A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident

The first daffodil shoots bursting above ground are usually a welcome sign of spring. But when these appeared on February 15, I was disturbed. That is way too early, disturbing rather than reassuring. I feared a return to seasonal post-freezing temperatures would doom them. The freeze never came and we had blooms on St. Patrick’s Day, weeks ahead of other years.

One of my favorite websites, howmuchwillitsnow.com, says that our part of the forest has received 70% less snow than normal. Our treacherous driveway needed only two plowings instead of the normal six or so. While I root for as little snow as possible, I found it difficult to feel good about a winter this warm.

Now I’m sitting in what we call social isolation, which, except for avoiding the new virus and constantly being reminded that my age and lungs make me particularly vulnerable, is not that different from my ordinary lifestyle. If my life were a bad novel, which I suspect it is, the way-too-early green shoots would be a foreshadowing of the virus. The same ecological disruptions that skipped winter in the Poconos enabled a virus to jump from bats to humans, like the Chinese butterfly with wings flapping causing a hurricane in Texas. This virus appears to be a hurricane that swirls everywhere at once.

My forest meanderings often focus on parts of the great cycle of life: a caterpillar that may or may not survive to fly, an acorn’s very small chance of becoming an oak tree, the invasive plants and the fragile ones, the heroic migration of the monarch, the stolid march of the wooly worm, deep slumbers of bears and chipmunks. Always behind my observations are the unvoiced questions, “Where do I fit in? What of my species?”

For many centuries, starting with Aristotle, humans put themselves at the top of The Great Chain of Being. Medieval Christianity built a penthouse for God and angels. I suspect the other species never saw us that way, but rather as just another hungry mammal trying to survive and best to avoid. They were right.