When Leaves Fall, Your Clothes Count.

It may not be obvious to those who don’t spend a lot of time on the trails during this time of year, but as Autumn progresses, the trails become a clutter of dry leaves. The near silent clump of boots on hardened dirt and rocks and roots is traded for the rasping ‘shh shh shh’ of walking through drifts leaves.
If you pay extra attention to the ground as you noisily tramp along (which you should, since on warmer days, you may well wander across the occasional snake, well camouflaged by the leaves) you may notice at about which time of the season, which leaves fall.
You may not notice them, but sycamore trees start early. So do willow oaks and locusts. These trees will begin in late August, or, if it’s a particularly cool onset to Fall, even earlier. By mid-October, the maples are all changing color and beginning to drop moderately. By Thanksgiving, especially if there’s a nice north wind bringing a cold-front, the oaks will let go.
If you have the desire to walk among the bare trees, in this cooler weather, or if you need to go rake your yard, here are a few things to keep in mind about how to dress for it.
As winter approaches, daylight is more scarce, especially in the mountains. Between the wooded valleys that may only get a few brief moments of sunlight, and the dwindling temperatures at night, some days may not even reach the highs that the weatherman calls for.
Keeping this brisk truth in mind, it may be necessary to inventory your hiking apparel to make sure that it is safe and warm for colder temps.
To begin, anything made of cotton should be folded and put away until spring. Jeans, cotton socks, skivvies, t-shirts, hoodies and so on, are a bad choice. Veteran hikers will tell you ‘Cotton Kills’. It’s true.
This is because cotton retains moisture. The same principles that make cotton ideal for keeping you cool in Summer are the same principles that make it dangerous for you  in Fall and Winter. As you move, you sweat. As you sweat, the cotton clothing keeps the moisture against your skin. When you settle into a more calm activity, you’ll find that the chill of your clothes helps to enhance your chill. That’s just if it isn’t raining or if the wind isn’t blowing. You may find in that situation, with nothing more than a hoody, that you’re in a very bad situation.
So, avoid cotton. Polyester, or many other lightweight synthetic materials widely available for athletes are very good for winter hiking. Synthetics are designed to ‘wick’ the moisture from your skin, keeping you and your clothes dry.
Columbia makes a whole line of very affordable and effective clothes, from undies to hats that will help keep you warm and dry.
Another good idea is to wear ‘peelable layers’.
As you move along the trail, even in winter, you warm up. Before you begin to sweat, remove a few outer layers until you are comfortable, and keep going. If you feel chilly, bundle up again.
If you watched a high speed playback of any group of experienced hikers on the trail, you noticed how often they pull on and off their coats and hats.
Hikers must be constantly aware of their state of comfort, and adapt to it, to keep themselves at the optimal temperature.
Regardless if you are on the trail, or outside just a few feet from your door, wearing the proper gear in cold weather will keep you warm, happy and safe during the late fall and winter.

I Miss Halloween.

I love this thing!

Before you friends and neighbors take up your pens and fill out a petition to get me to take down my glowing orange scary spider web from Halloween, I need to explain something.
All my life, as far back as I can remember, Halloween has been the only ‘holiday’ that really makes complete sense to me. We get to dress up, if we want, and no one looks at us funny. We get to give over our usual fears and we can embrace those things that typically scare us stiff. More than these, however, we get to give up pretending that we don't’ believe in monsters for one night, and accept their permanent place in our society.
Werewolves, vampires, mummies, devils, zombies and scary clowns, just to name a few, ramble to streets for one evening and no one panics. It is one of those things that I wish was acceptable all year long.
The first Halloween costume that I ever remember was something constructed almost entirely by my mother. The long red arrow-pointed tail was stuffed with pillow fluff. The horns too, and other than the mask and three pronged pitchfork, I was a handmade Devil. The following year, my step dad took and old box and some brown paper bags and made a ‘big bad wolf’ helmet mask for me. I truly believe that this was when I became a Monster Fan.
Tramping down the streets our tiny little country town each Autumn, I began to understand, of only faintly, humanity’s obsession with ‘the things that go bump in the night.’ Since then, every year, whether I actually dress up, or if I only don black from head to toe, I’m experiencing a kind of Monster Exhilaration, for which there is no pill.
Sadly, less than a month after the Great Halloween Celebrations have ceased, it’s time to talk Turkey, and Santa has already begun to stick his long white beard into the season. And while I love Thanksgiving and Christmas, love the dying of the year, and love any excuse to get together with family to eat yummy food, I still feel a pang of remorse at the sad ending of Halloween.
Personally, Halloween never ends, and I celebrate Monsters in all their gory glory all year long on my Facebook Page Monster Serial.
So, for those of you who are annoyed at my apparent inability to remove my lovely glowing scary spider web, please be patient. The weekend approaches, and I’ll be taking it down then. But give me the benefit of the doubt. I hate to let go of Monster Season and Halloween. It is, after all, my favorite time of the year.

Steady As She Goes

SAILING ON CHESAPEAKE BAY - NARA - 548494 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Our family loved to sail. My step-dad, mom, brother and step-brothers and myself spent many a weekend in the Chesapeake Bay sailing our family boat.
It wasn’t a yacht, by any stretch of the imagination. Just a small craft, designed for family outings scooting around the Del-Mar-Va Peninsula or down to Annapolis for the weekend. There was a cozy cabin, a nice cockpit from which to steer and of course the bow, which was my favorite spot to be.
Learning to sail is like apprenticing with a craftsman. You can be taught how to steer and manipulate the sails, navigate, and tack. But you cannot be taught how to interpret the wind and water. Those things require time and patience. You have to open up a special sensitivity to those things in your mind. It takes practice to be sure.
Lately, I have found myself missing the wind and water. It’s been uncounted years since I’ve even set foot on a sailboat, let alone any other type of water vessel. I miss it profoundly. While I live within a few short miles of my favorite trail, and while I can always find succor there for the stresses and strains of everyday life, even in the woods a good stiff breeze will remind me of how wonderful it would be to set my boots on the step, slide on my deck shoes and grab the lines and hoist the jib and mainsail and fly across the water.
In everyday life, it is common to feel a need to ‘get on with’ or ‘get through’ the day. We have many stresses on us daily. Money, careers, children, parents and social lives all of which seem to hold sway at the same time. Some days, from the time my head leaves the pillow in the morning, until it returns that evening, I haven’t had a chance to even stop to catch my breath. I feel sometimes that I am caught between duties. Duties to my family, to my friends, to my work and to my responsibilities as an adult. At other times, things are so mundane, slow and uninteresting that boredom grows across my mind and I adopt the ‘thousand mile stare’.
Yet, either way, regardless if I’m praying for Tuesday to hurry up and end already, or wondering where the weekend flew off to, sailing provides a good illustration of how we handle the hectivity and the doldrums of life.
The key is to remember a simple truth my step dad taught me about being on a boat. You’re never in control. You’re only borrowing the water, sharing the wind. You never get to choose what kind of weather you have, only how you deal with the weather that comes.
As an example, we once had beautiful, calm, chilly fall sailing, and a squall came up and hit so hard that we were all covered in fine gritty sleet and the whole deck was a sheet of ice, not to mention heavy chop. We got the sails down, motored to a nearby port, and battened down the hatches and waited for the squall to pass. I realized as I sat shivering in the cabin and my mom prepared hot soup, that I would never have been able to deal with that squall by myself.
Much of what I learned on that boat was technical. Which line to pull, how to steer, how to tie knots, how to tack and turn. But the deeper lessons in all of those physical and mental tasks was knowing why we tie the knots, when to pull the lines, where to steer and when to tack and turn.
So my step dad’s advice was good and true, and it rings true on solid ground with the weather of our lives, too. No matter what a day brings, if things go our way, or if they don’t; if tragedy and loss hold sway or if joy and hope for new life is the celebration, we must always keep calm, one eye on the compass, one eye on the sky and take the wind that comes.

The Walk of Life.

Few things are as natural as perambulation. We almost instinctively celebrate an infant’s first unassisted steps, and even if the child is not related to you, there is a small burst of celebratory cheer in your heart at the news that the baby is now walking.
From a pudgy-legged, unsteady gait to a flying run down neighborhood sidewalks, our body’s ability learn how to walk and then begin to run is a fascinating bit of growth. The only aspect of development more interesting is that of language.
For most adults, the idea of moving from one place to another is unconscious. We don’t think about going into the kitchen to warm up our coffee or  stepping outside to the workshop to get a tool. We become so indoctrinated with the simplicity of walking that we don’t even think about doing it.
Perhaps the greatest example of this ease of motion comes on the trail. Initially, as you get used to the weight of the pack, and settle into the rugged terrain, you may feel very cognizant of your steps. After a bit of time, though, the walking goes on a sort of autopilot, and you raise your eyes and observe the world. As you go, your body descends into a meditation of sorts. The mind thrives in this movement. The parts of the brain that work behind the scenes are occupied and there is mental clarity.
However we wish to define this reality of physical movement; whether it is simply a natural state for humans to move long distances on our legs, or if it is just an accident of our current world environment that we need to get into the wilderness and move to get away from all the distractions and extra stimuli, walking is a natural calming activity.
As I walk in the woods, I always picture a group of ancient humans, clad in rough-spun clothes with spears or short knives and sacks on their backs moving through the wildernesses of that world, eyes peeled and heads swiveling. It would be necessary for ancient humans to move long distances from time to time to keep up with game, to avoid unpleasant weather or even to stay near a steady supply of fuel to keep warm.
This group, as large as one hundred individuals, made up of young and old, male and female, would travel great distances as long as the sun was up. They wouldn’t stop to rest or eat. They would move until nightfall, when it became necessary to stop and build a fire. Hunting parties would join the group at that time, and bring game, if they could find it.
Some anthropologists now believe that ancient man could cover huge distances in one day, moving a very fast walking pace. Their entire physiology was based on their ability to walk or trot. The scarcity of food and the prevalence of large carnivores made it necessary for ancient humans to go days without sufficient nutrients, but still accomplish great feats of physicality.
I tend to imagine this while we walk in the woods. I pretend that Harmon and I are ancient hunters, walking into the deep wilderness to bring back game for our group. We are still living off the stores of fat and calories from the last kill, but we need more. So we set off into the deep wilderness. Heads down, looking for ‘game sign’, we imagine the aroma of meat roasting around a campfire, fat dripping and cracking in the fire. Unbeknownst to either of us, a large cougar or mountain lion has been stalking us for several miles.
It’s an odd fantasy to be sure, but it’s one that pervades my mind as we walk recreationally. It’s hard not to think about a time when mankind walked out of necessity. When the ability to walk meant the difference between life and death, food, fuel and fire, starving and freezing.
We take our ability to walk for granted everyday. It helps to think about walking from time to time, to remember how much each of us depends on it for survival, even now in these modern times, we still need to do the Walk of Life.

"Let's Talk About Food, Baby!"

A few weeks ago, two very good friends and I went off to the woods to pursue our usual trail. Harmon is a regular, but our Special Guest Hiker hadn’t been along with us for this particular hike yet, and we were excited to have him along. Ken is an Ornithologist, and works in a major capacity at the NC Zoo and being the nerds we are, Harmon and I were very excited to hear some of Ken’s expertise.
As we trudged along, the subject matter of our discussion turned from politics to zoology but only stayed briefly at each topic. The subject that seemed to hold us nearly the entire hike was that of food. As one of us would describe a delectable treat, the other two of us would moan or groan or shout out and slaveringly wipe away drool from our respective mouth.
If we droned on long enough about another subject, even something as interesting to the three of us as the pileated woodpecker, someone would eventually shout “Someone talk about food again!” And we would settle into the discussion.
Three quarters of the way through the hike, I couldn’t take it any longer and suggested that as soon as we had finished and returned to town, we should stop by our favorite diner for their special burger plate. And it was unanimously agreed upon.
As we sat munching at our delicious meals, I became very aware of a change in preference of subject matter in my own mind for conversation topics. In high school, sitting around our table, munching our cardboard cafeteria pizza over our cardboard cafeteria trays, our eyes would dart around, catching glimpses of the attractive young women in the jungles of the high school food chain. One could almost say that among our small, male dominated group, that we were connoisseurs of the beautiful woman.
Of course, at 18, what young man isn’t a thrall of his feverishly hormonal imagination? Even outside the school, as our group toured local shopping malls and eating venues, a weather eye was always peeled for the beautiful women who might walk by. We would whoop and holler and share looks of incredulity and shake our heads at our bad luck and not being able to get a girl like that to go out with anyone of us.
If we happened to have a ‘Hot Waitress’ however, we were all mute, somehow only able to mutter and stammer our orders, painfully aware of the scorching proximity of beauty even as it burned us like the sun in the desert.
In those days, and for many years after, even into marriage, I was hard pressed not to notice a shapely woman that came within the perimeters of everyday life. Yes, I have even been the painful recipient of an elbow gouge from my wife for staring too obviously at someone. And while I maintain that I will always be an appreciator of the female form, I have noticed a change.
The old adage that the only way to a man’s heart being through his stomach is perhaps the honest-to-goodness truth. My wife’s indelible beauty is inarguable, but her meatloaf? It is the nectar of the gods.
Even winking and fluttery-eyed, with kisses and caresses, she couldn’t get me to remember to put the seat down, or to put my hiking boots away. But, if she promised me Homemade Anything, I’d be putty in her hands.
So, here it is then. I’ve moved from being a stupid boy who cannot help but stare at a gorgeous woman, to being a stupid man who cannot help but think longingly about yesterday’s supper, while dreaming about tonight’s dinner treat.
A colleague at work, who has traveled the gamut of male fascinations, said that the next topic of preference for most men is what hurts, and why. Of course, he said the dinner bell still elicits the kind of reaction that a beautiful woman used to, but in the long run he said, dinner, the recliner and a nap are the things he looks forward to the most.
Here’s to food!

"Fall Back" Fallout.

All my life, I have always looked forward to Autumn and all of it’s accompanying glory. Throughout that time though, when DST was over and it was time to get an extra hour of sleep, it was like icing on the cake. What could be better for a young man with a slightly eldritch mind than twilight coming even sooner?
So, as the years progressed I looked forward to setting the clocks back and settling in for a long night of sleep.
That was then.
Perhaps there is still some joy in the prospect of extra sleep. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the idea of having one more hour to surrender myself to my still eldritch dreams. But there are other aspects of the impending lack of light at the end of the day that now mess with me more than they provide enjoyment.
It could be that, as an adult, I now have a day job that lasts until six in the evening. Progressively in the spring and fully in the summer, there is always time to get dinner finished and work outside after work. But in the late fall and winter, twilight swoops in with its raven wings and settles darkness on the land long before I ever clock out for the day. As a result, I feel muzzy-headed and tired long before I cross the threshold to our home. I’m ready to sit in the recliner, click on the idiot box; or better, slip into my pjs and nestle into bed.
Some would call this ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’. The change in time and light affects basic circadian rhythms, certainly, and the zeitgebers, or sensory stimuli that signal certain physiological patterns may cause a small ‘bump’ in the road of my daily internal schedule. This change in the daylight, which is one of the biggest zeitgebers can affect some humans for days or weeks with no known cure.
I’ve never minded darkness, however, as I’ve mentioned. And I love the chill air, the golden leaves falling and even the approach of snowy weather. So, why is it that I am feeling downtrodden? Why do I feel squished under the heel of darkness rather than rejoicing at it as I have in the past?
The answers, it appears, are both philosophical and biological.
The philosophical part is really me having to be philosophical in realizing the truth about myself. While, I’ll never acknowledge that I’m old or even getting there, I’m heading toward the roadmark of ‘middle age’, which means that certain biological truths are inevitable.  It’s also possible that a big-boy job and family duties have so programmed my internal clock that I’m really set in the daily schedule of things and they are hard to train out.
At any rate, whether it is old age creeping in, however glacially, or if it is my biological rhythm changing due to the more routine aspects of family life, I don’t yet know. What is perfectly clear is that this muzzy-headedness from the early onset of dark and cold is keeping me on the very edge of grouchville and also making it increasingly difficult to wake up in the morning.
So, if I snap at you, when in the past I was to be found under the deepening night of a Fall evening with an idiot grin on my face, blame DST.
Some fool’s genius idea is making a sleepy grump out of me.