Autumn Byways

By ED WESELY

There is no end

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This will mark a third season for Autumn Byways. But this year, because of space limitations, it will appear every other week.]

A FINAL BUS TRIP. The last children, 60 second-graders, arrived in a school bus in late October, and for two hours made the farm bubble: threading a labyrinth mowed into the meadow; straining to watch "Crinkle," the butterfly; and racing pell-mell, all 60 of them, to meet Precious the goat.

This has become a yearly ritual for second graders at Lakeside Elementary School who arrive in October, two groups per day, until all eight classes have made the trip.

Lakeside's teachers bring the kids to observe how I rear and release about 400 monarch butterflies each summer. But the best fun and learning is by chance - testing black walnuts (which stain fingertips and can sail in parabolas), or the peck of a beak when you hand-feed young chickens.

Aubrey (who insisted on the "b" after I'd said "Audrey") added her own presentation. She'd saved an apple for Precious the goat and after conferring about it ("will "Presh" bite my fingers?") danced round and round to prevent Precious from taking the apple in one gulp, and from blocking the views of her friends.

Lakeside kids have also spied bald eagles touching talons above the Delaware River, and have joined hands around the 19-foot circumference of a giant maple tree.

During the dark days of November the goats, Precious and Basil, and I invariably cock an ear for echoes of the Lakeside kids, and search the grass, on our walks, for scattered bits of yarn from one of their games.

	TRR graphic by Ed Wesely The Witch-Hazel flower.

WITCH-HAZELS. The witch hazels were in full flower a week ago, and I've never seen their yellow petals more brilliant. These are small shrubby trees of the forest understory which, around here, favor forest edges along our rural roads.

If you're walking or driving, look for four thin, strap-like petals about an inch long which clump into eight petals when two flowers are paired, as they commonly are.

It's also a witch-hazel trademark that seedpods from last year's flowering require a year to mature. They are woody, about the size of a little fingernail, and resemble gaping mouths after they've opened.

	TRR graphic by Ed Wesely Open seed capsules.

When puzzling about a snapping sound in his study one autumn night, the 19th Century naturalist Henry David Thoreau discovered "it was produced by the witch-hazel nuts on my desk springing open and casting their seeds quite across my chamber."

On October 21, in the Damascus town forest, I discovered a witch-hazel with scores and scores of flowers, more than I'd ever seen on any one plant. They were about head-high, and even across a broad meadow glowed with a special radiance.

Note, too, that the name has nothing to do with Halloween witches. It originated with the Anglo Saxons, from their word "wicen," which meant "to bend." It's the pliant quality of hazel wood that's prized by dowsers, who still collect it for their "witching wands."

Silas, the "hired man" in Robert Frost's great poem, is made to comment about a college boy who'd helped him at haying season:

"He said he couldn't make the boy believe

He could find water with a hazel prong-

Which showed how much good school had ever done him."

WOOLY BEARS. Another prominent visitor during our gorgeous Indian summer has been the wooly bear caterpillar. Coaxed by sunlit pavements, legions of these "black ended bears" have edged onto highways and rural roads, too often to meet their doom. On my own River Road I've found squashed wooly bears too numerous to count.

	TRR graphic by Ed Wesely The Isabella Moth.

Each survivor is seeking a dry, secure spot on the forest floor where it can curl into a ball and sleep away the winter. A blanket of snow is a special boon to wooly bears in zero-degree weather, and if they survive frigid nights and the damp of "thaws," they'll traverse our roads again in spring, searching out sites to build their cocoons.

Each "bear" will then construct a cocoon from its own hairs, and pupate inside it for a month or two. In May, a pretty little moth, the Isabella Tiger Moth, will emerge to find a mate and begin the cycle again.

"Thus life goes on from generation to generation," the Micmac Indians understood. "There is no end."