Going Where Woods Meets Woods

Things have changed a lot since the days when Nessmuk wandered the woods.

Folks like to say that he pioneered the practice of minimalism where woodcraft is concerned.

I am not so sure that he pioneered it. Many others before him had practiced the craft. I am more inclined to think that what he did was revive it, adapt it to his own preferences and personal needs, and garner something of a reputation through the articles he wrote that were published by Forest and Stream Publishing Company.

Regardless, Mr. Sears (Nessmuk) inspired a lot of people.

He showed a generation that pruning back superfluities and going light into the woods offered every soul an opportunity to reclaim and enjoy adventuring into the woods. Nessmuk, despite the fact that he has been dead and gone for better than a century, still offers a lot of sound advice … advice that can be taken and adapted to these more modern times.

Free roaming, at least in this part of the world, is a thing of the past. It was fading fast at the time Nessmuk roamed the North woods. There are still large tracts of “public” land to be shared with others of the public. But, for the most part, every other square mile is owned by private individuals and large corporate entities.

It is hard, anymore, to get deep enough into the woods that you do not hear the sounds of progress.

Somewhere in the distance will be the sound of human activity … cattle bellowing in a field, logging equipment, planes in the air, vehicles of one sort or another rattling down a pot-holed road, rifle reports. Signs that someone has already been there will always be there. Well, we do the best we can do with what we have to do with, deal with the love-hate relationships inherent in the nuances of modernity, get as deep into the woods as we can, and concern ourselves with what signs and footprints we leave behind when we walk out.

I can still, at least in my own mind, imagine what it was like before the age of fenced private property and hunting club leases.

The truck is a mile from the gravel-paved road.

I am another three-quarters of a mile from where the truck is parked on the bad, muddy, red dirt road that I came in on … sitting on the ground leaning back against the trunk of a nice beech. A slight northerly breeze touches my face. It is a really nice place in the woods to spend an afternoon being fruitfully entertained by the woods.

It is a place where an unnamed woodland creek has its origin with water emerging from several small springs hidden in a hollow.

We people-creatures like to personalize places … give them names that have some sort of meaning to us.

Possum Creek.

In my mind that will do just fine considering the hairy little critter that came along and hung around for a while. It never once noticed that I was there and wandered all around that spot in the woods, at times only a few yards from me, before leaving downstream in the same direction it came from.

I couldn’t help but to think of something Nessmuk wrote …

For brick and mortar breed filth and crime,

With a pulse of evil that throbs and beats;

And men are withered before their prime

By the curse paved in with the lanes and streets.

And lungs are poisoned and shoulders bowed,

In the smothering reek of mill and mine;

And death stalks in on the struggling crowd –

But he shuns the shadow of oak and pine.

(Keystroked – 1/7/2012)