Walking in the Woods

It’s always struck me as strange that we have a separate word for walking in nature, hiking, as opposed to just walking. Is walking too mundane? Maybe.

I was hoping Rebecca Solnit’s excellent book Wanderlust might have an answer, but in fact it never comes up.

So why “hike”? My 1913 Webster’s offers “tramp” and “march” as alternatives, but certainly at this point tramp feels colloquial. And unless you’re in the military you aren’t marching. Which leaves hiking. The word is curiously absent from my 1972 copy of the OED. An online etymology dictionary traces the usage to 1809: “hyke ‘to walk vigorously’, an English dialectal word of unknown origin”.

Hyke. Hike. So be it. Or not. I think I’ll stick with walking, it’s in the tag line of this site after all.

I was thinking about that tag line on a recent walk in the woods. The Walk Slowly bit up there in the masthead is there as a personal admonishment. I tend to rush things. I eat too fast. I talk too fast. I used to drive too fast. About the only thing I have never rushed is walking. As anyone who’s walked with me will tell you, my walk is more of a leisurely saunter. At best. That’s not to say I can’t cover ground if I have to, but I prefer to walk slowly. The tag line is there to remind me to apply that same slowness to everything else.

That said, I do not by nature walk quite as slowly as a two-year-old. Now I do though. Of necessity. I don’t know if it’s from observing me or just some innate thing I handed down, but the girls take after me in that respect. Hands thrust in pockets because of the chilly air, they “hike” like I do, sauntering along, taking their time.

They look much cuter than I do doing it though.

We recently went on our first hike of the season. I think hiking in the balmy 68 of February may be akin to burying our heads in the sand — we should really be shopping Arctic Circle real estate while the demand is still low. The poles are the future.

It’s always disconcerting to return to a familiar place having skipped a season. We had not been hiking at Sandy Creek Nature Center since summer. We missed the long slow transition from lush wetlands to bare woods. I had forgotten how much quieter every thing is in Winter. No cicadas, no crickets, no frogs. With no foliage to dampen it and no insects to drown it out, the roar of the nearby highway is more noticeable. Winter makes our little patch of nature feel smaller and more hemmed in.

It’s what we have though. Plunge your head in the sand and walk. Slowly. Along the ridge then to the left down into the wooded plain that precedes the wetlands that spill out from the pond. Down here Cardinals shadow us along the trail, flitting though the otherwise silent, bare trees. Red streaks of feather followed by the familiar short, thin chip song fading into the deeper recesses of the woods. In winter the bright red stands out easily among the tans, browns and grays of wilted foliage.

As always there is no one out at the nice birding blind donated by the Audubon society. There never is. In fact, despite hiking dozens of Sunday mornings out here, we have only once encountered anyone else beyond the first 50 meters of trail.

The blind is at the east edge of the pond, which is where Winter makes itself even more starkly felt. There are no dragonflies or skimmers darting among the lily pads. There are no lily pads. The pond is bare, quiet. The wind ripples the surface and Olivia says the water is coming toward us. And of course it is, the tiny waves begin to lap the shore, tossing a lone water strider deeper into the recess of moss and twigs. A orange and yellow Weaver Spider scampers out of the low hanging bowl of its web, seeking shelter higher up where web is attached to a reed.

We eat trail mix, not because we are particularly hungry, but because, hiking! Later we walk along the pond to the wooden staircase that leads back up to the pine covered ridge and home.

The next Saturday I get up just before dawn and check the temperature. 22 degrees F. That’s the sort of cold, calorie burning weather that calls for a plate of doughnuts.

By the time we hit the trail it’s above freezing and not bad at all when you’re out of the wind, which we are in the woods. We’re late though and for the first time there are other people out and about. There’s even someone in the blind despite the fact that there aren’t many birds out this morning — not a Cardinal to be heard. We see a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet or something similarly small and greenish, but otherwise the woods are devoid of life. It’s amazing what difference an hour and a few people makes to wildlife even here, in the only marginally wild.

As we near the pond Corrinne spots a Canadian Goose cruising the wetlands just before the pond. We stop and watch a while as it ducks its head to strain the silty mud along the opposite shore.

When we get to the pond there are two more Canadian Geese. We pick our way slowly through a maze of roots to the bench where we usually take a break. The geese swim right by, headed for the other end of the pond. I pull out the trail mix, because, well, hiking! But I swear the minute the sound of the ziplock bag opening breaks the relative silence, the geese whip their heads around and do an about face, heading back out way.

They take their time, eyeing us the whole way, but it’s pretty clear they’re hoping for handouts. Not the strangest animal I’ve had beg for food (that would be an alligator. Seriously.), but it certainly isn’t what I expected when we first spotted them. They get so close I have to take the zoom lens off my camera.

Lilah of course wants to hug them. They seemed okay with idea even if we aren’t.

The geese make sure to keep an eye on the bag of trail mix, but we never give them anything. They seem content to just hang out and dig in the mud for algae and whatever else they’re finding.

Soon the trail mix is gone and the girls want to climb the stairs again, take the shortcut back up to the Pine Ridge trail that leads back to the car. Because they love stairs.

Of course when you get to the top of anything you have to shout I did it and give some kind of victory salute.