It was a chilly wait for everyone to show up, then more standing around as we all introduced ourselves and how we geek. After someone said they'd be warmer if we could start hiking, I kept the hike introduction short, and Bill Dodd, Phillip Russell, and I led them into the hills.
I wanted to plunge their senses into the life around them.
We crushed blue ashe juniper berries in our fingers and smelled the scent of Christmas from the aromatic resin. We deliberated over what "edible" meant. These berries aren't poisonous, and they are technically edible, but I don't suggest eating one. (Since juniper is an evergreen, these juicy berries are technically cones, as in pine cones. But that's a technicality I usually don't bring up.) It is closely related to the juniper species that lends it's flavoring to gin, and people always find that a fun bit to know.
I did invite them to taste the tart red berries (actual berries, not cones) of the evergreen sumac. Someone spotted the small hairs covering each berry, and how large the seed was compared to the thin film of very tart fruit covering it. One guy mused it would take 400,000 berries to make a pie. 'Bout right, I'd say. With 400,000 cups of sugar added. A woman who hadn't brought water with her rued the inability to wash that tartness out of her mouth. (See? You should always bring water with you when you hike - you never know when, or why, you'll need it.)
We held gorilla snot in our hands. Not every group of hikers is lucky enough. Just a few days after a heavy rain (and a night and morning of SNOW!) these normally crispy black colonies of single-cell cyanobacteria called nostoc had swelled with all the water they had absorbed, and started to photosynthesize. That meant a green, gushy mess in our palms. To their surprise, this stuff is edible - you can even buy it at health food stores.
We inevitably came across some scat (poop) on the trail. Someone challenged the group to pick up some coyote scat. "It has a nutty aroma" they joked. This sample showed how omnivorous a coyote can be. The end part, with it's characteristic "twist" as the last bit comes out, was a mass of grey hairs (most likely squirrel) But before that, this one had eaten some berries of some sort, with the large seeds making it out the other end. I figure those who ate the evergreen sumac seeds might see the same thing, if they cared to look closely enough the next day.
One of the hikers was here this morning because of the cats. She had been told about the preserve and it's cat story at a neighbor's yard sale the day before. Unfortunately, she was anxious to see the cats, and I had to let her down that this was a bit of history, and not a feature of today's hike. When Ms. Lucas died in the mid 90's, her existing cats were taken care of and lived out their natural lives. Phillip told us he had had the pleasure of knowing the last cat - a grey long-hair named Fluffy. I like to joke that Fluffy turned into the grey concrete cat statue overlooking the driveway.
Sometimes, plunging your senses into something means taking stimulation away from you. We enjoyed thirty seconds of silence in a valley that's tucked away enough from the human world, that sometimes, like this morning, you get lucky and can't hear the traffic on 2222 or Mopac, or a leaf blower or lawn mower or construction, or a plane, or a bird, or even wind through the trees. Nothing but the forest being.
Finally, we had a rare treat for any hike, but especially for one so large and talkative. Someone spotted a buck to our left, and we stopped the group and tried to be quiet and see. A second buck was spotted, but both of them decided very quickly to high tail it (literally) out of there. Serves me right to be so certain when I told them we wouldn't see deer with such a noisy group. The world outside is full of surprises. And I like it that way.
No comments:
Post a Comment