Be Still

With the weather cooling off for the first time this fall -and seeing as how I am trying to regularly add more content to this blog as well as to my other blog and to my web site- I rememberd this:

This was published last year in the Mountain Statesman, our local Grafton, WV newspaper.

“It’s gonna be a hard winter,” my grandmother would’ve said. A firm nod of her head and a sagacity underlined with wrinkles would have left little room for doubt.
Unfortunately, my grandmother is no longer with us, but her insight and wisdom live on…
Yesterday, while walking the Woodland Trail here at Tygart Lake State Park, I slowed my usual frenzied pace and breathed in the ever-so-slight fall crispness that comes this time of year. The air was still quite warm, but the underlying sweet-tangy aroma of the mountains preparing to burst into color reminded me that winter is not far off. With the thought of cold weather approaching, I found a cold, flat rock to sit on, sunshine dappling my hiking boots. And then, I did what my grandmother told me, a fidgety child, to do: Be Still.
The pleasure of sitting quietly in the woods can only be outdone with the awareness that comes with stillness: the loudness of acorns and hickory nuts falling through the tree canopy and thumping when they hit the forest floor; the softness of two deer feeding, making their way up the hill toward me; the call of a bird I can’t identify. I see a little spotted toad hopping toward a hollow in the base of a massive oak. Miniscule mushrooms and hundreds of early-dropped maple seed ‘helicopters’. There are thousands of hickory nuts and as many acorns, most still with their little hats on.
If you’ve been fortunate enough to spend time in the woods this summer, you’ll have noticed the abundance of tree fruit this year. This is the indicator that my grandmother would have used as proof of the hard winter to come. Botanists call this larger-than-normal production ‘mast’. It happens every three to five years, but this year is a particularly heavy year. With all the research and scientific data, still no one is quite sure why this happens. For a year like this, when all fruit production is elevated, the most popular theory is based on the measured rainfall of the few years previous: the precipitation of a couple of ‘wet’ years is able to support the growth of heavy foliage and therefore the extra energy needed for fruit production. Another idea, based on a mast of one or several, but not all, types of fruit, theorizes that the cyclic production of fruit encourages squirrels and other animals to diversify their food sources.
My camera flash startles the deer, now only 50 feet distant. Their tails rise like truce flags as they turn away, down the mountainside. I stand to stretch, watching them disappear. Whatever the reasons, mast ensures a plentiful food supply for over-wintering wildlife and the uneaten –or undigested- excess will guarantee a high germination rate, perpetuating the cycle. No matter how you choose to look at it, plenty of food is essential for a hard winter. As I begin my descent, I realize that Grandma was right about a lot of things; I’ll be interested to see if she’s as right about the hard winter coming as she has proved to be about the importance of stillness.