We Pushed beyond the Devil and Happy Hill

 

In the winter months with the leaves down on the ground, I contemplate walking the ridge between Scott road and Huckle Hill.  I am particularly fond of the hill that terminates the southeastern end of this ridgeline. I imagine that it is to the east of where Scott and Vernon roads meet, while Huckle Hill lies to the west. Wayne of course believes otherwise, he thinks that the state line where the two roads meet is on the side of this hill. Who am I to disagree?

 From a distance, the hill looks as if one could see clear into three states, and then once finished drinking in the sight, a person would simply need to sit and slide down into the river valley below. Of course, having hiked with Wayne in Satan's Kingdom before, I intimately understand that couldn't possibly be so.

I was able to find on a map of Vernon, a place marked Happy Hill, and I wonder if this could be my hill?  Pond Mtn, The Pinnacle, Bald Mtn and East Mtn are along the state line listed east to west and in that order. Charles Hill of which I have found previous mention in historical journals, is behind Lily Pond and is also noted in Vernon, VT Nearby Mountains 

It appears fairly laughable to think that I am attempting to pin point on maps, a place where I have often driven through and that which I can plainly see out of my living room window. But truth be told, I have on more than one occasion, intended to take a well planned out leisurely hike and was instead confronted with what morphed into a big reality check. While Happy Hill seems like a friendly enough place, I have my doubts that I have any business at all bushwhacking up something called the Pinnacle!

An 1869 Beers & Co. map of Vernon depicts Pond Mountain spanning District 5 and into District 9 along the VT, MA border. Pond Mountain is 1,200 feet ASL, whereas my hill is around 500feet ASL.

 

What would I gain if I didn't at least try? 

Tyler cemetery sits in the foreground of Pond Mountain as seen from Pond Rd in Vernon. 

We began our attempt at the state line. Our plan was to hike just left of the state line in Satan's Kingdom / MA wildlife management area. We parked at the granite marker at the end of Scott road.  The state line between MA and Vernon has recently been surveyed and the pink tape on the trees is still present

Wayne, not wanting to disturb VT property owners along the line decided to hike even further to the south of the yellow blazes. This meant that we would not have the blazes to guide us; but nor would we risk confrontation. Going deeper into Satan's Kingdom in order to reach the Pinnacle was to be our hikes ongoing theme.  

For my part, seeing the steep, rough, ice covered terrain before me, I decided that the local dog would know best how to navigate it. I'm not too proud to admit that the dog was a far better hiker than myself and I might as well get this over with now. I shed a few tears and uttered a few unsavory words climbing up this hill and then down the other side. Honestly, I'm not even sure why I thought this to be Happy Hill! 

I have a Vernon friend who positively skips up 4000ft mountains, sometimes three at a time and always sharing pictures of her smiling with hands raised to the heavens at every peak. She once informed me that there are no cold days, just bad gear. I think that it would be fair to say, that I learned on this hike, that my new footwear was better suited for walking downtown than scaling ledge.

All excuses and complaints aside, lets go for a beautiful walk in Satan's Kingdom.

This winter, Wayne and I have noticed a lot of trees and limbs on forest floors. We look for signs of logging, did someone have a need and so felled the trees?  We wonder if it was a blowdown, had there been a strong storm that uprooted the trees? Perhaps it was disease that weakened them? What exactly has caused so many trees this winter to succumb? Then I remember that it's February and the snow cover this winter is slight. Maybe we are only noticing them because they aren't being hidden by a thick white blanket of snow. There is a peacefulness about winter, it hides what is evident.

It is truly a beautiful place, once the details are glossed over. 

We happened across what appeared to be a well worn trail. I was tempted to change course; but like the bear that went over the mountain...

We came to see what we could see.

And so pushed up towards the higher hill in the distance.

Only to discover ourselves on a ridge with no place else to go but down.

 

I don't fully understand what it is that drives me to do these things. There was a well worn path behind us, and yet I found myself looking for dog tracks on that ridge. Wayne has a way of knowing when I am about to come unglued.

 

There was no turning back, mostly because I had lost my trekking pole down the slope and needed to retrieve it.

Wayne waiting for me to collect myself.

Wayne took a minute to decompress and to wonder out loud why he agrees to go on these crazy adventures with me. 

We were standing on another opportunity to abandon ship. Wayne voted to hike on this trail further south. I on the other hand decided that I was ready to head north. In any case, there was what appeared to be an open field a little bit to the west that Wayne wanted to check out. So of course we headed north on the trail.

Sometimes on these explorations, we begin to think that we have strayed too far off course. Sometimes others leave us an encouraging sign.

The hill was within reach, all that we needed to do was take the shortcut and do a bit more downhill bushwhacking.

But still, we held to the trail.

Which brought us to a young stand of Eastern Hemlock teaming with life.  It was Wayne who first noticed that the trees were filled with Dark Eyed Juncos. The unassuming Junco is my favorite bird to visit our yard in the winter months. There is something about these small black and white birds, patiently waiting on the ground for for an opportunity to glean the tiniest of  morsels that fall from the gluttonous frenzy at the feeder above. And then when the bounty of spring and summer arrives, they leave my yard and disappear deep into the boreal forests to nest in the old stumps of conifer trees.

I once watched a news segment where an Ecologist stated that the best time to visit a wetland was in the winter. He said that in the winter you could get a closer look at what was there. 

Wayne studies the mountain from the wetlands.

A Cattail disperses its seeds during the winter months

Holding on for some outward sign.

Abandoning my thoughts of reaching the Pinnacle, I begin to think about what waits for its opportunity below this frozen shelf.  

And how it is some things that I think couldn't possibly be here, somehow still are. 

No, one cannot claim the mountain tops with a belief that only they can slide into the river below. There is too much work to be done between the two.

 -Norma Manning 

Owls Are For Lovers

 Dan calls to the Barred Owl during Owl Prowl

Here is a bit of trivia that is going make quite a few of us seem old; Owl Moon by Jane Yolen was written thirty five years ago. While I'm not feeling particularly old, being older seems to be an ongoing theme with me lately. For example, I offered up my Snow Lion sleeping bag to Kayden who searched online and found its corresponding 1970 catalogue. Ugh! What was I doing with a 52 year old sleeping bag? Because I distinctly remember getting that bag closer to the 80s, I convinced myself to feel better about owning a 42 year old bag. What? It's still in good shape. Just to pile on the mothballs, this week a kindergartner asked me, "Mrs. Manning, were you alive in the 90s?" while another observed that the Classical music her teacher was playing was in fact, "Valentine's noise." I quickly informed the group that Chopin was my favorite. What was I thinking?

In the early weeks of February, the Kindergarten science unit is adaptation. The classrooms fill with sciencey books on animals along with five and six year old fact loving reporters, "Mrs. Manning where is Australia? Do you know what these tracks are from?" Idk, Opossum? To which the small scientist gleefully laughs and announces, "No, a Kangaroo!" Well then, I guess I should have payed better attention to our classes' Bonnyvale Environmental Center winter animal tracking lesson. Each year Seth brings in his collection of hides, pelts, antlers, claws, teeth and bones for the children to closely examine. The students create art, role play, compare penguins and they become authors and illustrators. But my favorite time spent is reading aloud books like Jan Brett's The Mitten and of course Owl Moon. I'm all for tapping in on the facts of life; but these children still retain a contagious, glorious sense of wonder that infects even the most sensible. I find that as I grow older, I too am increasingly stirred by the intersection of what is and what might be.

Call it hope, call it romance, or call it science; January into February is for lovers:  Lovers of the new year, lovers of snow,  lovers of equality, justice, freedom and history.  It's also for lover's of spring like Punxsutawney Phil, and gardeners who receive seed catalogues in the mail, lovers of football, of the outrageous like Squirrel Appreciation Day, love with a purpose and love for the sake of love. 

"Great Horned Owls are our most common owl but they have gone silent. They have laid their eggs and the female is on the nest. Sometimes we can hear the male; but the female doesn't want to attract predators to the nest and goes silent. The eggs are laid so that the owls hatch and leave the nest when the rabbits are being born The male brings baby rabbits to them to teach them to hunt rabbit." -Dan

I look around the small group, there are couples like Wayne and I, an older single person and what looks to be a young teenager and her mother. Thanks to the kindness of Christine who gifted us her tickets, Wayne and I are at the Hitchcock Center in Amherst MA for the Owl Prowl. It's 7:30 pm the Saturday before Valentines Day and I am having second thoughts about being in the city until 10:30 at night. I mean, at that hour, even the college kids have gone home for the evening.

Leading up to this weekend our local Vernon Vermont Facebook page had begun to fill up with Martin's account of huge flocks of Gold Finch at Vernon's bird feeders, Bethany's fox sighting, Ali's Piliated, Karla's mystery snow track,  Jason's bobcat, Matt's videos of a Redtail Hawk eating gray squirrels, Paul Miller's amazing Snowy Owl at the farm, Diane's flowers and Ed Sr's stunning bluebirds. 

"We're from Vernon, VT" was met with some confusion. "The south-eastern most town in VT" didn't seem to clarify things much and who on earth, I thought to myself, leaves VT to see owls in the city anyway? "We had a Snowy Owl sighting" I offered, and with that Dan relieved my discomfort by informing the group that there is currently a Snowy Owl invasion mostly in the Midwest due to an abundance of food. With that I showed everyone Paul's photograph. 

Now I could fill this page in with all sorts of information about owls that Dan shared with us, like the fact that Great Horned Owls nest in old Red Tailed Hawk's and crow nests. I could even share my own accounts of the owls that  have visited our yard right here in Vernon and the owls that we saw and heard on the Owl Prowl; but what I really want you to understand is that owls are for lovers.

 Owls are for a teenage girl, who every time she saw an owl, grabbed her mom's elbows and exclaimed, "Aren't they cute!" Owls are for a grown man who tells a group of strangers that he has been calling owls since he was a kid and that last nights group had twenty mile an hour winds and they didn't see a single owl. Owls are for children who cut and paste together owls at school and then color them in with rainbows. Owls are for Wayne who practiced his Barred Owl call for the duration of our hike in the town forest this afternoon and then presented to me hot cocoa in a VT owl mug! And owls are for my Palentine Christine who gave up her chance to prowl for owls because she knew that Wayne and I love doing things like this. 

But if by chance, owls really aren't your thing, then perhaps tracking bears (?) in the town forest is.

or deer

Or maybe, just maybe, your love lies with a certain coonhound who is all too eager to help you appreciate the view from the town forest floor.

then asks for a treat from the person she loves the most

reminding me that owning a 42 year old sleeping bag and being alive in the 90s isn't really all that old. Especially once you have discovered, that all of that "Valentine noise" is just the world asking who, whoo, hoot, do you love? I have to leave you now, I need to figure out how to get back up!

-Norma Manning