Hannah Inglesby Reflections
Summer 2014
Twin Bridges
The coolness of the night pools, leftover, in all the places sun doesn’t touch. The sounds are those of ripened summer: the aeronautics of flies, an insect like an ostinato of tiny bells, and the intermittent swell of cicadas that crests and recedes. Almost noon, the light through the hemlocks lounges on hillocks of moss, in splashed languor. It’s a grove that’s secret-feeling, as if worlds could open up if you entered between the right two trees.
In the late August cant of the air and the light, there’s a sense of time’s fullness. Sitting here on the soft earth, my back against a trunk, I feel accompanied by the past. Children’s voices replay silently in my recent memory, called up by the miniature huts of sticks and moss still standing here and there amongst the trees. Only a few weeks ago, I led groups of gap-toothed kids, who were happy most moments to be in the woods at summer camp. They might now be buying new clothes and sharpening pencils for school, or gearing up for Grange Fair, but a part of them remains behind in the gestures of their play. The forest harbors these leavings graciously, reclaiming the little houses to the earth as the weather and the decomposers do their work of disassembling.
Memories stack like strata. Now I’m recalling one camp morning running with a fellow counselor, Vireo, to Twin Bridges. She’d been grasping at our morning meeting for what material to use that day for a bird tracks activity. Then, with minutes to spare, my thoughts flashed to the clay on the banks of Shaver’s Creek. We carved the clay with ice cream scoops into plastic bowls, which we toted back up to the environmental center. Later that day, after the kids had pressed tracks into trays of clay, Vireo walked with her campers back to Twin Bridges, where they ceremonially returned the gray earth.
A catbird is mewing. Its rusty insistence punctuates the sound of the creek. Were it not for time and rot, how many feet of hemlock needles would be piled here from how many years of growth and casting off? One of my campers lost a tooth while on the trail and we tucked it into her sandwich box. The tall joepye weeds hint how far we’ve come this summer, though more growth will arrive before the slope into snow. Past high waters have left swaths of sticks by the creek. A log is beaver-chewed. Lichens color trees as if they’re canvases in slow motion, the invisible painter working by increments. If I knew how to look, I could tell you what walked where. To the attuned noses of animals, this scene is a map of scents.
We need forests in many ways; among them is the sense they give us of our place in time. Forests hold the depth of seasons upon seasons, what with all the stages of striving and senescence commingling. The leavings of yesterday waltz with the births of today. The tree I lean on has been leant on before. Patience presides. Old cathedrals come close to attaining this quality of memory in balance, prayers imbuing the air with holiness and the tall columns causing us to crane our necks. But unlike the manmade, the forest regenerates. It insists up through the cracks where we hold it back. What falls down grows up. Our spirits need that doggedness.
Rudy Sawmill
Someone once sweat for what no more exists. In those afternoons, the ripping of boards must have seemed all-encompassing. It’s easy to forget in the moment that what is, is not forever. And sometimes it’s the opposite: too clear that all work is an exercise in impermanence. And yet we work, and we must. That Rudy’s Sawmill no longer remains does not mean it should never have been. We gain meaning by doing, I think, even if our strivings are a drop in the bucket of the world. There are those who would say the opposite — that we gain meaning by being, and that doing drives us away from centeredness. But to do whole-hearted work so fully that it ceases to feel like work is a means to jump into life’s current.
As I sit here with the creek going its way, I’m watching the movement of ants. They seem immersed in their production. Work, for us, can be nothing more than rote labor, especially if its purpose is gathering funds for the amassing of stuff. But, as I’ve seen evidenced in the staff of Shaver’s Creek, work can be the form of one’s passions, the channeling of exertion, and thereby, if only in moments, a route to freedom.
I remember one winter pruning apples trees in an orchard. Nowhere else did I want to be than on that hillside in my coveralls, high up at sunset; cold, alive, my muscles worked from sawing. Work certainly builds our houses and fills our bellies, but it can also teach us how to think and how to relate. I am twenty-six years old and still unsure, for myself, the shape of this concept they call career. There’s always the question of what move is the right move, but just now I think it does not matter so much which job I work and where, so long as I plunge my hands in up to my elbows in something I believe in. In full effort, there’s release.
Work is not done alone but relies, directly or indirectly, on cooperation with others. I’m imagining the team at the sawmill, whooping to each other over the noise and, on a good day, walking home in a glow of companionship. As an intern this summer, I was taught once again that the connections forged with my coworkers are just as important as the work we accomplish.
A sense of purpose is strong medicine. Thich Nhat Hanh said that a pine tree can give most fully to the world simply by being a strong and healthy pine tree. If I’m not afraid to sweat a bit, I too can do good work, using all my muscles to construct a channel for my innate gifts, building for this brief lifetime my place on the land.
Chestnut Plantation
I ride my bike in the flat, white morning to the top of the hill. I’ve come this way a half-dozen times before, up the gravel Shaver’s Creek Road through the Stone Valley Forest to the intersection of Hammond and Scare Pond. In the cleared area to my left is the chestnut plantation, protected by a woven wire fence. The air is lukewarm and thick with gnats. I read on the laminated sign that these trees were planted in 2003 by Penn State’s Honorary Forestry Society and volunteers from the American Chestnut Foundation. Research collected from these trees will aid the development of blight-resistant chestnuts.
The trees are now somewhat obscured by the tall grass that has grown up between them, as well as by sumacs and Queen Anne’s lace. Not all the trees are the same size. Some are saplings; others seem nearly tall enough to climb. The prickly burrs are forming and are neon green. Some trees are dead or dying and I wonder if they’re blight-stricken.
As I write, I’m sitting on the Mountain View bench, which looks down a grassy slope at Tussey Ridge beyond. This is the last week of my internship. Nearly all the other interns have trickled away to school or jobs, leaving just myself and another intern at the Roost, the hodge-podge cozy abode where five of us have stayed since the start of June. Last night Tom and I cooked on a fire outside the Roost and picnicked at this bench. Dusk gathered. Ballet of bats. What, I asked Tom, is the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen? For him, Katahdin in the mist. For me, it was the southern tip of West Virginia, when a white-haired backwoods herbalist named Annie drove my friend and me straight up a mountain track in a Gator. As we looked out from the summit, the green mountains rose and fell far as the eye could see, not a settlement in sight.
Then I asked the opposite: What was the ugliest? When it came my turn, I realized how lucky I’ve been my whole life to live in only lovely places: valleys, farms, and woods; old houses, streets with shady trees. I thought of places I’d travelled or visited. Still, what could be called ugly in every light? Not the sun glinting on skyscrapers, nor a garden in a vacant lot. Suburbs can be stultifying, first-glance, but with exploration reveal backyard beehives, blue glass bottles stuck in trees, and flashes of bright blooms. I thought of the interstate, but then I thought of a heron, ungainly and graceful at once, flapping over the semi trucks. Given half a chance, the beauty of nature insists.
Am I missing something, though? Is some part of myself underdeveloped for lack of a beauty I’ve never experienced? It could be that, growing up with only what I’ve known, I do not know what I lack. What grandeur, for instance, might be reinstated by chestnut research? Before being decimated in the early 1900s by chestnut blight, American chestnuts made up nearly a quarter of eastern U.S. forests and could grow six feet wide, 135 feet tall, and produce so many nuts that people could sometimes shovel them up. The chestnut blight arrived on imported Japanese chestnut trees in 1876 and within fifty years had killed four billion American chestnuts. Researchers are now experimenting with backcrossing Chinese chestnut and American chestnut, so as to impart the American chestnut with the Chinese chestnut’s blight resistance.
Time passes. We lose and gain. Often we cause our own losses, at least environmentally. No more do the skies darken with the now-extinct passenger pigeon; no more, in this area, do the mountain lions scream. Sometimes, though, we can amend our impact. Perhaps next century’s LTERP writer will sit on this bench some spring, looking out at a hillside white with blossoming chestnuts.
Dark Cliffy Spot #1
An error of perspective kept me walking.
In search of a rockface seeping wet
sheer, dark, ferned
formed in my imagination
I passed the place I sought.
At trail’s end I redoubled
it dawning the smaller rock I’d passed up
was my destination
after all:
not dramatic, not to make me
catch my breath
but yielding with time spent.
Becoming righter.
As I sit, I see
this is a place not of rearing up
but of soft subsuming:
the creek digging itself deeper
year by year
roots blanketed by moss
like bones beneath skin
a strand of barbed wire swallowed
by a hemlock trunk
a name carved in a beech
and grown shallow and stretched.
The rockface, not a cliff
begins beneath the surface of the creek
its slanting ridges
topography
for minnows.
Bluebird Meadow
Like the Great Spangled Fritillary
a butterfly in this meadow
the unknown flits and alights
adorned with dusty loveliness
that won’t sit still.
When it crawls on your hand
it’s a creeping thing
to some distasteful
or casting great shadows
by its insubstantial wings.
The unknown is a thing we arrive at
through the metamorphosis
of today into tomorrow
and if we could hook our sight
to its tiny insect eyes
we could sup the nectar
of the whole landscape
and get the lay of the land
of which we usually see
only pollen grains.
Lake Perez
A cockeyed platform juts out into a patch of weeds. The sign reads NO FISHING FROM DOCK. Rows of upturned boats, unfloated for years, seem to itch for their return to water. The rental office is silent. Spanning the width of most of the former 72-acre lake is a scrubby meadow, splashed with goldenrod. Saplings have grown up in places. A juvenile red-tailed hawk circles and calls. This summer, when it was my turn to work a Saturday in the center’s bookstore, the most common question I fielded was, “When’s the lake coming back?” Now, as of a few weeks ago, the dam is finally repaired. On the end near the dam, the lake is filling. There the landscape is a darker shade of green than the meadow, the water reflecting trees and the shadows between them.
On one night hike, Friday evening during a week of camp, I watched kids and parents look out from the Sunset Point Pavilion. They observed not a lake of water, but of fireflies, and followed with pointing fingers the swooping bats. Two bat boxes are mounted on the back of the bald eagle enclosure. I’ve heard stories of how, in years past, groups would gather there before the night hikes and watch hundreds of little brown bats pour out. Now, the boxes’ population has dwindled to near zero. White-nose syndrome is suspected, but the lack of lake may also play a part in the bats’ absence. Bats need a body of water near their roosting sites. Soon after leaving their box or cavity or attic, bats will dip down and scoop up a sip on the fly. So maybe when the lake comes back, so too will the bats. [White-nose syndrome is still by far the most likely cause, though. — Ed.]
In the years since the lake drained, the aquatic ecosystem shifted to meadow and marsh. I wonder if the water will encroach slowly enough for all the creatures who have taken up residence to relocate. Will the smell of nearing water be like an eviction notice, sending all the voles and snakes packing?
Before the lakebed turns back to aquatic plants, I imagine the meadow will last, below-water, for a few days. I like to think about the topside world submerged. If only in my daydreams, a turtle could swim through tree branches. A fish could hide where a bird once perched. Below- water and above — these seemingly distinct worlds — will for a time overlap. The grasses will sway in the water, dusky emerald, with the light filtering down from the surface.
Raptor Center
In the bald eagle enclosure, I feel incongruous: here are my heavy bones so near this creature of speed and flight. Though I’ve been told not to make eye contact, it’s hard not to stare at its white crown. I feel a little star-struck. This is the emblem of our country! Its razor-hooked beak is so yellow…and big. The bald eagle vocalizes in warning, a funny sound that I’d not expect to come from this bird, a sound that reminds me of a cross between a dolphin and a squirrel.
Each environmental education intern is assigned at least one week to work with the Raptor Center. On my first day in this role, I entered the bald eagle’s enclosure alone, bucket in hand. Every day someone tidies the enclosures, using tongs to peel strings of guts from stumps, picking up sticky down feathers, and raking the gravel clean. I had told myself I wouldn’t be intimidated by the eagle. But as he postured, dodging towards rather than away from me, I couldn’t keep my heart from beating fast. This bird is meant for power. While I am not a rabbit, I still eyed its talons with fear-tinged awe. Nothing bad came to pass that day and a few days ago, as I again picked up the bald eagle’s feathers, my heart beat slower. The eagle quieted as I hummed, then, sensing my tactic was working, sang it some Joni Mitchell.
I feel out of place, and honored, in all the enclosures. While I’ve not spent a lot of time with the birds this summer, I do consider them fond acquaintances. They are all quirky, majestic, and, were they not permanently injured, remarkable hunters. Though I know they were — and are — wild, it’s hard for me not to anthropomorphize them. The barred owls look perpetually perplexed, as if they’ve just woken from a nap. The kestrel flies, trilling, to the wires of her enclosure, looking for a treat. The black vulture with its ruffed hood reminds me of a Jim Henson creation. The turkey vulture tries to untie my shoes. And the barn owls hiss and bob and spread their wings grumpily from their high perch when I enter. The screech owls remind me of little old men.
All day long, off and on, the golden eagle squawks. During one week as a camp counselor, I had a camper who loved to imitate her noise. I wonder what she thought when this wisp of a boy would stand in front of her, responding to her high-pitched calls.
As I stroll through the raptor center today, a season of images drifts through my thoughts. I recall the pungency of dead rat as it’s snipped in half with shears. There’s the way a toad eats, waiting in front of a mealworm motionless, then flicking out a pink tongue and, as it swallows, its protuberant eyes closing and sinking into its head. I think of how the rat snake feels to hold it: muscled, heavier than I’d expect, cool, its scales sometimes catching on my fingernails. I think back on the festivals at which the Raptor Center tabled. Sometimes I’d sit in front of a display of wings and feathers, explaining how the fringed edge of an owl wing helps it fly silently. I’d talk to people as I held up animal pelts or explained the differences between venomous and non-venomous snakes. There was the guy who told me about eating roast snapping turtle, and the stories of a family who’d watch coyotes play in their backyard.
The Raptor Center is, for me, about the intersection of people and wildlife. My continued feeling of incongruence as I encounter the animals here is evidence of my awe. The sight, the flight, the radical ability to survive with only the tools of their own bodies — I am humbled by these animals and grateful for the rare close look at them the Raptor Center provides.
Lake Trail
One July evening, planning my next day’s hike with campers around the Lake Trail, I set out by myself. I ignored the gathering clouds, this being my only chance to make sure I knew the route before I led a group of kids on it. Halfway into the hike, the rain started. Then the thunder. When I came to powerline clearings, I ducked and ran, feeling vulnerable in the open stretches. Though it was not past 8:00, the forest had darkened and the hour felt late. The rain came so hard that the jacket I’d worn was useless. Once I resigned myself to being wet, I no longer felt resistant to it. The trees were wet and I was wet, and together we were beneath the storm that was bigger than any of us. Flashes of lightning cast brief shadows. If I’d heeded my judgment, I would have stooped down and taken shelter, but I relished the feeling of being buffeted. My skin prickled as the thunder closely followed the lightning. The sky sounded like it was tearing. I made my way home safely. At the Roost, my housemates looked at me for a moment gape-mouthed. They hadn’t realized I’d been out in the storm, and there I stood, looking happily addled in my sopping clothes.
Now as I write, it’s raining again, but only hard enough for me to hear the drops on the maple leaves above me. A raven, very near, is saying “rawk, rawk, rawk!” I’m sitting not on the Lake Trail proper, but on Spearmint, the trail we used this summer to skirt the dam construction when we took kids on the Lake Trail loop. This spot, where a long plank bridge spans a muddy section of Shaver’s Creek, is where, one Thursday, my campers completed their stream study. The water was too cloudy to find crayfish, but they discovered water pennies, mayflies, stoneflies, dragonfly larvae, and, to their dismay, one large leech. Their favorite part of the stream study was afterwards, when they were challenged to make boats from found materials. One group discovered the top half of a G.I. Joe; he rode their bark boat. Another group made a ship for a queen, which was an acorn perched on a tiny yacht. We all cheered on the boats, seeing which one could stay afloat longest.
Hiking on the Lake Trail with campers, we’d sing camp songs. Loudly. Sometimes the same ones over and over. As someone who herself likes to go quietly, I struggled with instigating such raucousness — it much diminished our chance of seeing wildlife. But when kids sang, they forgot about how far they’d walked or had yet to walk. Or that they were hot or wet. So much of the year, kids are funneled down the halls of school, where they must stay in line and stay quiet. And so, to shout, “You can’t ride in my little red wagon!” at the top of their lungs — in a place where no one is going to tell them to settle down — is a blessing.
Once, I hiked with a dear friend at Ricketts Glen, a trail northeast of here featuring stunning waterfalls. He brought his ukulele and barreled out tunes in his baritone voice as we walked along. I felt embarrassed at the time, as if we had trespassed on the ears of warblers. Today, though, when I consider the volume of thunderstorms, the songs we sing on trails don’t seem such an affront to the solemnity of trees. While going quietly is a valuable way of knowing, exuberance also has its place. The woods host beauty but they are not a museum. The rain falls in torrents, lightning cracks trunks, ravens call out and, from time to time, a pack of seven-year-olds sings till they’re hoarse. The auditory disturbance will dissipate, but the connection to nature these kids develop may last a lifetime, creating the citizens who’ll protect these lands.
