree in the backyard, or perhaps in the woodlot just beyond where I found what looked like the remannts of a building’s foundation? If I poke further off the trail, will I find more signs of a farm’s crumbled past?

I imagine the tree was once harvested by someone who lived here or nearby. Harvested on pretty autumn days, the promise of apple pie in the pickers’ hands. Did the farmers come here with gunny sacks, or was an apron simply folded up for a makeshift bag?

Now the tree bears fruit with no idea for whom. Perhaps deer and bear, and birds, along with the occasional woodland hiker who passes by. I couldn’t resist. The two largest and most red of the five apples were within arm’s reach. I snapped one off the twig, and the other tumbled to the ground. One for me, one for the deer.

I imagined the deer finding the treat later that day, like a child discovering a shiny penny on the sidewalk. I walked away, clutching my red prize in my hand, having added another small piece in the history of an old apple tree gently living out its life in near obscurity.

Striders on the water

From the brushy river bank on this warm September afternoon, I stare into the pool of stagnant water that the sluggish river has bypassed. The more I stare the more I see aquatic life on and above the water, including the gangly-legged insects that catch my attention. They look like giant mosquitos moving on top of the water, though they are not much longer than half an inch.

They are water striders, though the name doesn’t exactly fit what they are doing, for there is no striding happening here if striding means taking long steps. No, the water strider is gliding, scooting, skimming, skating or any other similar words that could describe its rapid propulsions across the water’s surface.

Nature has provided the water strider with short front legs to grab and hold prey. But wait, there are four more legs, much longer legs. The middle two legs push the insect forward, while the two hind legs provide steering.

I watch the water striders scoot forward a few inches on the water’s surface, which in turn is only a few inches above the tannish, silty backwater bottom. The insect suddenly stops and skates in a different direction. A thin membrane created by water surface tension, combined with delicate hairs on the strider’s feet, keep this insect atop the water.

Some striders race toward ripples, which at first baffled me until I later learned that the ripples can either be the sign of prey in distress—an easy meal—or a female strider ready to mate. I stand motionless, drawn to the striders’ movements as much as the striders are drawn to the ripples. Meal or mate.

Later, I was puzzled why my photos of the water striders showed six blobs below each leg. The slightly oblong shadow spots were many times larger that the strider’s six feet. Then, Annie Dillard in “Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek” solved the mystery for me. Wrote Dillard, “I watch the water striders skate over the top of the water, and I watch the six dots of shade—made by their feet dimpling the water’s surface—slide dreamily over the bottom silt.”

The dots are dimples. All day long the water strider dimples the water. Taking life in stride on the river’s edge.