WriterByNature.com

February 29, 2008 6:32 am

“Please sir, may I have more,” I tease as Carl pours each person on the tour a bit of maple sap.

The Hudson Highlands Nature Museum staff refer to themselves as edutainers. Carl, who led this maple syrup production tour from the tree to the table, has mastered the art of educating and entertaining while hiking.

We move and stop intermittently. It’s the way I like to hike when foraging or attracting wildlife. This museum really makes the natural world accessible to the general public.

This is the first winter of my life that there has been virtually no snow; the first significant accumulation had fallen just two days before this hike. But people who tap sugar maple trees in this area have already begun the process. In a normal winter, this would be the time to start.

It’s a short season - six weeks at most. Even with 21st Century technology, it’s a labor-intensive process. The result is worth the effort. If we happen to get a spring snow storm, I’ll be able to enjoy maple syrup on snow.

A few people my age, their children and grandchildren follow along, snapping icicles off branches, negotiating a snow-covered bridge and searching for dried sugar maple leaves. Carl delights in their discoveries. I marvel at how many details I didn’t know about this process. (more…)

February 26, 2008 5:45 am

Style, like DNA or fingerprints, is what identifies a writer.

Here are some techniques you can use to create the appropriate style for your written work: (more…)

February 24, 2008 7:04 am

Finding a blow-down, where a live tree has fallen down, can be a lucky opportunity in a survival situation. The pine tree that fell just before our survival class began, provided pine needles for tea, pine inner bark for food, boughs to cushion and warm the floor of our shelter and baskets for heating liquid during our trek.

This photo shows how the pine branch was peeled and the folded basket. (more…)

February 21, 2008 7:23 am

This is one of those skills that has challenged me for years. I can’t make a stone tool Figure-4 set, but thanks to the adaptations of Barry Keegan and those who mentored him, I can make a functional Figure-4.

A bent lever stick, supported by a forked stick, will hold the weight of the rock. By setting bait on a thin cardboard or birch bark tray and securing that tray to the bait stick makes it easier to position, without prematurely collapsing the entire trap.

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February 17, 2008 7:00 am

I’m lucky to learn from people who have been teaching for many years. They have a fine-tuned presentation that I find inspiring. They also know which books and which online sites provide the greatest value in keeping up with the continuous stream of new mycological information. That’s a huge time saver.

Once again, I am in awe of Gary Lincoff and deeply grateful he shared Michael Kuo’s MushroomExpert.com website. Michael writes:

Mushrooms and trees are inextricably linked. Most trees cannot survive without mycorrhizal partners from the fungal world–and saprobic fungi play a vital role in forest ecosystems, decomposing tree litter. Thus identifying trees is essential to understanding and identifying mushrooms.

Mycorrhizal means mutually-beneficial and saprobic means decomposing dead organic matter. My language skills are also getting a workout.

Everything in nature is connected. But I’m always amazed when I see it on such a macro level. (more…)

February 14, 2008 6:36 am

This is an adaptation of a recipe I found in a cook booklet, Old Pioneer Recipes, published by Bear Wallow Books. I am deeply grateful to this writer and historian.

The original recipe called for two squirrels, onion, butter, flour and Tabasco sauce. My recipe includes more vegetables and three sources of wild meat.

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February 11, 2008 5:05 am

I haven’t experimented with hide tanning for years. Back then, I used a hide scraper to remove membranes, fat and meat from a wet hide.

I had no idea it was even possible to scrape a dry hide clean. The red squirrel that found my trap provided an unexpected opportunity. I started with basic instructions provided by Barry Keegan. I skinned the hide while at Hawk Circle, but with all we had to do, I didn’t get to the tanning until I got back home. (more…)

February 8, 2008 5:32 am

I dug out my old notes from Tom Brown’s Advanced Tracking class. Either I took really good notes, or I copied them over right after I got home. I took Advanced Tracking in 1991. How time flies.

Virtually everyone I respect in the world of wilderness survival has taken classes from Tom Brown. He’s a charismatic speaker and an enigmatic personality. I struggled through those classes, but despite my fears and my inadequacies, I learned something.

As I think about how creatures move and how the shift in weight is recorded in the movement of each foot, (that’s a very simplistic explanation of pressure releases), I rediscover Tom Brown’s coffee cup tracking technique. (more…)

February 7, 2008 6:10 am

The wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) is an escaped cultivated parsnip, according to every forager I consulted. The important thing to note is that the leaves can irritate your skin. The root is the desired edible part of the plant.

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February 6, 2008 4:58 am

This is the first time I cleaned a skull without an expert at my side. I have only two other fresh skulls in my collection; the rest I found while hiking.

I wasn’t willing to bury this red squirrel skull and wait for the dung beetles. I knew that by boiling the skull, I would risk losing the teeth, so I tried an experiment, after consulting my experts and reading as much as I could on the subjects of cleaning skulls and cooking meat. (more…)