Uncategorized – Dave Greschner Outdoor Journal

Christmas Eve honey tree

Introduction: During this season of giving thanks and gifts, I have been sharing excerpts from my book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” which was released at the end of last year. For the holiday season, the book is available through me at a special price (see information at the end of this post). As we close in on Christmas, this excerpt is the last half of the introduction to “Sometimes the Best of Times: November-December.” The first half of this piece was in an earlier blog, “A Waning Day in Autumn.” We pick up this piece at the first mention of Christmas. Enjoy.

… I’ll search for a Christmas tree in the woodlot. Or a honey tree at Christmas, for it was such a tree on a December day that nudged me toward the wonder of nature. It’s a childhood memory in which I see my father and myself on the hillside pasture beyond our barn.

It’s the afternoon of Christmas Eve. A chainsaw churns into an old oak tree. It falls to the ground. My dad stops the chainsaw, reaches into the hollow trunk and takes out pieces of honey bee combs. In the cold, the honey is too thick to drip. He places the golden combs in a stainless steel milk pail.

I recall the fascination and magic of honeycombs, of small snowflakes dancing through the gray afternoon, my cold fingers, my inquisitive dad. Did we stumble upon the bees’ summer work or did dad know this present was in this tree? I think the latter, for why else would he bring along the clean pail? I’ll never know for sure; oh, the things we wish we had asked our parents.

I would guess he saw it and took note during deer hunting, or on a late summer search for a cow and its newborn. I do the same now, noting and returning to the nests of bald-faced hornets and goldfinches, and the drying stands of pearly everlasting.

I remember the afternoon growing dim as we made our way home, Christmas lights twinkling in the windows, mom’s Christmas Eve meal in the oven, our sweet find in the pail. It was December, and now it is again. And now, like then, I bring home the gifts of early winter as I was taught, and the knowledge that seasons come and go, as do our trials and tribulations, as I have learned.

We find beauty and hope in the new season, the new day, the new chapter, and the sweet treat in the tree.

Note: Thr0ugh the holiday season, “Soul of the Outdoors” is available through me at the special price of $17. For a personally-signed book, email davegreschner@icloud.com or text or call me at 715-651-1638. The book is also available through online book sellers, including Amazon, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

Settling into winter

Introduction: During this season of giving gifts, I am sharing excerpts from my book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” which was released at the end of last year. For the holiday season, the book is available through me at a special price (see information at the end of this post). The following is an excerpt from the chapter, “Woodland Settles into Winter,” from the November-December segment of the book. Enjoy.

Winter settles deep into the woodland, the chilly silence pierced only by the roar of my chainsaw spinning toward the core of the hardwoods.

The saw settles into a downed oak branch, scattering wood chips on the snow while slicing off 16-inch hunks of firewood. I pick up the pieces and bang the smaller ones together. A sharp smack rings through the leafless forest.

Then the saw unsettles winter in the middle of the firm but dying tree trunk. Caramel-colored rings tell me the oak has seen many winters. This is its last.

I come to the woods for more than wood. In early December, I come to make sure that some deer remain after the hunt, and that the first frigid blast hasn’t scared away the squirrels, rabbits, foxes, and ruffed grouse. I know the answers before I arrive, but reassurance is good for the soul, and a good reason to take to the woods.

In her 1942 book, “We Took To The Woods,” Louise Dickinson Rich writes of winter, “You can neither remodel nor ignore a thing as big as winter. In the woods, we don’t try. We just let winter be winter, and any adjustments that have to be made, we make in ourselves and our way of living.”

As the afternoon wanes, the half-lit first quarter moon starts to brighten quite high in the eastern sky. The full moon is exactly a week away, when the large sphere will rise at sunset. It’s a dreamy afternoon, and I think of the song verse, “There’s a new moon on the fourteenth, first quarter twenty-first, and a full moon in the last week brings a fullness to the earth.”

I feel the fullness. It’s getting dark as I haul my firewood to the truck. I pick up the pace and start sweating despite the chill that rides in on the sunset. I drive away, content that nature here is well, making all the adjustments for another winter.

Note: Want to read more nature essays such as this? Thr0ugh the holiday season, “Soul of the Outdoors” is available through me at the special price of $17. For a personally-signed book, email davegreschner@icloud.com or text or call me at 715-651-1638. The book is also available at regular prices through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

Walking the land

Introduction: During this season of giving thanks and giving gifts, I am sharing several excerpts from my book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” which was released last Christmas. For the holiday season, the book is available through me at a special price. See information at the end of this post. The following chapter, “Walking the Land,” is from the November-December segment of the book. Enjoy.

I’d like to think the land remembers my face, my gait, and that I was a friend. Still am. Why else would I keep returning to these woods, pastures, fields, and old farmsteads?

I come here now because I was here as a youth. Growing up here, the land etched in me the tranquility of tall pine trees, amber sunsets beyond fields of green corn, flaming maples, and fox tracks crossing fields of snow.

I nurtured a love for the land and for walking the land. There remains within me a desire to walk out the back door, through the barnyard to the pasture, up the hill and through the woods, across the town road and through the neighbors’ fields, pastures and woods, as I once did.

Though properties were defined by fences and roads, they remained joined by the land’s flow of hills and valleys and tree lines. And the sweat of settlers.

The land I walked for miles in all directions had different owners, but owners who were not much different from each other. They were farmers bonded to their neighbors by the need for green pastures, healthy crops and livestock, and firewood. Come hunting time there was a sharing of the land to an extent I’ll never see again.

These descendants of immigrant settlers from only a generation or two ago were willing to share. They lived the saying of Native Americans, “Who are we without the corn, the rabbit, the sun, the rain and the deer? Know this, my people, the all does not belong to us. We belong to the all.”

When I visited this land on a mild, sunny afternoon in early November, I knew I could cross the property of at least one family, for they are the children and grandchildren of my parents’ neighbors a generation ago. From our woodlot, I headed for the huge rock on the adjoining farm we once owned. The rock is in a valley of the pasture, near a small creek at the foot of tall pines. The rock is larger than a chest freezer. It begs one to pause.

I sat on the rock as a kid while exploring, and later as a young man while hunting. In his journal, “In Context,” Native American Kenneth Cooper (Cha-das-ska-dum) wrote that the Lummi tribal members in Washington tell their children, “You sit on this rock, and I’ll come back in a couple of hours, and you tell me what you learned.”

Patience is what children will learn on the rock, and what we all should learn if we take the time to sit under a canopy of tranquility. I sat on the rock for a time and then pushed on to the first deer stand my dad built. The boards are rotting and crumbling. I think I should rip the deer stand down someday. I think I don’t want to.

On this mild afternoon I nestled my back against the trunk of a large maple tree and slid to the ground, letting the sun find my face. I listened to a dog barking in the distance. It could have been my dog decades ago, barking at a treed squirrel from the base of this very tree.

I got up and begin pushing over a series of hardwood hills, crossing the tracks of deer and wild turkeys. I stood in a clearing between woodlots, where as a young photographer I was consumed with the golden leaves of birches against a blue autumnal sky. The birches are still there. And today, so am I.

A waning day in autumn

Introduction: During this season of giving thanks and giving gifts, I want to share several excerpts from my book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” which was released at Christmas a year ago. For the holiday season, the book will be available through me at a special price. See information at the end of this post. The following is the introduction, “Sometimes the Best of Times,” for the November-December segment of the book. Enjoy.

I was in a tree swaying to the rapid rhythm of nature’s breathing when it hit me. Not literally, though I suppose a branch could have let loose in the chesty November wind and knocked me on the noggin.

What hit me was that my autumn of blue skies, dazzling leaves, calm afternoons and the passing of migrating geese was over. Now all I could see and feel was fall ending. I saw it through bare branches as I stared in vain for a deer to appear. I felt a chill run through my body from the wind and clouds as the sun was slinking to the southwest.

There was little bird activity, though two chickadees came within whispering distance, and a blue jay squawked, irritated by something. Maybe me. Or maybe the warning of winter in its bones. At times the bursts of wind scattered the hunt’s focus while delivering the sounds of the countryside putting to rest this late autumn day

A cow bellowed at the farm in the valley, perhaps at feeding time, just before milking time. A dog barked, at the farm on the other side of the field. A car slowed at a driveway, and the dog barked with more gusto. And then there was quiet as a car door slammed and, I was sure, a dog’s tail wagged.

Children’s laughter and shouts rippled across the picked cornfield to my spot at the confluence of field and forest. The voices fell mute, and I imagined supper was ready. From another field I heard a tractor revving and clanking to load a round bale of hay before groaning out of hearing range.

Darkness gathered rapidly. I climbed down from my stand. I had heard the countryside preparing for the night, and I had heard the whistle of winter in the wind. The whistle would only get louder from here on, with the days passing rapidly as we hurtle toward Thanksgiving, a new month, the magic and memories the first snowfall brings, holiday music and gift shopping, and the winter solstice.

(The second half of this piece will appear closer to Christmas, as it is a Christmas Eve story about a boy and his father, a find of honey in the woods, and a farmhouse warmed by a Christmas Eve meal in the oven.)

Note: Want to read more nature essays such as this? Thr0ugh the holiday season, “Soul of the Outdoors” is available through me at the special price of $17. For a personally-signed book, email, text, or call me at davegreschner@icloud.com or 715-651-1638. The book is also available at regular prices through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

A calm encounter

There was calmness in the deer’s eyes, a calmness that spread across its oval face. The deer stood there, staring at me. There was a hint of curiosity, but no fear, no alarm. The deer’s face had a softness about it, as soft as the September foliage, turning to faded greens and pale yellows.

I was on a morning run on the Wild Rivers Trail, at a point where a path drops gently away from the trail for 40 feet before opening into a meadow. As I ran past this narrow corridor, in my peripheral vision I saw a deer, facing the trail from the far portal. A strand of old, smooth fence wire drooped near its knees.

It was a doe, no doubt intending to walk from the meadow to the trail, but stopping when it heard me, then saw me. I knew what to do next if I wanted a photo. I ran past the opening as if I hadn’t seen the doe, then stopped behind cover.

I didn’t have my long-lens camera, so readied my phone camera and tip-toed back to the opening. In these cases, the objective is to get a quick first photo before the animal bolts. It won’t be the perfect photo but good enough for a memory.

I eased into the opening. The doe was still there, attentive to my presence but showing no alarm. I began positioning for better photos, putting myself into clear view. The doe studied my slow approach.

For what seemed like several minutes, I alternated between baby steps and pauses, coming closer and closer to the doe. It simply stared at me with large, pensive eyes. I was within 10 feet of the deer when it slowly turned sideways, walked a few feet into the meadow and began eating leaves off an aspen sapling. It chewed while nonchalantly looking at me.

I walked toward it again, within five paces. The doe appeared healthy, the hair on its plump body beginning to take on a darker autumn hue. I was quite sure it was a yearling; it was too big, its body too mature, to be this year’s fawn.

How does one explain calm encounters with wild animals? Was the deer simply curious? It had surely encountered humans before, but perhaps had never felt threatened by them. For whatever reason, I posed no danger to the doe.

In his book “Within These Woods,” author Timothy Goodwin writes about a healthy young deer that adopted the family cabin as a place to eat corn out of family members’ hands. It had first appeared out of nowhere, nudging at Timothy’s father from behind.

Folks who believe in “spirit animals” say that deer have a strong spiritual connection, allowing them to be aware of the subtle energies happening around them. In this belief, deer are attracted to people whose spiritual centers are giving off vibrations of gentleness and compassion.

That’s nice to think. As I stood in front of the doe that morning, I wondered: Could I actually touch this deer? I only wondered. I backed away, not wanting to unsettle the gentleness of the moment. The doe ambled among the short saplings. I walked back to the trail and continued my run.

Note: Want to read more nature essays like this? My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Bayfield (Honest Dog), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), Stevens Point (Bound to Happen), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

Jewel of the flowage

Unless I go back to the campsite for a chair, I’m pretty sure who is going to win this waiting game. Great blue herons make a living stalking prey; my patience too often flutters.

I was walking the shoreline of this sluggish flowage, scaring frogs and taking photos of wetland plants, when the heron lifted in a rush from an old elm tree. Branches hanging over the water framed the bird’s getaway.

I had startled the heron, which in turn startled me. It flapped away on a 6-foot wingspan in a serious of screamy squawks piercing the silence on this dew-laden morning. The heron saw me before I saw it. Was I not paying attention?

Now, the heron is in the middle of the flowage, where lily pads and clumps of algae cover much of the water surface. The heron looked large when it took off, and still does, perched on a small dead branch poking out of the water. A great blue stands over 4 feet tall. This one is that and more.

My camera lens finds a portal between low branches and shoreline grasses. It’s not much of a photo, considering I missed the dramatic, close-up takeoff. My attention had been on frogs and flowers, and so I was guilty of not being ready for “now you don’t see it, now you do.”

The heron knows I’m here, so there’s no chance it will come back to its morning perch in the tree. In what I interpret as showing off after its escape, the big bird begins preening, using its dagger beak to rub its chest and get beneath its feathers, one outstretched wing at a time.

Meanwhile, the lazy morning meanders on along this 29-acre shallow flowage created by a dam on a slow and low river between the campground and village. I can’t say there’s stunning natural beauty here, or that the algal blooms riding murky green mats don’t smell. But I grew up along this river, so it’s all good with me.

The natural beauty is in the life on this nearly stagnant water. A kingfisher perches on a wire, silhouetted against the sky. An osprey flies over, a bald eagle circles. Though not known as a fishing lake, the heron, kingfisher, osprey and eagle know there are several species of fish “present,” as my Wisconsin lakes book puts it. Translated to avian language, there’s variety on the menu.

I begin looking at an array of wetland plants in late August: sweet flag, broadleaf cattail, and broadleaf arrowhead. Water plantain is in bloom with a spot of yellow at its base of three white petals. Pale smartweed blooms in drooping spikes of pink.

Jewelweed catches my eye. How can I not focus on the jewelweed? There hang the showy two-lipped flowers in reddish-orange with beads of dew on petals hiding a cornucopia-shaped pouch of nectar. Bees and hummingbirds know about the nectar. They use the lower lip of two fused petals as a landing pad.

Speaking of landing, a frog suddenly jumps and disappears below the muck, breaking my jewelweed fascination and concentration. I check for the heron. It’s still there. Perhaps I’ll get that chair.

Note: Want to read more nature essays like this? My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through online book sellers and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s. For a personally-signed copy, email me at davegreschner@icloud.com.

Month of the moth, and more

Our neighbors have a knack for seeing the little thing in nature. It helps that they tend to two gardens and two young boys; A child’s unburdened explorations reveal discoveries adults often overlook.

These folks just plain enjoy nature spinning its story in their yard. They wave us over for these discoveries—a baby hummingbird they nursed to independence, a flying squirrel living in a bird house, the clownish-striped caterpillars of monarch butterflies.

The other day it was a hawk moth, a fascinating creature less that two inches long, seemingly assembled with parts from a bee, hummingbird, wasp and dragonfly. Research revealed that these sweet feeders with long string-like tongues (proboscis) for probing flower tubes go by many names.

What we observed darting among blooming bee balm was a clear-winged hummingbird moth, also known as a hawk moth, from the sphinx moth family. They are daytime feeders, and if noticed at all are often assumed to be baby hummingbirds. However, baby hummingbirds don’t fledge until they are the size of their parents, and they don’t have antennae as do the sphinx moths.

So it’s August, and all that makes the month a mellow transition to the next season. Hawk moths, hummingbirds, and bees are pursuing the nectar of bee balm (bergamot in the wild). I walked away from the hawk moth in awe, wondering what else late summer will bring on days that dawn hazy but far from lazy as nature preps for autumn.

Spider webs glisten on the morning dew, the night work of the orb weaver spider, a dream weaver with visions of captured flies. The day drifts on as monarch butterflies squirm from chrysalids on milkweed with green pods. Tansies paint the roadsides yellow, and goldenrod takes the cue. Nearby Jerusalem artichokes nod approval as they bloom in the same hue.

Blackbirds whirl in synchrony and frenzy above fields of browning oats and barley. Bullfrogs poke their fat heads above the green scum of a warm lakeshore. Wild plums blush in purple, and clumps of mountain ash berries in deepening orange bow under their own weight. Squirrels scurry for green acorns, butternuts and walnuts.

I walk past field corn. Rope-like tassels, the male flower of corn, beg for a breeze to carry their pollen to the silk of young slender cobs in this business of manufacturing kernels. Somewhere, bears anticipate milk-stage corn.

I hear talk of tomatoes on a walk at sunset, a sunset 20 minutes earlier than two months ago. Where does summer go? It goes on the wings of Canada geese, their molt over, now flying against the dusky sky, adults and goslings alike, all with new flight feathers.

This evening, the Milky Way stretches across the sky, through the humid air, horizon to horizon. I wonder at its vastness. How many stars in it, how many creatures great and small under it? I wonder where the hawk moth is tonight.

Note: Want to read more nature essays like this? My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through online book sellers and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail Books), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwind), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at Bookstore at Fitger’s. For a personally-signed copy, contact me at davegreschner@icloud.com.

Glistening in green

It’s June. The lupine moth is mint green. The vibrant hostas outside the patio doors are pea green. The bracken ferns along the trail are bright yellowish green. Green, green, and more green.

Greenness flows in waves and rows, across yards and to the forests and fields, to the trails and meadows. The forces and rhythms of nature’s rebirth stretch green to infinity. In my field of vision, green comes in all shades distinguishable; the human eye is said to pick up only 40 hues of green even though there are thousands or even infinite shades of the color.

I like how green streams through June, how it runs from the lawn to the meadow, to the rows of corn leading one’s eyes to the leafed-out woods. The color flows like verses in a poem, connected in visual rhyme, one purpose in time, leading spring into summer. I’m filled with the bloom of June.

The month glistens, wrote the poet James Russell Lowell. “And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, comes perfect days. Whether we look, or whether we listen, we hear the murmur, or see it glisten.”

In his “Succession of Four Sweet Months, Robert Herrick penned of June, “Next enters June, and brings us more gems than those two that went before.”

Gems indeed, on days so full that darkness defers for a time to the beauty. There are gems of campion and geraniums, their whites and purples dotting the greenness. Of daisy fleabane and wild roses, their yellows and reds dancing on a stage of green.

The fullness of June is breathtaking. I stare in awe, as well I should, as William H. Davies implored us to in “Leisure.” Davies penned, “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare? No time to turn to Beauty’s glance, and watch her feet, how they can dance. A poor life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”

Note: Want to read more nature essays such as this? My new book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through online book sellers and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Spooner (Northwinds), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and at Bookstore at Fitger’s in Duluth, Minn.

Choices on long days

It’s the first full day of summer, yesterday’s midday solstice behind us. I have 15 hours and 38 minutes to work with, or play with. What should I do as the sun takes its leisurly most northerly path, from sunrise in the northeast to sunset in the northwest?

Should I share the day with the skippers in the hay, trying to match their nonchalant ways as they bounce from daisy to daisy, drawn to oxeyes? Maybe I’ll look for agates in the dry creek, though maybe I’ll wait for the next hard rain to tumble them into view.

Should I ease into the morning with a cup of coffee on the quiet porch, or with a fishing rod on a quiet lake, the silence broken only by the call of a loon? That could also be saved for sunset, though I’m leaning towards a trout stream, watching brookies break the surface for mayflies, and for my imagination if not my imitation.

Also near sunset I could choose to walk with the cooling of the evening, perhaps seeing a deer doing the same as it tiptoes through corn rows or pauses in the fold of ferns to query my presence.

And the long hours between sunrise and sunset? What about them? I’ll watch a catbird at the bird bath, then walk a trail and make notes of tiny blossoms on brambles where green blackberries will begin their journey to sweetness.

Should I mow lawn or drive through the countryside and smell fresh-mown hay? I could follow a bumblebee or look for a walking stick—one the insect, the other a walking aid. I’ll check the bluebird box.

So many ways to go on long days in the greenness of June as nature takes up a myriad of matters in the extended light. The seasons turn on the solstice and the sun trails the corresponding path, keeping all in balance

Is there a solstice, a turning point, a path and balance in my own life? Am I on course, connecting the natural world with my inner self? There’s plenty of time to find out today.

The soul of the soil

There was a time when m0re of us were more in step with the soil in spring. Though I strive to be a steward of the land, I am not a planter of the land. Oh, what I miss because of that lost connection with the soil.

As a farm boy I watched my parents, our neighbors and my aunts and uncles work the land, plant seeds and wait for the magic of tiny sprouts of corn and oats. There was magic in the soil. Spring after spring.

These good people on small farms turned over the earth with small plows, only two- or three-share bottoms. Then they pulled disks and harrows over the furrows, back and forth, leveling the soil like smoothing a table cloth. The finished surface was a brown carpet ready for the oats drill or corn planter.

It was hard work, on a deadline, compounded by the lack of help since farm kids were still in school. I’d run from the bus to see a field transformed since morning. My dad, too, had changed, now focused on fields, not the milking chores.

A small wagon of seeds for corn, alfalfa and oats waited at the edge of the field while dad rushed to unhook the harrow and hook up the planter, all the time shouting out my duties over the puttering John Deere tractor.

I shuttled between the field and barn, helping dad plant, helping mom with milking the cows. Dad rolled through the fields until dusk. Dust in the dusk, and beyond.

Those farmers knew the land, loved the land, did what was best for the land. They knew when to plant each spring and recorded the dates on a wall in the granary or machine shed.

The fields were small, and sometimes so were the yields in summer and fall. But in the spring the hopes of crops wafted across the bare fields, those hopes and the earthy smell of soil settling into the souls of the stewards of the land.