field notes
I am hunting morels.
At least, that is what my story is. The truth would be that I just can't sit still anymore, be inside four walls closing in and making me small, and so I have struck a deal. The hated algebra is done, it's obvious even then that I have English *well* in hand. I can go to the woods and wander *provided* I locate four things I don't know about, bring them back to identify, and write a paper on each. It's *science.*
I don't know it yet, but this will turn me into one of those annoying girls that has to stop and identify everything with those field guide reference books. I have to KNOW.
And so there are jars of water in my scuffed backpack along with a book (haha did you really think that wouldn't happen?) and I have pulled on the knee high rubber boots we call 'muckers' and walked across the mile of cornfield.
Morels - the yellow ones - come up when the ground temperature is reliably 50 degrees at night and so the cornfields are softly greened with baby shoots that I respectfully step over. The field is soft and muddy and in some places I sink deep. If you get a perfect combination of 50 degree nights and a spring rain, that's when you go out to hunt mushrooms. I stop from time to time and kick off clods of the heavy, clay-ey soil that accumulates on the soles of my boots. My dog wanders in widening radii out from where I walk, galloping joyously through the mud, tags jingling.
the cornfield is bordered by strips of land that is mowed for hay - grass hay. This isn't planted with alfalfa, just left to grass or whatever feels like growing and I don't feel guilty about rambling freely here. It moves from corn into the 'first woods', then hayfield, then the 'second woods', moving west to east. If you move north from the second woods you come to a great clearing where the sedgy bracken grows high in the summer. It's spotted all over with great stands of wild blackberries that grow as big as my thumb, and then you move into the 'third woods'.
I always start in the first woods. The borders are held with stands of sumac and tangled thickets of wild roses and black raspberries. You can tell the berry canes even before they're fully leafed because of the shape and the color of the cane itself. Those have the MOST vicious thorns, and in the summer I'll suffer silently picking the damn things because those tiny, hard-won berries make the most amazing jam. But that is later.
I like to practice sliding in between the dense growth without having to use human hands to move anything aside. I twist and bend, moving around and under thickets. My hair is braided out of the way but it still gets caught on the long thorn trees. In the middle of the thicket I find evidence of deer; the neatly pressed roundish spots of a curled up form pushing into the ground. I stop and press my hand against it, knowing this is silly but wanting to check for warmth all the same.
I see sprays of rose hips that haven't been eaten over the winter, and I break off stems of these for no good reason and tuck them into my backpack. I think they're beautiful, and at home I will put them in a vase with last autumn's teasel blossoms that are still poking spiky and bristly out of the ground, collected carefully because of all of the prickers.
Once inside the edge the woods break free and open up. My dog checks in with me then lopes back off. It's a deciduous forest, not many conifers, and the ground is covered in old oak and maple leaves that cling damply to my boots as I walk. Sunlight filters lazily down through the trees and I stop to listen to the sounds of the woods, a perfect composition, the trees creaking in a breeze I don't feel, songbirds and crows chattering in the trees, the occasional squirrel.
Sometimes morels like to grow under old apple trees, ash or elm trees, around stands of Mayapple. I see a lush spread of the umbrella -like Mayapple plants, and stop to push all of the leaves carefully aside, checking the ground underneath for the wrinkly mushrooms. No morels, but the Mayapples are blooming, flowers hidden under those broad top leaves. In a few weeks there will be a fruit that is edible and I might come back to gather those. I briefly wonder why it's called *Mayapple* when the 'apple' isn't ready in May, it's just flowering, and then I move on.
I look for trillium flowering along the ground. I like trillium flowers and when I find some I pick the flowers and weave them into the ends of my braids on a whim. I stop for a few minutes and consider a dogwood tree that is in bloom, easily recognizable by those distinctive four-petal blossoms. There is something about the shape of the dogwood tree itself that I find delightfully alluring. The trunk and the branches are whimsically crookedy, and it's a short tree nestled at the bottom of all these oak and maple, scavenging light at the mid point of the forest with those crooked branches. I look up and watch the tops of the trees sway against the sky.
Eventually I move into the 'second woods'. There is an ancient fence line around this, decades old and I step over the rusted wire. The second woods isn't bordered by the thorn bushes but the ground dips lower here, and this is where the spring flooding happens. In the summer it will all be dried up and a normal walk, but melted snow and the spring rains have temporarily flooded the forest floor. I sit on a log at the edge of these vernal pools, bent low, and watch the water for awhile. There's all sorts of things going on in this shallow pool. I see pollywogs and things I can't identify and I scoop up as many as I can into one of the jars in my backpack, emptied of drinking water. I *know* what a pollywog is, of course, but I can't help but capture a few anyway, no more than I can not catch fireflies in my cupped hands.
It's very likely they will be leopard frogs; I know this because even though I am far too old to do so, I will spend far more time than I care to admit in the summer trying to outwit the frogs and catch them so I can examine them closely, just looking, before releasing them back, marveling at the beauty of the greeny-gold skin. But maybe they're toads, too, the gallumping warty things that we hope will show up in the garden in a few weeks. These must be captured and held for a moment too when discovered, carefully of course, the underbelly smooth and cool against my hands.
By now I've forgotten that I'm supposed to be looking for morels. I look for the pawpaw trees; I've never managed to actually catch these with ripe fruit; there's a very old and racially insensitive saying about the timing of gathering ripe pawpaws, and for some reason I know it, probably from some old book. To me the pawpaw leaves look tropical compared to everything else, and there's a distinct smell that reminds me of motor oil. That's how I found them in the first place; I stopped dead one day wondering why on earth I could smell motor oil. I wonder what the flowers would look like.
I wander out of the second woods, up a hill and into a clearing and I lay in the grass and read for awhile. The sun moves lazily overhead and I keep an eye on it. I don't wear a watch but I can tell time quite accurately by looking at the sky, although if I get stumped I'll make a quick sundial. My dog flops down next to me, her legs wet and muddy. She pants for a bit before dozing off. I finish my book and just lay half hidden in the grass and *watch* for some time. I investigate the texture of the grass in front of me and observe the shapes and colors of the tangled greenery.
I sense movement and watch a wild turkey mosey by and feel quite pleased with myself; wild turkeys in the woods are notoriously 'spooky' and it makes me feel quite accomplished to know that I can be still enough, I can blend into the ground enough that the turkey doesn't notice me. A short time later a doe cautiously pokes her head through the underbrush, a new spotted fawn scampering behind her. I hold my breath and slide my arm over my dog to keep her there and watch the delicate, halting steps. She doesn't see me right away but I can tell by the way her head moves, scenting the air, that she is picking up some whiff of my scent, however faint. The fawn cavorts, kicking up tiny heels. I am carefully not to look at the doe directly, because prey animals can always feel that gaze. I look at the space around her - I still see her, but she won't be as uncomfortable. But my dog shakes her head at an errant fly and the jangle of tags sends both deer flying for cover.
Someday I'll learn that things like minnowing through thorn bushes and being still enough that a turkey walks by, knowing not to look at animals directly, these things aren't accomplishments that anyone cares about and you can't put them on a resume or use them to 'get ahead'. But today, I don't yet realize that, and it is perfect.
At least, that is what my story is. The truth would be that I just can't sit still anymore, be inside four walls closing in and making me small, and so I have struck a deal. The hated algebra is done, it's obvious even then that I have English *well* in hand. I can go to the woods and wander *provided* I locate four things I don't know about, bring them back to identify, and write a paper on each. It's *science.*
I don't know it yet, but this will turn me into one of those annoying girls that has to stop and identify everything with those field guide reference books. I have to KNOW.
And so there are jars of water in my scuffed backpack along with a book (haha did you really think that wouldn't happen?) and I have pulled on the knee high rubber boots we call 'muckers' and walked across the mile of cornfield.
Morels - the yellow ones - come up when the ground temperature is reliably 50 degrees at night and so the cornfields are softly greened with baby shoots that I respectfully step over. The field is soft and muddy and in some places I sink deep. If you get a perfect combination of 50 degree nights and a spring rain, that's when you go out to hunt mushrooms. I stop from time to time and kick off clods of the heavy, clay-ey soil that accumulates on the soles of my boots. My dog wanders in widening radii out from where I walk, galloping joyously through the mud, tags jingling.
the cornfield is bordered by strips of land that is mowed for hay - grass hay. This isn't planted with alfalfa, just left to grass or whatever feels like growing and I don't feel guilty about rambling freely here. It moves from corn into the 'first woods', then hayfield, then the 'second woods', moving west to east. If you move north from the second woods you come to a great clearing where the sedgy bracken grows high in the summer. It's spotted all over with great stands of wild blackberries that grow as big as my thumb, and then you move into the 'third woods'.
I always start in the first woods. The borders are held with stands of sumac and tangled thickets of wild roses and black raspberries. You can tell the berry canes even before they're fully leafed because of the shape and the color of the cane itself. Those have the MOST vicious thorns, and in the summer I'll suffer silently picking the damn things because those tiny, hard-won berries make the most amazing jam. But that is later.
I like to practice sliding in between the dense growth without having to use human hands to move anything aside. I twist and bend, moving around and under thickets. My hair is braided out of the way but it still gets caught on the long thorn trees. In the middle of the thicket I find evidence of deer; the neatly pressed roundish spots of a curled up form pushing into the ground. I stop and press my hand against it, knowing this is silly but wanting to check for warmth all the same.
I see sprays of rose hips that haven't been eaten over the winter, and I break off stems of these for no good reason and tuck them into my backpack. I think they're beautiful, and at home I will put them in a vase with last autumn's teasel blossoms that are still poking spiky and bristly out of the ground, collected carefully because of all of the prickers.
Once inside the edge the woods break free and open up. My dog checks in with me then lopes back off. It's a deciduous forest, not many conifers, and the ground is covered in old oak and maple leaves that cling damply to my boots as I walk. Sunlight filters lazily down through the trees and I stop to listen to the sounds of the woods, a perfect composition, the trees creaking in a breeze I don't feel, songbirds and crows chattering in the trees, the occasional squirrel.
Sometimes morels like to grow under old apple trees, ash or elm trees, around stands of Mayapple. I see a lush spread of the umbrella -like Mayapple plants, and stop to push all of the leaves carefully aside, checking the ground underneath for the wrinkly mushrooms. No morels, but the Mayapples are blooming, flowers hidden under those broad top leaves. In a few weeks there will be a fruit that is edible and I might come back to gather those. I briefly wonder why it's called *Mayapple* when the 'apple' isn't ready in May, it's just flowering, and then I move on.
I look for trillium flowering along the ground. I like trillium flowers and when I find some I pick the flowers and weave them into the ends of my braids on a whim. I stop for a few minutes and consider a dogwood tree that is in bloom, easily recognizable by those distinctive four-petal blossoms. There is something about the shape of the dogwood tree itself that I find delightfully alluring. The trunk and the branches are whimsically crookedy, and it's a short tree nestled at the bottom of all these oak and maple, scavenging light at the mid point of the forest with those crooked branches. I look up and watch the tops of the trees sway against the sky.
Eventually I move into the 'second woods'. There is an ancient fence line around this, decades old and I step over the rusted wire. The second woods isn't bordered by the thorn bushes but the ground dips lower here, and this is where the spring flooding happens. In the summer it will all be dried up and a normal walk, but melted snow and the spring rains have temporarily flooded the forest floor. I sit on a log at the edge of these vernal pools, bent low, and watch the water for awhile. There's all sorts of things going on in this shallow pool. I see pollywogs and things I can't identify and I scoop up as many as I can into one of the jars in my backpack, emptied of drinking water. I *know* what a pollywog is, of course, but I can't help but capture a few anyway, no more than I can not catch fireflies in my cupped hands.
It's very likely they will be leopard frogs; I know this because even though I am far too old to do so, I will spend far more time than I care to admit in the summer trying to outwit the frogs and catch them so I can examine them closely, just looking, before releasing them back, marveling at the beauty of the greeny-gold skin. But maybe they're toads, too, the gallumping warty things that we hope will show up in the garden in a few weeks. These must be captured and held for a moment too when discovered, carefully of course, the underbelly smooth and cool against my hands.
By now I've forgotten that I'm supposed to be looking for morels. I look for the pawpaw trees; I've never managed to actually catch these with ripe fruit; there's a very old and racially insensitive saying about the timing of gathering ripe pawpaws, and for some reason I know it, probably from some old book. To me the pawpaw leaves look tropical compared to everything else, and there's a distinct smell that reminds me of motor oil. That's how I found them in the first place; I stopped dead one day wondering why on earth I could smell motor oil. I wonder what the flowers would look like.
I wander out of the second woods, up a hill and into a clearing and I lay in the grass and read for awhile. The sun moves lazily overhead and I keep an eye on it. I don't wear a watch but I can tell time quite accurately by looking at the sky, although if I get stumped I'll make a quick sundial. My dog flops down next to me, her legs wet and muddy. She pants for a bit before dozing off. I finish my book and just lay half hidden in the grass and *watch* for some time. I investigate the texture of the grass in front of me and observe the shapes and colors of the tangled greenery.
I sense movement and watch a wild turkey mosey by and feel quite pleased with myself; wild turkeys in the woods are notoriously 'spooky' and it makes me feel quite accomplished to know that I can be still enough, I can blend into the ground enough that the turkey doesn't notice me. A short time later a doe cautiously pokes her head through the underbrush, a new spotted fawn scampering behind her. I hold my breath and slide my arm over my dog to keep her there and watch the delicate, halting steps. She doesn't see me right away but I can tell by the way her head moves, scenting the air, that she is picking up some whiff of my scent, however faint. The fawn cavorts, kicking up tiny heels. I am carefully not to look at the doe directly, because prey animals can always feel that gaze. I look at the space around her - I still see her, but she won't be as uncomfortable. But my dog shakes her head at an errant fly and the jangle of tags sends both deer flying for cover.
Someday I'll learn that things like minnowing through thorn bushes and being still enough that a turkey walks by, knowing not to look at animals directly, these things aren't accomplishments that anyone cares about and you can't put them on a resume or use them to 'get ahead'. But today, I don't yet realize that, and it is perfect.