winter bark

Winter is a time for bark. In spring we see the buds and flowers, the maroon haze of maples and the fine, yellow-green mist that starts to spread across hillsides. In June we hear the whisper of young leaves, which deepen into rustles in summer and finally throaty rattles in fall. We identify by leaves, and marvel that oxidation and changes in sunlight morph green into golds and scarlets and purples. But in winter we finally see the skin, the shape of the skeleton itself. We tune a finer eye; texture becomes our pallet, subtler than outrageous shades of autumn leaves. We understand clearly the difference between the scales of red pine and the furrows of white, diamond skin of ashes and strips of hickory. Grays and browns and everything in between.

My skin itself sparks when I walk through the woods in winter. One only need see the smooth, muscled bark of a beech and the urge to drag one’s black-bear-claws into it makes the skin ripple. Sugar maple, its gray bark smooth in the young and cracked and furrowed in age gives nuthatches crooks and crevices to search. The jaggy diamonds of white ash beg to traced, exaggerated snake skin and back-scratcher extraordinaire. And the birches! They are the swans, the snow geese, the cardinals of winter – bold and daring and stark in their contrast to winters grays and greens. Paper, its swaths of combustible bark, and gray with its chevron-eyes. Yellow birch seems to me a sneaking ghost of Christmas present, in all its ebullient, shimmering opulence. It recalls the gold Rumpelstiltskin spun, and its twigs in deepest winter are sharp and sweet. They grow larger and thicker than all the rest, and seem jolly in their girth.

But, to me, winter belongs to the hickories and aspens. The great, ripping shreds of shagbark hickory seem almost indecent. The strips detach at both ends, holding fast in the middle, giving the tree an appearance both undulating and sharp. The ripped bark might seem an entry way, a vulnerability, but in fact they are plates of flame-resistant armor. It is one of the only trees that can withstand the hottest fires, the strips creating a barrier with pockets air outside the precious cambium layer. There are three shagbark hickories that will stay in my memory forever, and even the thought of them makes me draw my breath.

And then the great producer of clones, the colonizer, pioneer, succulent food and northern-most survivor: Populus tremuloides, the quaking aspen. Its bark is beyond compare. Come to a grove of aspen just before twilight on the clearest winter days and you’re through. It is an olive-gold unrivaled, the color magnificent, and the secret to its near-artic existence. Aspen photosynthesizes through its bark, and the lighter color also prevents cracks on the coldest winter nights. Trees with darker bark will absorb surprisingly large amounts of heat on even the coldest winter days, if there’s sun. As night approaches the temperature drops rapidly, and the difference in temperature will cause huge cracks down a tree, most often on its southern side. But aspen, and birch, rarely suffer the scars. They stay bright, and they stay cold. Aspen bark is a favorite of beavers and porcupines alike – I’ve seen a tubby, spikey fellow high up in an aspen more than once (being remarkably well-protected, they don’t much bother with curious and noisy on-lookers below).

Aspen is glorious in all seasons – watch its shaking, silver coin leaves turn to gold come autumn. But in winter it reigns, and evokes that near-divine response, the humble awe, the quaking.

hope-sewn peas

*a companion to garlic and rye, from last spring*

I put my bare hands in furrows today, deep and dark and crumbling. They were so gently awake, and wide, and warm-smelling so soon after being so frozen. There will still be snow, but now there are peas snug and tucked down tight. A second sleep, and then metamorphosis.

Mine is not so dramatic, nor productive. But in the shower that stung my cracked hands the water ran brown with soil, and it made me laugh the bright laugh that went south with robins and warblers. Then I thanked all of my body, out loud to the walls, yes even the nail beds and blisters.

I do not ask an oak to leaf in winter, but crave its craggy form and trust its sleep. And when I worried how the snow might chill our hope-sewn peas, the farmer shrugged a light, wise shrug and taught me – plants want to grow.

garlic and rye

We’ve been at our place in Charlemont for almost two months now – we moved in about the middle of October, well after the first frost. It took us a good week to move in, and so it wasn’t until the end of October that I actually took to the garden. It had been abandoned mid-July, and so there were still a few persistent peppers on the stalk and mounds of mint. But the other inhabitants were the usual weedy suspects – purslane, shepherd’s purse, chickweed, galinzoga, dandelion, plaintain (all of which, by the way, are edible, delicious, and some of the first to come out in spring). It was completely grown over, so the first task was simply to get back to bare ground. A little odd to be weeding in late October freezing rain, but one has to start somewhere.

And that’s it, that’s the secret. Start somewhere, anywhere. I am not a gardener – in fact, most things that I hesitantly take into my care whither, and if they manage to hang on it’s in spite of, not because of, the misguided care I give. But I want to garden – it is one of the simplest, most cost-effective and environmentally beneficial actions we can take, as long as you don’t dump fertilizer and pesticides everywhere. But there are many a blog that expound on the wonders of organic gardening (see Cella’s!). Anyway, I don’t even have gardening tools, so I went at the garden with an oversized serving fork.

Well and darn it I want garlic. Hard-necked varieties do well in cold climates, and they’re planted in the fall, mulched with leaves or straw or whatever else you’ve got, and then harvested the next July. By the time I’d gotten things ready all the garden centers had run out of garlic, so I just picked some up at the co-op. I planted two corms (not bulbs, as they’re separated into cloves), and patted them to sleep with a blanket of straw. It’ll be a long wait, but maybe I’ll get to make fresh pesto and pickles next summer and fall.

But, remember, I am not a gardener! One of the jolliest and most energetic people I’ve met is John, a volunteer at Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, Mass. He’s headed up the community garden in Wellesley for over thirty years, and knows a thing or two about plants. After a snowy April fool’s day, he came in whistling saying he’d planted the first of his garden in snowy, almost-frozen ground. I looked at him rather shocked, and he shrugged and said, “Well, Hannah, plants want to grow.”

Indeed they do. We are inspired but intimidated by expertise, I think – we take tests in high school that tell us what our talents might allow us to do. A bachelor’s is often not enough; we need to be masters before we begin. What a suffocating assumption. We’ve learned we have to learn, in fact, before we do. I don’t know how many times I’ve proclaimed what I’m not: an artist, a musician, a singer, a gardener, a writer.

Creation, then, can seem to us looming, scowling down at us – hallowed and distant. When, in fact, it’s just a seed. A pen, a crayon. It’s a minute. And so much of it is generously passive, out of our hands. I got a little crazy after the garlic, and decided to try some winter rye, to cover crop the rest of the garden and try to nourish the soil a bit. I got a pound of seed, and as my hands were chilly and there was tea to be had inside, I didn’t really even plant it. I tossed it about, unevenly, and then sort of raked it into the soil with my hands, and patted it down. Sort of. I didn’t even water it.

And now I look out the window, and there’s the sere, yellow patch of hay, and then a haze of soft, etched green throughout the rest of the garden. The rye isn’t growing evenly, but there it is, growing.

It can be hard to begin. But we and plants are hearty, and do desperately want to grow.

the trees wake me up

*from last winter*

Yesterday I went into the woods.

I took with me Hamlet, and snowshoes, and the stew of static I carry, my wicked halo. Conjuring doubt, formulating tricks and untruths, questions that beckon to nowhere. That pull me with hook and weight, down, and further down. Devilish and slippery, they knit my brow and crook my neck. I see vapors, shadows, whispers….

Then I look up. Breath, breathing, cold and clean and separate. Trees, my trees, bastions of un.doing. White pines in their straight strength, hemlocks in feathered grace, and bare, beautiful oak. In cool blueish (almost pink) afternoon, the sun deep in the west, I laugh at constructed gravity.

But as soon as I draw one deep breath (or perhaps even on its cusp) I shake my head in shame – my trees? Yes I’d already gilded them, wrapped them in words, made them for me, degraded them with purpose. Hemlock and pine are mysteries I will never unfold. Locked in the law of subjectivity, I am deeply humbled. But to crumble would not be proper, either.

I go inside, and I wash my blue cup, the one with the braided handle, slowly. I keep my eyes on it until it’s settled, entirely, on the shelf. I let my hand linger a bit as my fingers trace the fur beneath Hamlet’s collar. I notice all three of us are going gray.

how's your topography?

A word about place, as befits a proper introduction. Too often, I think, it’s absent from our particulars. How are you, what do you do, whom do you know… I want to know, what surrounds you? How’s your topography? Who grows above you? Lithe aspens, stark birches, or craggy oaks? Is there water? What does the sky do?

I live in Charlemont, Massachusetts, on the Deerfield, reportedly New England’s hardest working river. Our bend of it lives up to the moniker, as it seems to rush off with many a thing to do. It’s a bit odd, this time of year, but the storms and snows have kept the level up. It still runs with sediment following the erosion of hurricane Irene, and the subsequent (and misguided) channeling of the Chickley River that runs into it. But alder reaches over the banks, and witch hazel with its spindly petals that bloom in late fall. I watched a bald eagle ride a current ten feet above the surface two weeks ago. Yellow birch, its almost flaxen peels of bark curling, populate the banks and upland, along with black oak and beech. The stubborn leaves of each keep each other company, and rattle. Come up to the yard and we have raspberries, a couple of small gardens, gray birch, white pine, and sugar maples. There’s a stand of staghorn sumac, its red seed heads, bobs, picked clean. I once read them described as painted witches’ fingers. And the two ancient apple trees that are more crag and cavity than tree. Among these old friends are the shadow-species, the invasives: Japanese knotweed, Japanese barberry, burning bush, Asiatic bittersweet, and multiflora rose.

Down along the banks I find deer and weasel tracks, piles of woodchips from both beavers and pileated woodpeckers, and once three or so weeks ago I found unmistakable black bear prints. Now I’m just waiting to find my catamount. But the mythic mountain lion, like the ivory bill, demands another entry.

These aren't just catalogues of biodiversity, these introductions. There's a biography for every individual, let alone each species. But it's the act of recognition, acknowledgment, the taking of time to see and name (though knowledge is deeper than taxonomy). I rather feel that when one let's one's gaze rest on a tree, a shrub, a squirrel, it leaps forward and is stitched a bit to ourselves. The sugar maple is not scenery, but existent unto itself. And then we step a little more carefully, feel a bit closer, and celebrate a bit more. We see.

dioramas and sparrows

Before we get to the nitty-gritty, like “who is Sam?” or “Wait I just wanted to check the weather!” or “no seriously what happened to Sam??” I want to talk about dioramas. You heard me. Those shoeboxes on their side, people made out of clothespins and clouds/birds/airplanes suspended from floss from the top. You remember. The little hot glue strings always got all up in your business, and they got a little dented on the school bus, but all in all they were SO DARN COOL. And don’t get me started on the life-size ones at the natural history museums. They put cellophane, backlit fires to shame. To shame! The point is – do you remember the feeling? Do you remember being that awesome combination of mesmerized, excited, and drawn in? Why? A diorama is an interface. It’s taken a moment, an experience, a species (remember those woolly mammoths?) for the most part far away and inaccessible, and brought it into your hands. Even as it has been frozen, shrunken – the viewer is broadened, enlivened. Your imagination roars. You feel wild, outside yourself.

This brings me to the actual nitty-gritty, the point of the blog. We all need some wild-ing. I have spent the last few years unplugging – from facebook, tv, and finally a cell phone, except for emergencies – and re-inserting into something more nourishing. A blog seems like an odd choice, but I’ve come to believe it can be a diorama, an interface. It’s not real – but the hope is that something, sometime here will make you go “whoa, sweet!” And you’ll get the diorama butterflies, and go outside.

Which finally brings me around to Sam. Mr. Peabody is not a person, but (as anyone with binoculars by the window probably knows) the song of the white-throated sparrow. It’s a little bird, generally in the northeast year-round, with a black and white striped head with bright patches of yellow above its eyes. It forages on the ground in flocks come this time of year, but the thing’s in the song. He says “poor-sam-peabody-peabody-peabody!” Or, in Canada it’s “oh-sweet-canada-canada-canada!” Unmistakable. So, birds are great, but why the title of a blog? Because Sam Peabody is a diorama. To know the unknowable, feel kinship and belonging to another species – to recognize! It wilds us. We yoke the song in human terms, but as we bring it in it coaxes us out. This friendly sparrow is a gateway, a door. Yep, it’s a gateway birdsong. Birders bird, in part, because of the accessibility and comfort it brings – the simple satisfaction of hearing that sweet song and thinking, “yes, the white-throat, the world is out there.” We are brought closer, we are more awake. Listen.

Welcome!