Category Archives: Seasons

What is that smell… on the Appalachian Trail?

12 Thursday Mar 2015

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What is that smell? My brother and I found ourselves asking that question as we hiked along the trail. The odor resembled garlic or onions, strong and persistent in a local area, then as we walked on, it vanished. Sometime later the odor came strongly again. We looked around to see if there were some kind of onion in the vicinity, but all we could find was wild ginger, trillium and mayapples. The area was wooded and shady, of course; virtually everywhere along the trail was wooded; oak and maple predominant in this particular area, about 2500 feet in altitude. The soil was noticeably loose and rich, full of humus, with the mountain slope providing plenty of drainage.

I thought it was the wild ginger. I have a small patch of wild ginger in my garden, but I’ve never noticed a distinctive odor coming from it. The roots are supposed to be usable as an herb, similar to the ginger found in grocery stores, but not botanically related. Still I surmised that the odor of such large amounts of ginger might be strong, as the flavor usually is. I have little experience of wild ginger, certainly none of patches that are as large as tennis courts. I took a leaf and a stem and crushed them in my hands, and all that came out was a fresh grass-like scent. I smelled the soil around the ginger, and although the ambient area was filled with the distinct aroma, the soil smelled like, well, soil.

Dave thought it smelled like ramps. What are ramps? He had attended a ramp festival somewhere in North Carolina. They cooked with ramps, and told stories about ramps, which are popular in the Appalachian region. He didn’t particularly like what he had tasted, which is unusual for my brother, but he knew that people collected ramps in the mountains.

Still there was no sign of an unusual plant. We walked on until we came to another patch of wild ginger, where the aroma was again strong. Every time we entered a large patch of ginger, which was regularly at the same altitude and type of environment, the aroma came. I guessed that the aroma percolated up through the soil from the roots.

Maybe ramps and wild ginger are the same plant? We wondered about it, but walked on without knowing. Recently I took the time to investigate further. Wild ginger, which I had correctly identified, is Asarum canadense. Ramps are an entirely different plant, scientifically identified as Allium tricoccum and Allium burdickii. Both wild ginger and ramps show up in the same kind of mountain environment. Ramps look something like lily of the valley, but the leaves die back after their spring appearance, leaving the onion-like bulb in the soil.

My favorite story about ramps, also called “wild leeks,” comes from their seasonal character. Mountain families would find and use them alongside morels and other mushrooms in their spring cooking. Children often enjoyed ramps’ sweet taste, and ate them like candy, with the problem being that a vile smell oozes from people’s pores for days after eating them. Children were often excused from school for those days.

So we have to go back. We have to dig up the roots and see whether there are some onion-like bulbs among all those wild ginger roots. We will put our trowels to use in this scientific quest, which is different from their typical use along the trail.

May you find yourselves on fruitful quests throughout the coming spring. May your curiosity be piqued and your senses be stirred with aromas, flavors, sights, sounds, and textures in limitless variety. Taste and see that God is good.

At the foot of Blood Mountain

12 Thursday Mar 2015

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We left the Appalachian Trail at the foot of Blood Mountain in Georgia. The next fifteen miles climbed the mountain and descended the other side. Near the highest point in Georgia this section of the trail is the most popular and scenic stretch in that state. At mountaintop sits an eighty year old rock cabin that serves hikers as a shelter from the storms that sometimes rake the barren summit. Prominent signs warn hikers to carry water from the spring a mile below the summit if they plan to stay at the cabin overnight. It is not supposed to be an easy climb, but the rewards on the other side include a fully stocked store and showers at the foot of the mountain’s other side. As near to heaven as the AT gets. 

The name of Blood Mountain intrigues us. Known by that name before the Europeans came people assume it came from a prehistoric battle between native peoples. Over the thousands of years of human habitation every space on earth has seen its share of blood, but occasionally the toll is heavy enough to mark the sites with lasting titles that warn us– Starved Rock, Devil’s Den at Gettysburg, the Crater at Petersburg, Wounded Knee, Little Bighorn. Those places all have tragic stories to tell, and so, I suppose, does Blood Mountain, but the details of the story were lost and so the name became generic and universal. 

So we planned to return to the trail  to pick up where we left off, knowing that this mountain is a symbol of a universal and hopeful quest that we will someday climb beyond the stories of slaughter to a place of refuge and serene circumspection. From that vantage point we will see in perspective all the paths traveled by people with plans that intersect and plans that merge, where either cross-purposes or reconciliation could emerge from the deep woods and thickets with just a slight turn of the compass.  

Already some people have climbed that mountain and achieved such perspective, following the leader up to the top. How heavy that burden must have been, weighed down as it was with so many rivers of blood, before he arrived there, and foretelling so many more needless sacrifices to follow. Yet he carried it, with a little help from yet another hapless victim chosen at random to add to the burden of insult. He carried it up to the top and then still higher as he ascended to the place of thrones and final judgments. 

Again we mark Jesus’ ascent of a cross and of a path to heaven. Again he tells us to put away our swords and suffer the temporary humiliations of defeat while at the same time we accept the stronger force of stubborn love to insist on healing instead of harm. From the perspective of a bloody mount we look all around at the world God has made, and see how beautiful it can be.

Dog Boy on the Appalachian Trail

10 Tuesday Mar 2015

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Dreaming about summer, I dug up this Chaplines from 2005:

Dog Boy* came trotting down the trail alongside his Irish Setter late afternoon on July 11. Brother Dave and I were staying our first night on the Appalachian Trail at Gooch Mountain Shelter. We shortened that day’s hike to five crow-fly miles due to the soaking rain, from tropical storm remnants of the two early season hurricanes. We had had an alarming experience at Gooch Gap, where lightning had us hunkered down for thirty minutes, after we had searched in vain for the shelter that used to be there.

We decided to stay at the Gooch Shelter a mile and a half farther after we finally found it. It was eight intensely hard miles to the next shelter, and tenting in a soggy campsite was no match for the dry shelter, even with its one side open to the air. Dog Boy explained that he was a trail runner, and his banter raced even faster than his scrawny legs.

“You got a cell phone? (Yes). Can you get a signal? (No.) If I could get a signal I’d just stay here all summer and work from my camp. I might just do that anyway. I live in Atlanta, but here is where my real home is. I’m camped up at . . . [Five minutes later.] Did you know you’ve got a Scout Troop coming, about an hour behind me? Three adults. Six tired and sore boys. They’ll probably sleep tonight . . . [Another five] You’ve got synthetics to wear? [Our wet synthetic clothes were stretched out on lines under the shelter roof to “dry.”] You can’t survive out here without synthetics. If I were teaching a course on hiking the AT I would just toss all the hikers, shoes and clothes and all, into a swimming pool, and then make ‘em hike for a week. That would get ‘em used to what it’s like. You never can dry out. Socks and shoes just stay wet all the time. . . [At one point I did manage to squeeze in a question about the river crossings that lay ahead of us; Dave and I both had imagined trying to cross swollen streams walking on a narrow slippery log.] They’re OK. Got a little foot bridge on one and some slippery rocks to walk across on the other. Just get your feet wetter, that’s all. I’ve got . . . .” [The Irish Setter listened more patiently than I.]

Forty minutes later, after his discourse on wilderness survival and environmental protection, the first instalment of Scouts arrived, and we moved our things aside. There would be plenty of room in the double decker shelter for all of us. Dog Boy stayed a few more minutes, then took off, saying he hoped to be back at his own tent camp, next to a Forest Service road, shortly after dark.

The next day we did indeed see Dog Boy in his camp, explaining the facts of AT life to two other hikers. We waved and slipped past. It was reassuring to know that he was not an apparition, since the mists and sounds of the wilderness made everything take on an other-worldly mantle. We met no one else until we came into the next shelter at Hawk Mountain.

Trail runners scout the trails regularly to make sure they are passable, to make notes of where fallen trees must be removed and paths restored, to find the lost and discouraged stragglers, and, obviously, they have other social or anti-social agendas as well. We didn’t meet another, but there were plenty of signs of regular volunteer maintenance on the trail. With the wash-outs and recent windstorms there was a lot to be done soon. We appreciated the warning about the fallen tree that was covered by a huge lush poison ivy vine. Climbing over it or through it was inadvisable. Climbing around it took us through more poison ivy, but we at least had a chance soon to wash the ivy oils off our legs.

With small captive audiences who really do need a lot more advice, and plenty of trails to maintain, and a wonderful, extraordinary environment in which to work, trail runners are an unexpected and unremarked feature of the trail experience. Not a bad job to have. Come to think of it, I think I had that job for a lot of years.

* An old Appalachian Trail custom is for hikers to adopt a “trail name” while hiking the AT. Nobody needs to know the name you use in the rest of the world. Dog Boy introduced himself with this trail name.

Silent unseen companion

28 Saturday Feb 2015

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My desk sits next to and facing a window, and the only problem with that comes from my tendency to gaze into the woods instead of attending to the project that sits on my desk. On this day I’m glad I looked up when I did. About fifty feet directly in front of me, still in my yard, though my “yard” is all undeveloped forest, I catch a slight movement. It appears to be the twitch of an ear, a rabbit, I think. Then I look closer and see the body lying in the fallen leaves, blending perfectly into the snow covered forest floor in a depression next to an old stump. That is the biggest rabbit I have ever seen! Instead, as I take some minutes to observe, it proves to be a deer. 

She sits silently, motionlessly, except for an occasional reaction to a gust of wind or a wary reflex to a sound nearby. Likewise I am absorbed in meditating on her, as she has chosen to rest mid-morning in such close proximity to my home. She is well-concealed, nearly invisible, camouflaged in color and stillness, and secure in her choice of resting place. 

Not thirty minutes before this I walked around the house, passing just a few feet from her. She must have been there then, but still she stayed. She lies there, and even when I stand to get a better look, she makes no move. Now I know where deer go during the daytime. In the evening we often see them along the road. They leave their tracks all around the house. On a wintry night I have walked outside and interrupted a herd of ten or more nearby, but during this particular day, she is by herself and secure in her secret. If she had not moved so slightly when I happened to look up in her direction, I never would have noticed.  

I have moved enough, and made enough noise, that I know she is aware of me. Once she even stands and looks in my direction, then turns around and moves a few feet, still in view, and lies down again. For three hours, as I work at the desk, she is my silent partner. 

How many times have I missed such a visitor? What am I not seeing now, even as surprised as I am by this one, and as intent on seeing someone or something else? Does the barred owl still rest on this day in the stump nearby? Does the armadillo dig in the loose leaves and make a nest for sleep during this day?  

How hard it is to learn to be observant and sensitive to the world around us! Only by accident do most of us note what is there for us to understand all along. Accelerate the hustle-bustle of our pace, and we miss even more. Slow it to a steady, thoughtful pace, and we at least have a chance to notice. Now I too must move along and do some other work, but her soft, gracious presence has beautified my day. When I return she too has moved on to something else. But, I think, she is still nearby, observing me.

The Joy of the arrival of seed catalogues

25 Sunday Jan 2015

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It’s January, and the plant and seed catalogues have begun to arrive. Their pages are filled with spectacular specimens that provide a winter diversion until signs of spring actually arrive. I am tempted to order everything so that my yard will be as full of color as the pages of the catalogues. I imagine a large windbreak of Messer Forest spruce and pine on the north side of the house alongside the shade garden, an orchard of Stark Brothers dwarf apple, pear and peach trees on the east side, every kind of Wayside Gardens viburnum, agapanthus, aconitum, heuchera, aquilegia, campanula, coreopsis, echinacea… in the south and east yards, except for the space reserved for the Gurney’s vegetable garden and the strawberry patch and the Perkins rose garden. Our yard isn’t big enough, of course, for any of that. But this late winter break is for dreaming, not working.

Not that there isn’t work to do. The dried stalks of last year’s garden have served their purpose and need to be cut before the first buds of the new season poke their heads through the soil. The stalks have allowed the roots to breathe through the winter’s frozen crust, and they have formed the “architecture” of the winter garden, according to the sages of Victory Garden and HGTV. In reality I just never get around to cutting them until late winter, so I use any excuse for delay.

All it takes is a few warm days in February to encourage the tulips, daffodils and lilies to show up. Their first appearances always get frost bite, but they spur our hopes for an early spring. The winter accumulation of leaves from the oak trees across the street and any other vagabond neighborhood trees must be cleared, along with the candy wrappers and overflow waste from the neighboring yards that get caught in the existing landscape plants. There is plenty to do before the first crocus blooms, but it will surprise us before it all gets done.

Then we will begin again with the trips to the greenhouses and the selection of a few annuals to fill the empty spaces and provide the splashes of color that the perennials don’t provide in the season’s gaps.  We will take a census of the survivors of the wintry tests, and discover what new arrivals the birds have brought and deposited in the soft earth and mulch. Sometimes they have brought visitors that we have not imagined would take up residence here. Then we will resume the weekly hour of prayer and meditation in the yard following the lawn mower in its noisy labyrinth.

I rarely order anything from the catalogues, but that does not make me appreciate them any less. They provide a welcome tour of anticipation through the seasons ahead and relief from the heaviness of winter’s last effects. In similar ways the combination of secular and religious events on the calendar provide a way of marking time until better days arrive. Between Valentines and St. Patrick’s Day, M L King’s and President’s Day, Lent and Easter and Pentecost, there is a mixture of nature and history to keep us moving along in our hopes and imaginations. We count the days with an expectation that something new will break through the old patterns and refresh our spirits and make it possible for us to see with new eyes and hear with new ears and feel with new hearts that God is indeed good…all the time.

The farm in winter

24 Saturday Jan 2015

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In the coldest and hardest days of winter the tasks of the farm family took a different shape. The stores of hay, feed grain, and silage were parceled out with eyes fixed in principal directions– feeding for market, maintaining body heat and weight, and making the stores last until spring. Heat was critical, to keep liquid water available for all the animals, and, to  provide extra heat for the small and the weak, we had to place heat lamps and electric water heaters and regular supplies of fresh water in accessible places. We had to make sure adequate shelter was available, and for access to shelter we had to cut pathways through ice and snow for ourselves and sometimes for the animals themselves. Often births came on the worst days, and special care had to be given. It usually fell to the youngest child to care for the weakest of the litter, the runts, by bottle and bucket feedings.

We had to bundle up warmly and wear heavy boots and gloves and hats that made anything that we did harder to manage, but the task of protecting ourselves was at least as important and difficult as protecting the animals, as we went from barn to barn and shed to shed.

Although there was no work in the fields beyond spreading manure, there was plenty of paper work to do, placing orders, updating records, filing taxes. This was the time to sort what we had set aside for planting, so that only the strongest plants would provide seeds and bulbs for the spring planting. We would make sure they were protected in their clean and dry containers.

In the barns and the sheds the work took on an urgency that was about survival in the cold and ice, for the newborn and the growing and the breeding stock. To keep the chickens laying their eggs, we had the usual daily rounds of feeding, watering and collecting, within a henhouse that seemed dustier and more confining than ever, while the brooder house would be newly filled with two hundred baby chicks clustered under a heat lamp, to provide the next crop of laying hens and a supply of chicken for the freezer and the table.

The milk cows needed milking twice a day, but the herd of milk cows had long since dwindled to one or two by the time I was old enough to help with that. Usually it was done before I got around to doing it. Fresh milk, cream, and butter were luxuries that I have long missed. Churning the butter on Saturday morning was an activity I looked forward to doing.

Many of my farm dreams surround the least critical of the chores– caring for the rabbits. Rabbits were not critical to the success of the farm but they were my job alone for several years. Their hutches stood in the open, and they needed tending at least twice a day for food and water and providing care for the new litters.  Pieces of sheet metal and bales of hay provided the makeshift wind breaks that protected the hutches. Once in a while I still dream about forgetting to tend them, returning to the hutches and finding their carcasses starved and frozen. To my knowledge I never forgot, but I certainly wanted to on particularly miserable days, and I always lost some to the cold anyway.

While winter tended to isolate people, there were times when the neighborhood came together. Card parties gathered neighbors. So did the shelling of corn from the crib when farmers tired of waiting for the price to go up, and decided to empty the crib in readiness for the next season’s crop. Extra hands were needed when we loaded the truck with steers for a trip to the Chicago stockyards, and the trip itself was an adventure into alien territory. Any combined effort became the occasion for a meal shared with neighbors.

These days when only the birds call for my tending, and only the sidewalks require my efforts to clear them, the tasks are greatly reduced, but the needs of many people around us in the world still require our willingness and readiness to do the chores that mean survival and prosperity for the seasons to come.

the care of days

11 Sunday Jan 2015

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The pages of my calendar filled my desk drawer. I had to discard some. But discarding days brings a feeling of uneasiness. Caring for days and filling them appropriately adds to the joyous accumulation. The symbol of this truism was my desk drawer.

For several years our secretary gave me a garden calendar with each day describing another wonderful aspect of gardening.  The reverse sides of the calendar pages were plain, so they could become useful note paper, if the contents seemed disposable, but often the information was so helpful and interesting that I add it to the “do not discard” pile. Both the recycling pile and the “do not discard” pile continued to grow. So I finally had to sort and remove some days.

The care of days remains a challenge. If you want to add to the challenge, consider the many rewarding pastimes you could take up. What a mix of things to do or to neglect, to save or to discard! But each day involves its choices. Will this activity ever be useful to anyone again? Will this investment of time, and the desire to remember and hold onto it make any sense down the line?

To care for days recognizes the primary gift any of us ever get– the amazing gift of this day and the choices and opportunities in it. My chief sin will be to reject this gift of time, and to treat it as a waste. Still a day of rest is not a waste, nor time spent in the contemplation of beauty or goodness or the One Source of all that is.

I have exhausted myself in plenty of hours discarding other people’s accumulations, including those of people I dearly love. I must let go of some days, and memories, and collections. Then what remains? Only the love itself, and the desire to find some new expression of it that does not just sit and fill a desk drawer. An expression that is not just so many words, or things.

Each day is new and different. If it was just repetition, without a different approach or slant to it, then the tedium would make the task of disposal easier. Why save any day if the next will be just like it? When is that ever a problem?

These calendar pages are just symbols. Wednesday, September 20th,  lists fifteen plants that purportedly possess aphrodisiac powers. It then reports that only one on the list has a verifiable impact, and that is not as an aphrodisiac. I think I can do without that one

A belated Boxing Day wish

02 Friday Jan 2015

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Granddaughter Willow wrote a regular humor column for her school newspaper on the subject of odd holidays and observances. I suggested to her that she should write about “Boxing Day,” that day after Christmas, when people are supposed to “box.” I used to think it was a day devoted to fisticuffs, but that was because I grew up in a family of boys, and trying to be good for too many days before Christmas required a way to release pent-up energy.

I understand that in Great Britain and Canada Boxing Day was devoted to giving boxed gifts to people whom you wouldn’t see on the holiday– postal and garbage workers, delivery people, and the like. I like that idea, because I rarely get myself well-enough organized to give gifts to them ahead of Christmas. The days after Christmas tend to be more leisurely so I honor the idea that Christmas is supposed to be twelve days after all, followed by Epiphany, which lasts until the beginning of Lent. That six weeks or so gives me time to get everything done that most people try to get done before Christmas even starts.

Boxing Day around here is the time when many people box up the kinds of decorations that I have finally gotten put up. At least one of my neighbors keeps Christmas lights on well into January, so I’m not alone in my neighborhood. Other people observe the day by boxing up the gifts that don’t fit or they don’t want and returning them to the store. I don’t remember ever returning anything; most people who give me anything have better taste that I have, so I keep whatever I get. Gift Cards are eating into that Boxing Day custom anyway, turning it into a shopping day for after-Christmas sales, and that suits me as a procrastinator just fine, so long as I can wait for a few days until the sale crowds have passed. As for mailing Christmas cards and greetings, mine have often waited until after Christmas anyway, guaranteeing that I have a chance to check the addresses for many of our old friends who have moved to a new address during the past year. We gave that up– moving, that is– many years ago, so they know where I am anyway.

I have one friend who manufactures boxes, so I won’t criticize them in any way. (He already knows the song about “Little boxes…full of ticky-tacky…etc.”) Boxes are great! Everyone should have several of them for storing things, just not too many, and definitely several for giving things, and as many of those as you can manage. You just can’t box up Christmas. You can’t return the message of this season. You must keep it with you for a year, until it’s up for renewal. If you think it’s out of date or wearing out… well… fisticuffs anyone??? Happy New Year and Merry Christmas, after all!

Cancer for the Holidays…1978

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

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Hanukkah menora 1Mom called me on Tuesday, December 12, 1978. I had taken my family to Paxton to visit with them the previous Friday. She sounded a bit weaker than usual. First, she reported that Dad had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but not to worry, his doctor was very encouraging. No surgery, just hormone treatments.

Then she dropped the bombshell. She was in Burnham City Hospital, recovering from a complete hysterectomy. Her doctor had found cancer in her as well, and they had scheduled the surgery immediately. “I am fine,” she said.

“Why didn’t you tell me Friday?” I wanted to ask, but knew better than to say it.

She continued anyway, “I knew you were busy getting everything ready for services and lots of people needing you. I wanted to be able to tell you about this when everything was settled. The doctor gave me the good news—he thinks they took care of it with the surgery.”

“That’s good to hear. I’ll be there in two hours,” I said.

“You don’t need…” she started.

“I’ll be there in two hours. I love you,” I said, firmly. The conversation went on for a few more moments, but apart from her “I love you, too” response, and her apology for not being able to gather the family for the holidays, I do not remember more.

When we met in her hospital room, she still wanted to talk about the family gathering. “I was ready for everyone to come. Maybe we can get together later, maybe in March.”

I tried to reassure her that March would be fine. Jesus was born in the spring or summer anyway, when the shepherds were in the fields with the sheep. We prayed together for her and Dad’s healing and for some of the other people who always were her concern. I saw her again before her discharge, and everything was going well, except for her sadness about the family get-together. On the next Friday, the 22nd, we went to Paxton again, carrying a small Christmas tree and a small Hanukkah menorah. We started lighting the candles. “A great miracle happened here,” we said on the first candle, “You both found the cancer early and have done quickly what you needed to do to treat it.”

The family gathered around the tree in March and celebrated Christmas. For the next Christmas Eve, their 45th Wedding Anniversary, we celebrated with a surprise reception in their honor, with many friends and family members coming together. Mother lived twelve more years, Dad another twenty-seven, in relatively good health.

A Letter from the “Good old Days”…Happy 100th Wedding Anniversary…on Christmas Eve 2014!

16 Tuesday Dec 2014

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Bessie Coen

Bessie Coen

Carl Warfel wrote to his “True Friend” Bessie Coen on December 9, 1914:

“Well Bessie I am going up to Janesville tomorrow. I will be just 10 mile from you. I will be there about a week. I think it has been just a week ago today since I seen you but it seems like two weeks to me. I will try and come up next Sunday if I can. The trains don’t run to suit me and I can’t come every time I want to.  . . . Well I guess I must close for this time. Answer soon. Good by. from your true friend Carl to Bessie. Think of what I ask you.”

“Think of what I ask of you.” That was all he wrote. He knew that Bessie’s father said that he was no longer reading all of their mail, but he still kept the request ambiguous.

Bessie wrote back several times without revealing anything, but on December 23 she wrote:

“I just got home from grandma’s & had such a good time. Hasn’t this been a dreadful cold time? I thought so Sunday morning. I missed the city car, walked to town & saw the 8 o’clock car leave Mattoon. I went at 9:30. I didn’t have to walk there though. I am sorry that your hand isn’t well yet. Well, Carl, I will try to be ready when you come. I am so nervous I can hardly write, I have been carrying my suitcase from the car line. Well, I must close & go to town or this letter will not leave Mattoon today. I will be ready tomorrow. With love from Bessie Coen to Carl W.

On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1914, Carl and Bessie married. Now one hundred years, eleven children, sixty-some grandchildren(counting spouses), who knows how many great and great-great grandchildren (I am confident Bessie does from her new point of view), we celebrate those true friends who remained true until Carl’s death February 26, 1971, fifty-seven years later.

Happy one hundredth anniversary, Carl and Bessie!