New Year's Mountains

View from the summit of Giant LedgeNear the summit of Wittenberg Mountain, the wind howling through my wool hat, I heard the chickadees. I looked over into the Spruce trees and there were the bright little birds, tilting their black caps at me, as if to get a better look at this person on snowshoes, trudging her way through the snow. My appreciation for the Chickadee soared. Here they were, just over 3,500 in such cold, singing away. My toes were cold, my ears burned, my fingers were numb. I didn’t feel like singing.

It was January 1, and we were five, ringing in the New Year by heading for the summit of Wittenberg. Wittenberg is 3,780 feet and is neighbors to Cornell and Slide in the Burroughs Range of the Catskills. The guidebook describes the climb up Wittenberg as “extremely difficult.” I had been up the mountain before, but on a spring day. And, I was feeling fresh that day. On this New Year’s hike I started out with sore legs; the day before, I had hiked up Giant Ledge and Panther with my friend Max.

Max duck-taping his snowshoesMax and I had left late on the 31st, after spending some time duck-taping his snowshoes, and stopping for sandwiches. The sun was high, a crystal blue-sky day. The trail had been broken, though we still wore snowshoes. In several sections, the trail had been blown over and we tromped down the fresh powder as we passed black cherry trees and then moved through hemlock forests.

This was Max’s first Catskill hike and I wanted to take him up something with great views (not the case with every Catskill peak). We were not disappointed. The scan east toward the Hudson, to Overlook, Roundtop and Plateau was magnificent. After easily summiting Giant Ledge, we headed on to Panther, and returned to the car by three in the afternoon happy. On our walk I had seen exactly two birds: two Hairy Woodpeckers and a few Chickadees out in the sunshine. It was the perfect close to a not so perfect year.

I try not to place too much pressure on the New Year, but like many I have hopes that something might change. I don’t hope for anything too farfetched like world peace or finding love or not ever hearing the words fiscal cliff again. I keep it small: that I’ll write with more focus or become a better birder. When you spend a day hiking up a mountain, you are not writing. And a mountain in winter, you are not birding. I ignored this, hoping for the sheer high of a day outside, of sweating then freezing, of standing above the world and looking down.

Sun rising, from WittenbergOur group gathered at the trail at 8, Woodland Valley still dark.  I only knew one of my companions, Connie, who has hiked every peak in the Catskills dozens of times. She’s a sort of godmother of the mountains, leading people to summits they need to complete all 35 peaks above 3,500 feet. Three others on this hike “needed” both Wittenberg and Cornell. I didn’t need anything but a hike. Before we left I said, “if anyone out front flushes a Ruffed Grouse, let me know.” One companion, who I did not know, said, “I hate grouse.” I looked at her in surprise. How was that possible? “I would like them dead,” she said. I hoped she was joking but her expression said otherwise. “To eat, of course,” she added.

Puzzled, I turned and headed down the trail, which was mercifully broken.  Two hundred yards from the trailhead, the Ruffed Grouse flushed from the cover of a downed tree. The flurry of flapping wings delighted me. My first bird of the year.

I try not to place too much pressure on the first bird of the year. But I have come to see them as an omen. A good bird makes me feel lucky, and the hope is that luck will follow me into the New Year. (How we delude ourselves!) I had heard a Carolina Wren singing as I waited for others in the parking lot off of route 28 at 7 in the morning. But the first bird I saw was this Ruffed Grouse. And here’s one cool thing about a Ruffed Grouse: in winter they grow projections off the side of their toes. This creates mini-snowshoes for the bird. We would both be snowshoeing on this long day.

From the summit of WittenbergThe wind howled as we neared the summit. Such different weather from the previous clear sunny day! Near the summit, there are a series of steep climbs, moments where you need both hands and feet to get over rocks. These rocks were iced and snowed over making the ascent trickier than usual. We spotted each other and pulled each other over ledges until we were at the summit. There, we marveled at the view down onto the vast Ashokan Reservoir, which is part of New York City’s water supply. But we couldn’t stand and admire long in the cold and wind. We huddled behind a few trees and gulped water and sandwiches. Two in our party continued on toward Cornell while the rest of us headed downhill. Down to our cars, to our lives, to the end of a special day, which is really just like any day.

From Snow to Spring Beauties

West Kill is a small town wedged in a wide valley in the Catskill Mountains. The houses nudge each other in the small town, then out route 42 the houses space out, become farms. I wonder about the brave farmers who first settled this valley.

“Do you think you would be lonely living out here?” I ask our car full of women, all dressed for a day hike up West Kill peak. I used to romanticize living far from everyone and everything, craved silence the way some people crave chocolate.  Mary responds quickly, “Yes.” I would be too, I admit.  Though I often spend long days alone I always see another person: the post mistress, or Mikee the baker where I buy a brioche on Wednesday mornings. In the bakery I’ll know someone, share a few words, a laugh. I may only talk to another person for five minutes in a day but that is five minutes of touching the world. I think of these moments as ballast, keeping me upright. This Catskill town’s emptiness feels vast. To add to it, there is evidence, deep, piled up, destroyed evidence of Hurricane Irene from this past fall. Some bridges have been rebuilt, some remain in progress. But the river bed is wide, wider than is needed for the stream that now flows through. The debris that lines the riverbank includes massive logs and piles of brush. Looking at it I sense the force of the water that swept through here, altering this landscape.

The trailhead follows a stream into the hills and to a series of beautiful waterfalls. The trail then shot uphill for two and a half miles. 

I am sure that I used to be a fun hiking companion to Mary and Connie, with whom I’ve shared many peaks. We would gab our way up and down mountains covering life’s most important topics: family, food and sex. Now, I have my binoculars strapped to my chest, eager to see what birds are living their lives on this snowy mountain. Rather than talk, I linger behind everyone looking for movement, or a small chip.

I am rewarded right away with a plump rusty Fox Sparrow. It’s one of my favorite sparrows and not just because we share a name. A Junco trills from the woods and further up the trail I hear a flock of Pine Siskin where they belong: in a pine tree.

Soon we are tromping through snow, and clambering over downed birch trees. We have had so little snow this winter that to walk through the soft layer pleases me.

A picnic on the summit offers one of the finest views from a Catskill Peak I have ever had. Often from these summits there is little or no view. In fact, you hardly know you’ve arrived at the summit. Here, we look into the valleys, the trees brown, but beginning to shade to green with new buds, the spread of the mountain range before us. We pick out other peaks: Plateau, there, Hunter, there, and share food.

view from the summitA Turkey Vulture soars into view. And then a Raven swoops past. I could hear—felt—its wing beats. Perhaps we were sitting too close to a nest.

The quiet of the woods is my company on the descent. Too soon we are out of the snow and back at the stream, the falls. And there to greet us is a patch of Spring Beauties.

Lists

With Connie, heading up Black DomeI have four notebooks that float through my life and all contain lists. Students to meet with. Food to buy. Bills to pay. Letters to write.  Grants to apply for.  I love these lists for the sheer satisfaction of crossing something off. But it’s a rare list that is completed. There is always an item or two that lingers, that gets transferred to the next list.  Eventually I will decide I never will apply for that writer’s colony or never will write that letter and it gets forgotten.

And then there are the other lists in my life. The list of climbs I have scaled—this exists only in my mind. The list of mountains I have climbed in the Catskills. There are 35 over 3,500 feet and getting up all of them is a vague goal of mine. But I can never keep track of what I’ve done and so that list is both incomplete and inaccurate. The list of birds I have seen. This is a list that birders take seriously.  But once again my keeping track is haphazard. Some days I come home from birding and carefully highlight the new bird in my Sibley’s and mark the date and place. But often I forget. I get home and make tea and go on with my busy life. Somehow I think I would be a better person if I could keep these lists; keeping track of my climbs, my mountains, my birds would be tending to my life. And that attention would make me more focused, more attentive to detail. Would life be neater if these lists were in order?

When, two weeks ago, someone posted on a birding listserv that they had found a Gray-crowned Rosy-finch on the summit of Black Dome mountain two of my lists collided. I had never seen a Gray-crowned Rosy-finch  but I had climbed Black Dome a few winters ago with my friend Teri. The bird list trumped—it would be thrilling to add this bird to my list, a bird that had never before been seen in New York State and is rarely seen east of the Rockies--and off I went with a few friends, including Connie Sciutto, known to many as Killer Connie or the Godmother of Catskill hiking. She hikes several times a week and has completed the grid of Catskill climbs—twice.

A few days before, eight birders had trudged to the summit of the mountain in an attempt to re-find the bird. They were all expert birders and what they came up with was a robin on the summit. This big “dip,” as a birder would say, didn’t discourage me. I would find the bird.

The road into the trail head winds through the isolated and rather quaint town of Maplecrest. In these remote towns I wonder how people make their living. Some are farming, but most houses stand lonely, seemingly braced to weather a Catskill winter. The road out of town passed by an image of hurricane Irene-related destruction: houses stood cock-eyed near the creek that had expanded to four times its usual width. The pile up of boulders and trees was frightening to see, the force palpable months later. The rising, rushing water had killed one elderly woman in Maplecrest.  Many of these Catskill towns are still reeling from the storm—rebuilding bridges, roads, and houses.

At the trailhead we layered on our clothes, which we then systematically took off as we started to climb. This winter, we can agree, has been spookily mild and there was but a dusting of snow on the ground. Still, it was slick and when I went down the first time I put on my micro-spikes to help me climb. At a saddle, our group parted ways, some heading for the summit of Blackhead (a peak some needed), while my friend Mary and I went for the summit of Black Dome. “Don’t worry, I’ll be quiet,” Mary promised. We had been chatting away up the hill, but I had kept an ear cocked for any sounds. All I got was silence, and a few Black-capped Chickadees.

The summit of Black Dome seemed a mini-boreal forest with stunted conifers and a few mountain ash bearing red berries. We walked the sheltered path along the summit; like many Catskill Peaks there’s no great sense of expansive view at the summit, just a long relatively flat path that traversed the summit and then headed down the south side. The wind was ferocious, but in the shelter of the trees we kept fairly warm.

The summit was eerily silent.  We walked slowly, pished from time to time, listened, looked. If the bird wasn’t here, where might it have gone? And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bird fly into a spruce tree. “I saw it too,” Mary (not a birder) confirmed. She stood on the path while I walked through thick bushes toward the tree. The bird flushed and Mary pointed to where it had vanished. We compared notes on size and color—it had to be the bird!--and I felt my blood tingle with a just miss.

We settled in to eat some lunch, hoping the bird might return. But after twenty minutes of loitering we were cold and the woods were silent.

Soon, we headed downhill. I had added nothing to my lists, not a new bird or a new peak. Yet when we arrived at the car I felt that familiar elation of a day spent outdoors, of cold and exercise and wind making my blood flow, my ideas warm.

My bird list will remain messy and incomplete, like all of my lists.  Perhaps in fact that is the nature of a list, to be a process, to be unfinished, to always have more I want to see or do or experience. What I can say is there are no regrets as there is nothing like a day spent among trees, my senses alert, looking but not finding a rare bird.