Twisted tree evokes memories of winding roads
- John Lorson: The Rail Trail Naturalist
- March 28, 2023
- 454
How our parents ever allowed us to make the trip in the first place remains one of life’s greater mysteries.
And yet, right around this time of year, a little over 40 years ago, a handful of buddies and I packed my old Chevy with sleeping bags, fishing poles, .22 caliber rifles and a foolishly meager amount of food and set off for a played-out farm deep in rural Knox County. Tucked in a labyrinth of hills amid the still-naked forest, the spot was the perfect venue for our low-level “survival” adventure. I emphasize the word survival here because it wasn’t really a “man against the elements” journey. It was more of a “teenage boys against their own idiotic nature” story.
The plan had been to shack up in an abandoned farmhouse on the property (the ancestral home place of one of our number) and take what we needed from the land. Knowing the place was ripe with groundhogs, it had been our intent to harvest one of the beasts and presumably turn it on a spit like a bunch of aboriginal hunter gatherers. (Again, how did we ever get our parents to agree to this?)
The shacking up in the farmhouse part worked out fairly well. The roof over our heads proved valuable when the nighttime temperature dipped into the 20s, but without a working indoor fireplace, we found ourselves torn between huddling near an outside fire or bunking out on the cold wooden floor while listening to the resident wildlife scramble across the floorboards of the second story. A short snow flurry settled it. We all spent the night inside.
Our daytime adventures proved much more satisfying, if not particularly productive. We wandered through the woods and fields, rifles at the ready, but for all the wildlife we encountered — dozens of songbirds, a sprinkling of deer and a day-drinking opossum that immediately passed out after waddling into our path and assuming he was cooked — not a groundhog was to be found.
Bound by honor, we would never have taken a game animal out of season, even if it appeared to drop dead in our path, so with red meat off the table, we headed to the fishing hole. A hard-won smattering of bluegill proved the only thing that stood between us and utter starvation. (The metabolism of a teenage boy is rapid and demanding.)
We cooked the fish on sharpened sticks over a campfire. It was every bit as primitive and delightful as we had hoped.
Such adventures, while you’re in them, are replete with things you hope to remember forever. Still, a souvenir or two can’t hurt. I dug up a young fern from a south-facing hillside, one of the greenest things I’d seen in months, and took it home in a plastic pale I found in a roadside ditch. The plant stayed with me all the way to my senior year in college when, forgotten amid increasing din of impending adulthood, it died of thirst in a corner of my rented room.
The one talisman that remains capable of carrying me straight to those boulder-strewn hills, winding gravel roads and some of the best pals I ever had is a twisted walking stick that I’d picked up off the forest floor as we’d headed for home. It stands in the corner of my room, always at the ready to transport me back to my 17-year-old self.
If you have comments on this column or questions about the natural world, write The Rail Trail Naturalist, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email jlorson@alonovus.com. You also can follow along on Instagram @railtrailnaturalist.