Into the Woods… with a Naturalist

I’ve been dragging my family along on forest hikes for 20 years. In that time, I’ve learned very little natural science, preferring to enjoy the beauty of the trees and moving water in blissful ignorance.

But an inner voice scolds me sometimes: You have no idea what’s around you. What, I’ve wondered, would a naturalist see, walking the trail beside me?

I decided to find out.

David Alexander, Senior Naturalist at the Essex County Environmental Center, agreed to join me for a walk through South Mountain Reservation. Fifteen miles west of lower Manhattan, the Reservation covers more than 2,000 hilly acres. I’d pictured my guide as a grizzled elder woodsman, but Mr. Alexander turned out to be a youngster, just nine years out of college. He’d brought backup, however: retired history teacher Dave Hogenauer, a volunteer with the South Mountain Conservancy who often leads walks through the park.

The younger David had brought a couple items to show me: a praying mantis egg case (or ootheca), and a few dozen baby mantids, each a quarter-inch long, in a plastic tub that formerly held Trader Joe’s cookies. The egg case was brown and grooved, about the size of a walnut, and looked prehistoric, like something that would hatch an evil alien. You can find them attached to the stems of shrubs about knee high, Mr. Alexander said; they’re easier to spot in the winter, when the leaves are gone. Unlike the egg case, the baby mantids — nymphs, to use the scientific term — looked very cute as they blithely explored the paper towel Mr. Alexander had placed in the tub.

We entered the woods. Barely out of the parking lot, Mr. Alexander stopped to point out a hay-scented fern growing alongside the path. Hay-scented is its actual name, and an accurate description. Mr. Alexander crushed a leaf between his fingertips and let me smell: “like just-mowed grass,” he said, and I agreed. The fern had just come up with the recent rain; the tiny leaves at the tips hadn’t unfolded yet.

Other ferns spotted on our walk included a Christmas fern (evergreen, even in December) and a group of ostrich ferns. The fact that fern is an entire category of plants hadn’t occurred to me before; I’d thought it was the official term for anything frilly and green that grows in the shade.

Naturalists know more than the names of plants and animals. They also know, among other things, which plants can be used as food or medicine, or even as a canoe. Jewelweed, for example — identifiable by its translucent stem, and by the way a drop of water on the leaf sparkles like a diamond — will prevent a reaction to poison ivy. Just slit the stem with your fingernail and rub it against the place where the poison ivy contacted your skin. Native Americans used it this way for centuries.

We came next to a spicebush. “Look at these shrubs,” Mr. Alexander said excitedly. “The tips haven’t been nibbled. Other years, you would have seen them all nibbled away, but they’ve had a chance to grow. This is evidence of a recovering forest.”

He was indirectly referring to the annual deer hunt, which reduces the number of deer in the Reservation by 40–50% each year, according to Dan Bernier, who supervises the program. Animal rights activists continue to protest the hunt, and say that contraception would be more humane and more effective in the long run — and I’ve always sympathized with their side of the argument — but Mr. Alexander argues that science (not to mention the N.J. Audubon Society) supports culling the deer this way. He added that the county donates most of the meat to the New Jersey Community Foodbank.

Fenced enclosures throughout the park — called “Forest Regeneration Sites” — are another means of helping the forest recover. Inside these deer-free plots, ranging from 5,000 to 40,000 square feet, landscapers have planted hundreds of native species selected by Rutgers botanists, in the hope that they’ll seed new plants throughout the park. There are 42 of these sites at South Mountain, each functioning, in Mr. Alexander’s words, as “a little Noah’s Ark.”

Later in our walk, we came upon some signs of success: new hemlock and white pine trees, each a foot tall, and an even smaller blueberry bush.

What you see in the woods depends on the time of year, the region, and the elevation. We heard migrating warblers singing, and saw “spring ephemerals” in bloom: wildflowers like Solomon’s seal, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and Canada dayflower. The trout lily had flowered a week earlier; all that remained were its little leaves, speckled like trout skin. Things change constantly in a forest. Mr. Alexander quoted nature-writer John Burroughs: “To learn something new, take the same path that you took yesterday.” Actually, that applies everywhere — though it may be especially true in the woods.

Two of the wildflowers we saw shared an interesting metaphoric trait. With both Solomon’s seal and Jack-in-the-pulpit, you have to lift a leaf in order to find the hidden flower. In other words, you have to know what you’re looking for or you’ll miss it completely.

Coming upon a black birch tree, Mr. Alexander cut off a thin twig with his Swiss Army knife. He whittled away the bark, handed me a handsome toothpick, and suggested I chew on it. The wood tasted like mint. Having grown up in New York City, where they teach you never to put strange things in your mouth, I was thrilled.

As we walked, Mr. Alexander pulled plants out of the ground now and then and left them lying by the trailside. The plants were Japanese knotweed and garlic mustard, both invasive species. Early settlers brought garlic mustard with them from Europe as an herb and a medicine. Crush the leaf and you’ll smell something like garlic. The plant is “allelopathic”: the roots emit a chemical that won’t allow other plants to grow nearby.

But why, exactly, are invasive species so bad? For one thing, they take over (or “outcompete”). Mr. Alexander showed me a stand of Japanese knotweed, roughly a hundred square feet of it, six feet tall, with nothing sharing its soil except a few skunk cabbages. Another problem: deer prefer to browse on native species, and one deer can eat seven pounds of foliage in a day. After a while, only the foreign plants are left standing. But the real reason why he pulls those plants has to do with the web of life. “Insects have coevolved with certain species. The spicebush swallowtail butterfly, for example: its host bush is the spicebush. Insects require specific plants, and birds eat those insects. Without the native species, you damage the ecosystem.”

Trees, wildflowers and shrubs are all very nice, but where were the animals? Isn’t that the unspoken hope when you go to the woods — that you’ll catch a glimpse of at least one wild critter?

First of all, Mr. Alexander explained, most birds and animals are crepuscular: they’re most active just before dawn and just after dusk. Unfortunately, the park is only open to the public from dawn to dusk. If it’s wildlife you’re after, you’ll do best to arrive at first light, or to stay until the sun goes down. Second, the park is a big place, with plenty of room for the animals to hide. And they always know when people are near. Even before you approach, they’ll hear a blue jay or another bird sound the alarm. But Mr. Alexander has a suggestion: “If you really want to see wildlife, be still. Just find a pretty spot and have a seat. Relax, and broaden your vision. Let your senses pick up on new indicators that you weren’t observing previously.” Mr. Hogenauer has seen a fox at South Mountain; Mr. Alexander has spotted a coyote and a pileated woodpecker. A good place to see great blue herons, egrets, and kingfishers is Diamond Mill Pond, the southernmost and shallowest body of water in the park. Fish are closer to the surface there, and you can see kingfishers dive straight down to catch them.

Each time a bird called, I asked Mr. Alexander for an I.D. He explained that he’s a generalist, not an expert in any branch of natural science, but he managed to identify, among others, a phoebe (“fee-BEE”), a robin (“cheerio!” — a pretty, honey-throated song), a tufted titmouse (“peter peter peter”) and a few unspecified warblers, with their high-pitched chipping and zeets.

You wouldn’t think there’d be much of interest to say about vines, but there is! On the hikers’ bridge over South Orange Avenue, we found a woody vine that looks exactly like the grapevine in my backyard. Mr. Alexander identified it as fox grape, from which Concord grapes are derived. The wild grapes have big seeds and remain sour until they’re fully ripe; by then the birds have gotten most of them. He likes to put them on his windshield to dry, and eats them as raisins.

Fox grape grows until it meets a tree branch; after wrapping a tendril around the branch, it keeps going. You can swing on the vines, Mr. Hogenauer said. (Test them first to see if they’ll hold your weight, cautions Mr. Alexander.) Mr. Hogenauer once took his grandson for a walk in the woods, and the bored boy asked, “When is this walk going to be over?” To keep his interest, Mr. Hogenauer showed him how you can swing on fox grape vines. From then on, the boy had to swing on every one they saw.

Even more amazing was the hairy rope. Mr. Alexander recited a version of the poison ivy rhyme — Leaves of three, let it be/Hairy rope, don’t be a dope/Berries white, take flight — and soon after, we arrived at a hairy vine about five inches in diameter, that had climbed at least thirty feet up the trunk of a tall tree. I knew about leaves of three, but I never would have associated this thick, fuzzy thing with poison ivy. (By the way, many non-poisonous plants also have leaves in groups of three, but “it’s a good first indicator,” said Mr. Alexander.)

Among the trees we encountered were red pine (dead of unknown causes and pocked with woodpecker holes as wide as a dime), sassafras (its crushed leaves smell like Fruity Pebbles, according to Mr. Alexander), ironwood (whose bark looks like muscle and whose strong wood is used for axe handles), shagbark hickory (the bark peels away from the trunk in slabs, and bats sometimes sleep in between, as do mourning cloak butterflies), dogwood (in bloom and beautiful, just like in my back yard, but it’s a native species, not a cultivated ornamental), and white pine. (You can make tea from white pine needles, which grow in bundles of five — easy to remember because there are five letters in white, as compared with the three letters in red pine. Guess how many needles to a bundle on those?)

Near one sturdy old beech tree, we noticed a younger, skinnier beech. I assumed a beech nut had fallen and germinated there, but Mr. Hogenauer explained that new beeches can grow straight up from an older tree’s roots. Later, by Cobble Falls, we saw an old beech with exposed roots and a new stem that illustrated his point as clearly as a diagram.

A flash of red high in a tree caught my eye. A cardinal, I assumed — but it was hard to be sure with the sun behind it and the leaves blocking our view. As it flitted from high branch to high branch, we noticed what seemed to be black wings. Mr. Alexander consulted his Droid phone and brought up a description of the scarlet tanager, a black-winged red bird (not to be confused with the red-winged blackbird).

About that phone: “The idea that technology and nature are disconnected, I don’t see that as being true,” Mr. Alexander said. “I enjoy having technology out on the trail, to help recognize what I’m looking at on the spot, or to take pictures. There are citizen science apps, I can post a picture and get immediate identification from some biologist somewhere else.”

Rains had temporarily flooded a low spot on the forest floor. I thought this would be called a big puddle, but the proper term is vernal pool. Frogs and salamanders breed explosively in these pools. “What about mosquitoes?” I asked. Apparently, the amphibians feast on them — which may finally explain the purpose of mosquitoes on this planet.

Some of the forest’s hidden wonders are more securely hidden than others, but even these can be uncovered, literally: by lifting logs and rocks and peeking underneath. Mr. Alexander had seen a red-backed salamander on his morning hike, and he hoisted a few logs by a stream, trying to find it again. No luck there, but he did find a red mite (tiny, bright red, clinging to the log’s underside) and a millipede (brown, wriggly, and an inch long, just like all the millipedes I’ve seen before without knowing their name). He also pointed out the eggs of a slug, a clump of grayish, jelly-like little pearls. “Always put the roof back on,” he instructed as he fitted the log back into its damp imprint.

On the south side of South Orange Avenue, just beyond the bridge, we came to a stand of storm-damaged trees, and here my guides mixed human history with natural science. “These aren’t first-generation trees,” Mr. Alexander said. Before the Reservation existed, this land was divided into thousands of small plots, some as small as a tenth of an acre. When you bought a house nearby, the deed came with a wood lot attached, so you could cut firewood to heat your home. After coal heat became the standard, the lots were clearcut and the timber was sold to the paper mill in nearby Millburn. The county purchased the land between 1895 and 1910, and planted new trees. In some of the photos from that era, “there’s not a tree standing,” Mr. Hogenauer said.

We came to a massive white oak at a fork in the path. The tree seemed to have three fused trunks. Mr. Hogenauer recently asked a school group to surround this tree, shoulder to shoulder, and it took 32 kids to complete the circle. Mr. Alexander said that lumbermen might have left the tree standing because of its awkward shape, or else to provide shade for farm animals, or as a property boundary.

Mr. Hogenauer calls this the Rhinoceros Tree, because a thick bough broke off the north side of the trunk long ago, leaving a sort of proboscis. Rainwater had collected in a natural birdbath on top of the rhino’s snout. The water was reddish brown (from tannin in the bark) and thin, wormlike creatures were wriggling about in it. Mr. Alexander identified these quarter-inch swimmers as mosquito larvae. Reading from his Droid phone, he said that they siphon microscopic organisms in the water for nutrition.

This was my favorite find of the day. I’d never seen anything like it before, never known that mosquitoes take this form before they emerge to annoy us. Though I’m 60, I felt the happy awe of an urban Boy Scout, his first time out of the city, glimpsing tiny miracles.

Both Davids make it their mission to help visitors — especially children — engage with nature, and to provide moments like this. “If you show kids today logos, trademarks, they can recognize them at the snap of a finger,” Mr. Alexander observed, “but if you show them leaves from your ten common backyard trees, they might get one or two.”

Young visitors respond instinctively to the woods, he says. “It’s the most authentic experience they’ve had in a long time. When they come out here, they get to use their senses. They’re touching the texture of the bark of the tree with their hands, using binoculars and magnifiers to see, they’re listening to bird sounds and insects and frogs. They’re scratching and sniffing plants.”

I would only add that all of this applies to adults, too. The subtle delights that Thoreau and Wordsworth described are still available, if you seek them out and slow down. There are treasures awaiting in the woods, and guides who want to show them to you. Even alone, though, without expert knowledge, you can discover wonders there.

Be still, and things will appear.