Animal sign is all around. Nipped vegetation, chewed bark, animal runs and burrows. Are you in a field, spruce, hemlock, hardwood forest? It’s a whole universe out there, and you can never learn it all. Isn’t that great?
- Pat Liddle, April 16, 2020 Community Voices Interview
We had a feral summer. Perhaps you did, too. As we live in rural Vermont, most of our family activities involved the woods around our house. We played in streams. Suspended tents in trees and read there, sometimes slept there. Spied on improbably cohabiting porcupines and later, a porcupette. Our inventory of game cameras expanded and then shrank again, chewed by bears.
My husband and I worked, and cared for our children. Worked again at night after they went to bed. Worried, grieved, and measured out each blessing by the ounce. Our family took long walks. We walked religiously. There are two possible Latin roots for the word religion: religare, “to bind fast,” and relegere, “to go through again.” We did both. Repeated the same paths, lauds and vespers. Bound ourselves ever closer to our home.
Often on these walks, I took along a camera with a macro lens to document unfamiliar plants and insects. Some of these photographs found their way into Northern Woodlands’ new online series, This Week in the Woods. This is a weekly report (or if you like, tic-tac-toe game) on nine nature observations within easy distance of the Northern Woodlands office. The series complements our monthly Reader Photo Gallery, which has also experienced rapid growth, as measured both by the number of photo submissions and online reach.
There’s a sympathy between these series, with inspiration running both ways in what our staff and readers choose to share. I think of them as two sides of a conversation – friends meet each other where the trails cross, sit down, and visit for a while. What have you seen? What have you learned?
Communication, at its best, is an exchange of ideas. And some ideas are most wholly expressed through a diversity of lived experiences. Community Voices, a second online series that we launched this year, expresses the value of forests by exploring the many ways they enrich people’s lives.
The series is supported by the Larsen Fund and produced by Assistant Editor Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. I find it inspiring. For example, who wouldn’t enjoy time on the (digital) page with Jim Hayner or Ali Thomas, both recently featured? Jim is a recent veteran, new dad, and student at Paul Smith’s College, serving as coordinator of the school’s Troops to Timber initiative. Ali, the education manager at Vermont Fish & Wildlife, has made a sustained effort to help new Americans access outdoor recreation opportunities.
I started this column with a quote from a third interview in the series. Although Pat Liddle’s words specifically relate to wildlife tracking, what she expresses is the kind of curiosity and openness that brightens lives and strengthens communities. The goal isn’t so much to find new paths, as to notice more – and listen more – on the one we follow.
Elise Tillinghast, Executive Director/Publisher