Bushwhacking Into Peace

Not the recommended approach

I don’t know about you but I always end up leaving on vacation like my ass is on fire. The thing is, in a competition between the forest and the trees, I always see the forest. I get the big picture, I make intuitive leaps, I cross boundaries. I’m great at rounding. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, and who cares where the rest of it falls — that kind of thing. 

Sometimes you gotta see the individual tree though, and not just the tree but the bark, or maybe a single leaf, maybe the vein in the leaf, the leaf’s curl, looped downwards by the vein, pulling it taut.

Photo by Maros Misove on Unsplash

And it’s always somehow at the last minute, right before I’m about to head out of town, that someone notices I’ve fucked up again, I haven’t really seen the tree or the leaf or its vein, and they start pulling me back into work and the situation is as if I’m some cartoon dog and someone’s holding my shirt and my feet peddle madly but don’t even touch the ground until finally I fix whatever it was, at least a little bit. 

And then they let go, and I rocket off, my radio turned up to deafening decibels, angry at them but also deep down angry at myself — why do I always do this? Maybe that’s why I’m a wanderfinder. I want to see the trees, individually. I don’t want to only round up, I want to take time for each tree, each beetle, each bark flake. It’s hard for me though. I want to but it’s hard.

Anyway, that’s how it was the Thursday I left on vacation — I fucked up, not too badly, pretty early in the process but still, and I got held back, I left hours late, and what should have been an smooth drive to Connecticut threatened to become a wrestling match with the start of DC’s rush hour & the end of New York’s. Except it wasn’t like that. Google — many blessings be on her algorithm — took me out by Maryland’s Bay Bridge, then through Delaware field lit golden by the sunset. 

It was a fine entry into a visit with retired friends Lisa & Richard, delighted with their new home. After years of living in DC, their big ask was quiet and they got it in spades — they live across the street from a sweet poet, and at night if you turn out the lights, you can drink your Manhattans while watching the stars. It was grand seeing them happy.

Photo by Wil Stewart on Unsplash

From the start, I was fascinated, not just with the elegant, manicured part of their plot, slopping down to a curated line of cypress trees at the back, but also, further out beyond those trees, to the wildness, the thicket beyond. It’s a tangle, and the tangle both connects and divides every house in the neighborhood, providing both a kind of natural fence and also insulation, each house from the next. 

Lisa said she’d already asked two gardening professionals about it  — what plants were in it? Were they native? Were they the right plants for the wildlife in the area — deer, hundreds of birds, and even a bear and a bobcat. But nobody was interested in the tangle. 

Of course, that only piqued her — and my — curiosity.

I only had three mornings in Connecticut. On the first two mornings, I believe that it’s considered impolite to start bushwhacking at the far reaches of your host’s yard, but on the third morning — the morning when your hosts sleep in and everyone makes their own coffee — the rules change, and you can sneak out the back door, earlier than you like to be awake, but pleased with yourself nonetheless because now, hopefully, you can escape into animal space.

That’s what the tangle is, if you look at it from their perspective. It’s an animal highway between the houses.

I approached it like a human at first, because a human is what I am. I walked down to the bottom of the garden, down the long slope, through the thin line of cypress trees, saw a small opening in the thicket, and pressed my way in.

The sort-of hole I fit through.

The animal space I found myself in.

I don’t know if you’ve ever done something like this — pressed yourself from the human space to the animal space. The birds know right away that you’re transgressing our arrangement, and they call out to let everyone know: a human has crossed the boundary! We have an invader! And soon there are no birds close by at all.

I could still hear them, though. They were close enough, and the surroundings were quiet enough, that I could let the birdsong ID of the Merlin app run and run.

To my surprise and delight, the app heard two birds it had never heard before, ever: the American redstart and the hooded warbler. I don’t know how common this is, for the app to hear birds it hasn’t heard before, but I was mighty impressed — thousands use this app every day, and it felt special to be able to make the introduction between the recorded birdsong in Cornell’s database and the real live thing. 

Nonetheless, I was realizing that I had used the space that the bobcat or maybe the raccoons use to squeeze into the thicket. I could barely stand up and there were thorns in every direction. It took five minutes of very careful movement to get a foot inside. Finally, convinced that I was trespassing, I backed out again.

And as soon as I did, I saw a much bigger opening in the thicket, just where the line of cypress trees hit the tangle. Yes, said Lisa later, that’s where the deer appear & disappear when they come into the yard. 

I entered the deer-sized door, and it was entirely different. There was a path back there — human made at some point surely, but also perhaps kept up by larger animals. And the trees were covered in birds. For whatever reason, perhaps because of their numbers, these birds seemed much more relaxed about my presence.  Perhaps they simply expected larger animals there.

I spent an hour or so, walking the little path through the tangle, spending time with a red-shouldered hawk whose shadow traced a path of silence across the forest floor, then with little flickers of yellow among the vines, then with a woodpecker I heard with deep, echoing insistence, but who was really a tiny speck almost lost from sight in the branches. 

I never got much of a shot, what with the tangled vines and leaves, but I spent time with each one, observing, slowing down. When I finally emerged, I felt rewarded when a few birds came out of the tangle with me, and fed in the yard. 

Goldfinch

I guess that’s just the kind of wanderfinder I am — an explorer, a bushwacker, and every once in a while, on my good days, someone who sees the trees in the forest too.

Let me know what kind of wanderfinder you are in the comments, and I hope you’re having a wanderful week.