Celebrating40Years in the Outdoor Classroom - The Chewonki ...

Pompey started with me but did not stay with me long.
We were running through a field, he barking and I yelling
and whistling when about two hundred yards ahead I
saw an animal running for the edge of the woods.
Although I do not have a Pompey, I feel the same exuberance
as I walk through fields and stone walls toward the edge of the
wood, seemingly unchanged. The animal Clarence saw was the
skunk that lured Pompey on an all-day chase. I am on
Clarence’s trail.
Before I reach the field-woods edge, I notice a white ash
sapling with buds nipped off 5 feet above the ground—a
moose. About 100 feet farther and I pick up a large feather—
wild turkey. These are two animals that were extirpated in 1904
but have returned in abundance today. I pass through a short
stretch of early successional forest before popping out on a
woods road along a stone wall. Behind the wall is a stand of
mixed woods, with much fir, just bursting with the most
succulent blackberries I have seen this year. Within another
100 yards I see a pile of bear scat and multiple moose bed sites
amidst the blackberry bushes.
Clarence’s balsam fir woods remain, but the large mammals
have returned. I load up on blackberries and then scurry along.
The view from atop Burnt Mountain. In 1904, Clarence wrote of this same
view: “The general impression of the green mountains I had been told was
of an ocean rolling away. It is so—only grander and more impressive and
when one sees the whole circumference as I have today it awes you and
goes deeper than cathedrals or any works of man.”
WILLARD MORGAN
Within another 10 minutes, I find a seasonal hunting
camp at the edge of a recent cut, with a steep hill
covered by a tight network of ferns and blackberry bushes
ahead of me. Because of the heat, I had worn only shorts and
running shoes, to my dismay now. I recall Clarence’s account at
this point as I rouse my enthusiasm for a brutal bushwhack.
The task before me was no easy one. This hill has all been
burned over and a tangle or rather miniature jungle or
thicket of thorny berry bushes has sprung up around the
burned stumps and the fallen logs. Then too the
mountain is not one that a person looking for pleasure
would pick out there being innumberable large boulders
on every side. But it couldn’t have been better for me if it
had been made to order. I dug into the bushes and
boulders and fallen logs, pausing rarely but just going up
and keeping a sharp look out for animals. The tracks
were scarce on the mountainside and I looked in vain
until I reached the very summit.
There I was rewarded by the sight of a fine white
rabbit. The view from the top was inspiring. All around
were mountains of equal size with mine, and rolling back
to the horizon they served as mere foothills to the larger
and grander mountains. I could look all around the circle,
seeing Camels Hump and others of the same height.
They were of course covered with snow and many of
them reminded me of the sacred mountain of Japan. The
general impression of the green mountains I had been
told was of an ocean rolling away. It is so—only grander
and more impressive and when one sees the whole
circumference as I have today it awes you and goes
deeper than cathedrals or any works of man.
Encouraged by the Clarence Allen spirit, I plow ahead through
ferns and blackberries, which turn out to hide a tangle of
logging slash underneath. A few headlong falls and “innumberable”
scratches on my legs later, I clamber out of this thicket
and into a beautiful mid-successional northern hardwood
forest. American beech, sugar maple, red maple, and yellow
birch dominate the canopy, with some striped maple and
scattered balsam fir in the understory. As I climb, the forest
becomes a woodland with a wide-open understory carpeted
with hayscented and bracken ferns.
Continued on page 18
Visit our website at www.chewonki.org / 17