TRAIL-WALKING

When I was a kid growing up in New Hampshire, we spent a lot of time in the woods -- walking through, running trails between houses, creating bike paths, sledding between trees, skating on the small bog, scaling boulders, climbing trees, and generally creating mayhem.  Except for the occasional bear, wolf, or beaver encounter, my life in the woods has been relatively uneventful.

Although I live in an urban part of suburbia, I'm still not far from the woods.  I drive through or around the perimeter of the state forest every day going to and coming home from work.  My town has protected trails all over the place.  Even though I live across the street from the train station, I'm also along the banks of a river that is completely shaded with trees.

Even the prep school up the street has protected woods.  Behind the track and playing fields are trails into the woods.  It also has a bird sanctuary, which is a partially fenced area full of forest trails and animals.  Sunday my daughter and I decide to take a walk and inadvertently end up in the bird sanctuary.  For a beautiful day, it's not very crowded.  We see a few families, some joggers, and a few lone hikers.

I am surprised by how many people come in here alone.  I'll admit there is the creep factor of someone jumping out from behind a tree and grabbing me, but that may be leftover fear from my younger days of living in the NH woods.  Still, there's the simple worry about tripping over a tree root or miss-stepping.  A rolled ankle out here in the woods can turn into an evening of hypothermia before anyone even notices that you're missing.

My daughter, who rolled her ankle badly a few months ago, admits that despite being a nurse, she's worried about re-injuring herself in the woods.  I tell her not to worry; I'll grab her a crutch-like stick and help her hobble out to safety.  She assures me that if her ankle hurts as badly as it did a few months ago, she's calling an ambulance to drag her out of the woods.

We trek along for a while, crossing an open field then ducking back into the cover of the early spring semi-foliage.  I laugh to myself walking through the woods because this is what it looked like in April 1775 when the British engaged the Colonists in Lexington and Concord.  There was no cover except the trunks of trees, semi-leafy mountain laurel, and the occasional stone wall.  New England doesn't have real foliage in April, yet every movie ever made about the battle shows the Americans hiding under cover of lush green leaves.

I call bullshit.

As I'm thinking about this, I see something ahead of us on the trail that makes me gasp a sharp intake of breath.  My daughter, who is wearing sunglasses and not her regular glasses, panics.  Last year there was a coyote attack in these woods, and I'm not helping when I stop abruptly and point.

"Three deer," I say.  "White-tailed, about fifty yards in front of us."

My daughter sighs.  "You know I can't see that far."

As quickly as I see them, they bound away.  I'm not sure where they're going because there's nothing up there except an open field, a cabin, and the street.  I lose sight of the deer for a few minutes then catch a glimpse of them skirting the open area and circling back around behind us, then they vanish.  I hope to take a picture of them, but all I get is a picture of the knotted bush where they are hiding, waiting us out as much as we are waiting them out.

Other than the deer, we don't see anything more exciting than a chipmunk.  Nobody falls or twists ankles or gets attacked by anything.  Even the spring bugs are not out yet.  We walk almost three uneventful miles, emerging back into the tar and car exhaust of urban suburbia.