Author: admin
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Grow Your Own
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident Readers of “Naif in the Forest” will recall my recent difficulty identifying mushrooms. This time I am 100% positive this photograph is of future Shiitake mushrooms, species Lentinula edodes, strain West Wind. I know because…
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Deer Bed
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident This week’s photo is taken twenty feet from the edge of a nearby creek. The brush is flattened in an almost circular pattern. I suggested to my wife it might be a crop circle where…
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A Bug by Any Other Name
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident This photograph is blurry. He ran when an object several times his size, wielded by a being of unimaginable power and intent, hovered over him. He was the season’s last stinkbug. More precisely, he was…
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Not Too Late Fall
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident The fall colors had been disappointing. Endless rain and cloudy days are not conducive to fall colors. Our terrible summer, which followed a spring too late to earn its name, which followed a winter where…
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As Above, So Below
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident During this very wet summer there was more moss than ever in our back yard and the surrounding forest, especially the kind that looks like a tiny pine forest. I think this is one of…
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What Endures
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident Violet the Corgi was on full Squirrel Patrol recently, when she stuck her snout into the roots of a dead tree. She frequently becomes sufficiently obsessed following her nose as deeply as it can penetrate…
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The Real Orange Peel
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident Recently I wrote about the rare bright orange colors found in the forest: an orange newt and an orange mushroom. Proving that “Naif in the Forest” is accurate, I now discover, thanks to the diligence…
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Milo the Explorer
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident Milo is almost eighteen years old and has spent his entire life as an indoor cat, except for a few anxious moments in his youth, one of which required the hook and ladder crew of…
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The Weed of Sisyphus
Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident My wife is the gardener of the family, being the only one with actual knowledge of plants. I am enlisted for tasks too heavy, repetitive or boring. This includes controlling Japanese Stiltgrass. Microstegium vimineum came to…
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Orange is the New Taupe
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident One of my first purchases upon finding myself a weekend forest dweller seven years ago was a bright hunter orange hat and vest. I also bought vests for my dogs. It makes sense to tell…