a few walks - blog 3

    Since my last blog, I've been out to the park three or four times. With the snow, it was the best time to be stalking through the forest, hoping to see deer. As a result, this blog is a blend of a few excursions through the leafless trees of Frick Park.

     I enter the park on the bike trail, and it's not too far before I start into the trees. There's a large strip of land between the trail and the upper ridge, where homes are. I walk slowly through this area and hope to catch sight of deer in the distance. A light snow falls, and in between the crunch of my steps, the wind blows, branches squeak, and squirrels gnaw on nutshells. They tc-tc-tc-tc-tc away, sitting in trees, grinding through to meat. A few birds chirp and a woodpecker rattles a tree. I follow the noise and find him high up in a tree. The squirrels continue chomping, birds call, the woodpeckers works, the wind blows, and it all becomes a feeling, an ambiance. It's not that unique, it's not that special. It's not grand, but it's not my living room. This moment--simple, quiet existence--lasts a few seconds before I start walking again.

     Moving forward, I come upon two sleeping spots. Imprinted in the snow is the body of two deer. About two by three feet, round at the edges, the spots are leaves and ice.

The heat of deer bodies have melted the snow and revealed the ground beneath.   I continue further, and there's a group of resting spots, where birds and squirrels are digging for food.








Suddenly, a small facet of the interdependence of these animals is clear to me. This is the ecology of the Pennsylvanian forest. The smalls birds and squirrels aren't diggers, but sleeping areas and deer hooves uncover scarce nutrients. The birds flirt back and forth between the bare leaves and a nesting bush nearby. While the deer are gone, they gather what they can.

 
 After watching a while, I head to the grass clearing, where a few dead trees stand in the middle, around them are caged sprouts. A few are oak, maybe, and few are evergreens. I've ordered books from the library about tree identification, and I'm curious exactly what kind of trees these are. Why these species? Are they native to Pennsylvania like the long-leaf pine to the Southern region? Before I'm too far into imaginative inquiry, two deer appear up the hill.  Camouflaged by dense brush, a doe stares through and flicks her ear. After a few minutes, the other deer grazes and digs through snow. The doe and I stand long enough that snow covers her back, her head, and the angle of her ears. A solid skiff lays over each of us, and I wonder, I don't know how, if my disturbance is costing her calories, costing her daylight.  We stood there maybe ten to twenty minutes, and though that's not long, I wonder how many calories that is in the cold of winter. That's twenty minutes she could have been eating.

      Suddenly, she spooks, and they leap up the hill. The two of them don't go far, still in sight, but I decide to leave them be. We've encountered each other and the moment is over. I leave the clearing and head back through the trees. I go slow, hoping to see other deer, but there's no sight or sound. At the top of the hill, I come across five to six sleeping spots--each a patch of leaves, dirt, and a few green sprouts.  They are spread over a circumference of thirty or forty feet, but all in sight of each other.  Even resting, the deer must remain alert, depending on others.

      I continue walking and daydreaming when I notice burs all over the bottom of my jacket, all over my gloves. As I trek, my fingers pick small burs from my clothes with little thought.  I never see anymore deer, but the whole way I pick and throw burs. I realize I'm spreading something through the forest no different from the birds or squirrels. Similar burs are probably trapped in the pelage of deer tracking these woods.  I'm part of the forest ecology, of the nearly invisible web of interactions.