Category: PEEC Blog
-
To Hibernate, Perchance to Dream
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident This photograph is our short fieldstone wall, which I call the “Mouse Hotel.” Most of the year I see many mice in and out of the little crevices. Squirrels and chipmunks hide their lunches; toads…
-
Forest Fear Itself
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident A mature shagbark hickory can grow to over 100 feet and live for 350 years. The bark of the mature tree will curl up, sometimes extravagantly. The first time I saw a large one, with…
-
Nevermore
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident This photo was taken during last winter’s late storm that dumped over a foot of snow on our part of the forest, and knocked out electrical power for nine days. About an hour before the…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…