On Break: Lost in a Swamp

I had a short break before some professional development work at school today and I decided to take a walk in the woods. Off trail and just over a tiny creek, I noticed some deciduous trees and,wondering if they might be maples, decided to have a closer look. It was swampy and I had to hop on tufts of grass, but I made it to the trees, and then decided to wiggle my way through some rose bushes to see what was beyond the swampy area. I was hoping to stumble on some morel mushrooms but instead I hiked into a deeper swamp. Too far out to turn back and not wanting to go through the thorny shrubs again, I planned to circle around towards the school but this only led into deeper water. I tried walking on dead logs and more tufts of grass but a log snapped and my foot plunged into the cold water, and I just gave up and waded through the calf-high water and bushwhacked through a thicket, arriving back at the school sopping wet and with no socks (l had wrung them out and placed them in my car window to dry) and just in time to talk with my colleagues about literature.

In the Woods, Past, Present and Future

March 8

I took a walk this morning in the woods next to the school where I teach, and I imagined I was in the same woods I roamed when I was a boy on Long Island, although I’m now 42 and live in the hills of western Massachusetts. I imagined these were the same pines I smelled, the same sharp air I breathed, and the same birdsong I followed, often barefoot down sandy paths. And, as I walked, I looked ahead to when I'll be an old man passing under the same bare oaks my children will someday pass under when they are old and their children will pass under when they are old, and I am gone. At some point, I noticed a coyote track, a single pawmark in the mud in the middle of the trail. The mud was soft and wet and the print was fresh. I can see the coyote leaping from the dark on one side of the trail, making a brief landing here, and then disappearing into the brush on the other side.

On Suburban Maryland Roads: Hunting for Berries, Bypassing 'World Famous' Strip Clubs, Suffering Poison Oak (On the Forehead), Finding a Fox Finding Me, Reflecting on the Addiction of the Finder's Joy, and Returning with the Booty

We were visiting my sister, Jennifer, from our home in Holyoke, and once we arrived, I  headed outside to have a look around. My sister and her family (a husband named Dave and a baby daughter named Bridget) live in a suburban neighborhood just outside of Baltimore, on a street shaped like an oxbow, a tiny teardrop of a road branching off of the Patapsco River.

Out back, there's a sump and along its edge a patch of woods where I guessed I might find some berries. Starting here, I quickly noticed one of my favorites, blackberries. It was a bit early in the season, so my son, Paddy, and I had to search up and down the thorned canes to find the darker berries. We did, picking several mouthfuls and then continuing our search.

Through a tiny path at the end of the street we headed, stepping over a steel culvert that directed a stream towards the river, and walking into a development of row houses. Here, we picked our way through bramble after bramble that framed the road, and not far ahead, we spotted low-growing bushes with light-green, oval leaves, and on the end of each branch, blueberries.

We paused, admiring our find. A low-bush blueberry is only a little bigger than a pea, so to get as much flavor as possible, we filled our palms with them before eating a handful. Cars slowed to watch the two grazers, and I got the sense they didn't know about all the wild fruit growing outside their doors. (Or, they were wondering about these two out-of-towners picking all their berries.)

Either way, their watching eyes didn't slow us down. Because once you start picking, it's hard to stop. It's an obsession that isn't just about the sweet reward. Before your tongue even bursts that perfect berry against "your palate fine," some other joy pops in your brain when you see the reward; this happens a moment before you pluck the berry from its vine, and it's this finder's joy that charges your search.  I suspect some ancient evolutionary response wants to keep us scavengers out there in the hot sun hour after sweaty hour hunting for food-- and the addiction works!

In fact, I was so intent on foraging that I not only ignored the nosy neighbors but I even missed the poison oak when its oily leaves brushed my forehead as I rooted through the berry bushes. Yes, I said "my forehead!" And by nightfall, blisters bubbled up, one pimply pocket at a time.

But all this came to pass much later. In the moment, under the sun, on the wood's edge, my son and I were in bliss. Happily we noshed. Eventually, we had to drag ourselves away from the blueberry patch and out towards other finds.

We headed up and out of the townhouses and onto a busy main road.

Across from us was an 84 Lumber and beside that, a storage facility and a do-it-yourself car wash. Stretching down the road was an occasionally-gapped wall of other one-story businesses: a recycling center, asking for brass, copper and aluminum, a restaurant called Beefalo Bob's with a flashing neon sign advertising karaoke night, a strip club with dark-mirrored windows (one shattered) calling itself The World Famous McDoogles, a bail bondsman offering "the lowest" interest rates and a little farther down, beside a tiny drawbridge, a marina peddling steamed Maryland crabs ("too pricey," my sister said) and a tiny one-room wings and sub shop (in a spot where "restaurants go to die"). Behind the stores was a backdrop of woods where two industrial smokestacks puffed out white clouds of steam. High-power lines stretched back to the smokestacks, making a greenway where one evening I spotted a red fox watching me.

Paddy and I walked a little ways and then turned off the main road and headed back towards my sister's, where we stopped at some abandoned buildings. "Check that out," I said. The white-stucco shacks were once summer bungalows. As my sister explained, many of the neighborhood's bungalows were long ago purchased by factory workers from Bethlehem Steel (at a time when the Patapsco River was polluted and river-front property was cheap) and they are now being purchased again, torn down and turned into million-dollar homes, squeezed onto tiny water-front plots on a river more pristine.

These three shacks sat in a line down to the river's edge. Their yards were overgrown with sumac and oak and another tree which had what looked like four-foot-long pole-beans hanging down. Vines wound tightly around the trunks. Green plants of various types--some blossoming yellow and white flowers--covered where grass once grew, and along the edge of the road were the last fruits of the day, mulberries.


I jumped and grabbed a tree branch, pulling the berries down to us and soon our fingertips were stained with the dark purple juice. After picking the lower branches clean, we stood under the tree, looking up at mature berries hanging from the higher branches. "I can climb it," my son said. Although he's only four, I didn't doubt him, and I considered giving him a boost to help him scale up to the enticing upper berries.

But I thought better of it and walked back to my sister's.

Finding wild ramps (I think) on a strange and beautiful hike

We stood at the top of a steep hill, just off an abandoned railroad track. This was the spot. I had noticed it from the road and had a feeling we'd find ramps here. I looked around: no pines (ramps dislike the acidic soil pines grow in). A corroded pipe jutted out from the embankment near the street, allowing a stream to pass underneath and into the tiny valley. Ramps grow in such moist soil.

Paddy and I climbed down, digging our heels in with each step. Once down, we had to cross a bridge made by a fallen tree to get to the other side of the stream. It was about six feet up and Paddy carefully balanced his way across, while I followed behind.

On the other side, we began to roam.

Paddy found an uprooted oak tree and I told him that some people believe such roots are the best place to look for rare rocks and long-ago buried treasures. He went to work poking his hand into the roots, searching for his treasure.

We soon continued on and I noticed some light green leaves, in a small patch, poking from the ground. I immediately knew they were ramps. I snapped one at the root and smelled. Ramps are a wild leek and they smell like onions. I smelled onion.

I looked around and saw a few other patches. I dug up a few plants in each, careful to leave enough to go to seed, so they could produce more later on. I stuffed the ramps in my backpack next to some garlic mustard I had already picked and we moved on towards the culvert that Paddy wanted to check out.

The ramps were the climax of a strange hike, marked by beautiful and weird sights, like a miniature forest of tiny white flowers ...

and a root that looked like a giant snake ...

and the abandoned house crushed by a tree, set right in the middle of the woods ...

and a sea of mesmerizing plants growing from the leaf litter ...

Finding ramps would have been a perfect finish and I had big plans. I wanted to pickle them with some fiddleheads I plan to pick in a couple of days. We quickly headed home, with Paddy in the lead.

My plans lasted the whole way, until we reached home. This was when I called out to Lisa.

"I found ramps!"

She was on the couch with Gabo sleeping on her chest. I brought her in one to smell.

"Smells like onion, right?"

"I don't smell onion," she said.

What did she mean? How could she not smell onion?

I smelled it again. The scent was not as pronounced as when I picked it in the woods, but I smelled onion.

But now, I needed to be sure. Lily of the Valley looks like ramps and is poisonous. I read online that sometimes when you pick ramps with garlic mustard, the onion scent is from the garlic mustard, not the ramps. "So be careful" was the message.

I wasn't so sure anymore.

I grabbed one of my books. It said that ramps have a red or purple color at the base. Mine were pure white; it was not looking good. I decided to bag the "ramps" for the day. Tomorrow, I would bring them to my father-in-law, Thom Smith, a nature writer who lives in Pittsfield. He'd know.

To be continued ...