Following John Burroughs

 The pleasure and value of every walk or journey we take may be doubled to us by carefully noting down the impressions it makes upon us. -- John Burroughs, from "Spring Jottings"

I own a lot of books that deal with birds and nature. I have a paperback copy of what might be the first writing devoted to carefully studying the flora and fauna of a particular area, "The Natural History of Selbourne" by English churchman Gilbert White. I have several volumes written by John Muir, whose detailed writings about Yosemite in California's Sierra Nevada mountains helped protect it first as a state, then as a national park. Muir then turned his sights on Alaska, exploring glaciers - including the one later named for him.

The view from Boyhood Rock - Slide Mountain with Burroughs'
grave in the foreground. (Margo D. Beller)

Henry David Thoreau's most famous book is his detailed study of his home area of Concord, Mass., and the nearby woods, "Walden." More recently, Aldo Leopold wrote about his Wisconsin farm in "Sand County Almanac." His book, like Muir's, promoted the importance of nature and our relationship with it in an increasingly industrial world.

And then there is John Burroughs.

I don't remember how I first heard of John of the birds, so called to distinguish him from John (Muir) of the mountains. My husband (MH) was surprised to learn I had not read him, although I had read OF him in John Taliafarro's biography of environmentalist Robert Bird Grinnell who, with Burroughs and Muir, were part of industrialist E.W. Harriman's Alaska expedition of 1899.

So I got two books of Burroughs' essays from the library and found a sort of kindred spirit, though I'll never be the naturalist - or the writer - he was.

Burroughs, born in a brown wooden house in Roxbury, N.Y., did his nature writing on the side while making a living as a teacher. Later, after he married, he took a job with the U.S. Treasury Dept., living in Washington, D.C. on the north side of the Capitol, in a house on a one-acre lot where he let his cow out to pasture on what later became the National Mall. It was at this time he met and befriended the poet Walt Whitman, who became the subject of his first book.

Woodchuck Lodge (Margo D. Beller)

But he did not enjoy being stuck in a government office, as he notes in his essay "A Cow in the Capital":

I planted myself as deep in the soil as I could, to restore the normal tone and freshness of my system, impaired by the above mentioned government mahogany.

Having been stuck in enough offices when I'd rather be out birding, I can commiserate.

So he and his family went home to New York, where he built a house in Esopus, near the Hudson River. Then he built a cabin nearby he called Slabsides and there he began writing in earnest. His essays were published in influential magazines and he soon became a best-selling author, his prose striking a chord with those city people who wanted to retain a connection with nature or remembered when their families lived on farms.

As a youth I was a philosopher, as a young man an Emersonian; as a middle-aged man I was a literary naturalist - but always have I been an essayist. (from "An Egotistical Chapter")

In the summer the family would go back to Roxbury, to another brown wooden house built by his brother and named Woodchuck Lodge. He would write in the hay barn. When he wanted inspiration he would climb to what he called his Boyhood Rock and look out at Slide Mountain, the tallest of the Catskills, and listen to the birds and commune with nature.

As he became successful he made a lot of rich and powerful friends - President Theodore Roosevelt, inventor Thomas Edison, automaker Henry Ford. All had a great love of nature. They would visit Woodchuck Lodge or the group would go on long hikes. It helped to have such friends. After Burroughs died in 1921, Ford bought the lodge to preserve it and the surrounding grounds. It was eventually incorporated as John Burroughs' Woodchuck Lodge Inc. One-tenth of a mile from the lodge is an open area that is a New York State Historic Area. It includes a path up to Boyhood Rock and Burroughs' grave.

Plaque on Boyhood Rock: I stand amid the eternal ways and
what is mine shall know my face. (Margo D. Beller) 

MH and I visited on Oct. 16 as part of our annual trek to see autumn leaf color.

The lodge is only open the first Saturday of the month until October, but it has been under renovation for years and we had not planned to enter. I wanted to see it and the hay barn where he wrote. It was a windy day, making it cold enough for me to need my winter parka. Then we drove down the road, parked and made the climb to the Rock. 

Between MH's knees and my previous falls, we both climbed very carefully. My wrist reminded me that it was still not 100%. I listened for birds but only heard a blue jay. MH and I sat on the bench provided and looked at Slide Mountain, 25 miles away, with Burroughs' grave in the foreground. Like the rock on the grave of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of Burroughs' influences, Boyhood Rock was Burroughs' headstone.

The silence was overwhelming. Except for a distant raven and a woodpecker softly tapping on a tree near us, it was quiet. No cars. No leaf blowers. No yapping kids or dogs. Just a mountain ahead of us and peace all around us. I almost cried. No wonder the man came here for inspiration. 

One of the few bits of deep color we saw in our travels.
(Margo D. Beller)

What we love to do, that we do well. To know is not all; it is only half. To love is the other half. (from "The Art of Seeing Things")

I thought of all the times I've been in parks, listening or trying to see birds, as I was passed by runners wearing noise-cancelling headphones, groups of chatting walkers or bikers zooming through. Rare is the time someone stops and asks if I've found anything "good," rarer still they tell me of the birds they've seen. Most people seem to use the park as background, to "get into nature" while paying as little attention to it as possible as they move through quickly. 

Before MH and I made our very careful descent to our car, I opened the wooden hutch where visitors could sign in and make comments. When the doors opened a small, winged insect flew out and into my open parka pocket. Maybe it sought more warmth than what the hutch provided. I tried to find the insect but it stayed hid. I wrote in the register, "Making the pilgrimage to a great man and writer." As I turned to leave, the small insect flew out of my pocket and landed on Burroughs' grave. 

I think Burroughs would've appreciated that moment.

My life has been a fortunate one; I was born under a lucky star. (from "My Boyhood")

 

Searching for Color

You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.  
― Ernest Hemingway, "A Moveable Feast"

I don't know when this ritual of looking for trees filled with dying, colorful leaves began. Doubtless, the good people of Vermont knew a good thing when they saw it, drawing those of us in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere up to New England to drive around, stay at a hotel, help the local economy and watch leaves color, die and fall without our having to sweep them up.

Ashokan Reservoir, Catskills, NY, Oct. 2017
(Margo D. Beller)

Watch a weather forecast and there's someone telling you which areas are "peak" or close to it. Look online and google "fall foliage" and see what you find. Regional websites, weather websites, tourist websites all trying to draw you to their regions to look at the colorful, albeit dying leaves.

This week I've swept dozens of long, hard, black pods from the black locust tree to the curb to allow MH to cut our lawn one last time before the raking begins. Plenty of leaves and pods to come. I can put some leaves into my compost pile but my pile is only so big and there is always too many leaves.

Rondout Reservoir during a brief moment of sunshine.
This and Ashokan are among the reservoirs that supply New
York City with water. (Margo D. Beller)

In my part of NJ this year the color isn't all that good. Yes, the dogwoods, Virginia creeper vine and some maples are showing red, some of the elms are starting to go yellow and some of the white oaks are going brown. But the overall picture is one of rain-starved trees trying to drop dully, tattered leaves as fast as they can to save energy and thus themselves for next year.

Yards with yellow and red maples are already covered with leaves so thick you can't see the grass. The whine of the leaf blower is heard throughout the land.

And yet, here was MH and me on a recent Sunday driving north to the Catskill Mountains, looking for color. Any excuse to get out of the house. Most of the day was cloudy and breezy and far from the expected 80 degrees, thankfully. At Rondout Reservoir in the Catskill Mountains of NY, a source of NYC's water, there suddenly appeared cormorants, common loons and ringbilled gulls in the water, and a shrieking redtailed hawk over my head.

Below, in the still-blooming daisies and goldenrod were Monarch butterflies. These delicate creatures were holding fast to the flowers in the breeze. They are flying south to Mexico for the winter, an amazingly hard journey for these little fliers.

(Margo D. Beller)

Rondout was our birdiest stop. The other reservoir we visited, Ashokan, had a great blue heron but not much else. As MH persisted in telling me, this was a leaf-peeping trip, not a birding trip. I watched the scenery go by and every so often got a surprise, such as the mature Bald Eagle sitting in a tree over the Neversink River or the female Common Mergansers in a pond near where we stopped to stretch our legs.

But color? Not so much.

Meanwhile, back at home, we've had a spate of clear, sunny, warm days and cool nights. More leaves are turning color. But is MH satisfied? Of course not, and when you read this we will be on the road again, this time in another state, looking for that mystical "peak."