Thursday, October 20, 2005
THE HUNTER'S MOON
It is slightly past now, but its effects continue to widen.
The full moon of October has traditionally been known as the Hunter’s Moon. For good reason.
That’s because, when such things mattered, the crops were in. Remember September’s Harvest Moon? There’s also the great yellow orb in the sky these clear October nights. It throws plenty of light for hunters and their restless, excited coon dogs.
I hear them running at night in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and along the rivers and creeks of Southwest Virginia. Today, kerosene lanterns have given way to powerful battery-pack headlamps worn by coon hunters. But there’s still enough light from the Hunter’s Moon to switch off the lamp from time to time and follow the dogs through the less tangled sections of forest, or along creek banks where coons like to search for freshwater mussels.
It doesn’t matter much whether there’s a coon caught, or just a coon chased. The ancient attraction is to woods illuminated by hound music and moonlight – by the Hunter’s Moon -- and to the other signs that proclaim, once again, the earth has rotated and tilted to the precise and wonderful short period of the year when it’s time to go hunting.
Most people think hunting takes place all year. Not so.
From January through September, wildlife is mostly left alone to reproduce and store up food or fat for the coming winter. Hunting seasons are set for fall and winter, and seldom last for more than two months out of the year.
But unfamiliar ducks and geese are sliding into our creeks and rivers as the great migration away from the frigid north begins.
The color of deer is changing from summer tan to winter brown in order to absorb more sunlight. Squirrels are scampering from dawn to dusk to gather the abundance of hickory nuts and tangy black walnuts that litter the ground. At night, you can hear the hoot of the owl and see migrant birds passing across the bright face of the moon.
The doors to various hunting seasons will begin to fall like dominoes now. Those of us who hunt – whether it be coons or walnuts – will walk though the door, and be renewed again.
It all began, as it always does, with the Hunter’s Moon.
END
The full moon of October has traditionally been known as the Hunter’s Moon. For good reason.
That’s because, when such things mattered, the crops were in. Remember September’s Harvest Moon? There’s also the great yellow orb in the sky these clear October nights. It throws plenty of light for hunters and their restless, excited coon dogs.
I hear them running at night in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and along the rivers and creeks of Southwest Virginia. Today, kerosene lanterns have given way to powerful battery-pack headlamps worn by coon hunters. But there’s still enough light from the Hunter’s Moon to switch off the lamp from time to time and follow the dogs through the less tangled sections of forest, or along creek banks where coons like to search for freshwater mussels.
It doesn’t matter much whether there’s a coon caught, or just a coon chased. The ancient attraction is to woods illuminated by hound music and moonlight – by the Hunter’s Moon -- and to the other signs that proclaim, once again, the earth has rotated and tilted to the precise and wonderful short period of the year when it’s time to go hunting.
Most people think hunting takes place all year. Not so.
From January through September, wildlife is mostly left alone to reproduce and store up food or fat for the coming winter. Hunting seasons are set for fall and winter, and seldom last for more than two months out of the year.
But unfamiliar ducks and geese are sliding into our creeks and rivers as the great migration away from the frigid north begins.
The color of deer is changing from summer tan to winter brown in order to absorb more sunlight. Squirrels are scampering from dawn to dusk to gather the abundance of hickory nuts and tangy black walnuts that litter the ground. At night, you can hear the hoot of the owl and see migrant birds passing across the bright face of the moon.
The doors to various hunting seasons will begin to fall like dominoes now. Those of us who hunt – whether it be coons or walnuts – will walk though the door, and be renewed again.
It all began, as it always does, with the Hunter’s Moon.
END
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
THE TIME OF THE WOOLY WORM
AUTUMN WOOLY WORMS: A MODEST MARVEL
Of the all the attractive but simpleminded natural fauna you’re likely to see rambling around in the fall of the year, the wooly worm caterpillar is perhaps the most abundant and easily recognizable.
(Come to think of it, those are the same words we used to describe my weird brother Tosh in his salad days – attractive but simpleminded, and way too abundant.)
The wooly worms – sometimes called wooly bears or wooly boogers – are everywhere. Crossing roads and sidewalks. Inching up door facings. Inside the house.
Whatever the local name, we’re talking about a caterpillar that will, in spring, turn into the tiger moth. The caterpillars are black on both ends with a reddish-brown band around the middle.
And that brings up one of the most interesting aspects of the wooly worm.
For generations, checking out the breadth of the brown band on a wooly worm is supposed to predict whether the coming winter will be mild or a real rip-snorter.
A narrow band of brown means a moderate winter. A broad band means snow galore, so you’d better gather in an extra pile of seasoned oak and hickory for the stove and extra flour for the gravy.
And here’s another mystery. Why does a wooly worm cross the road? The highways and back roads are where we see most wooly worms in autumn, diligently and single-mindedly humping it across a very dangerous piece of real estate.
Cars squash them into juice. Others are rolled like fuzzy little tumbleweeds by the backwash of a car traveling half a hundred miles an hour.
The ones that aren’t squashed almost immediately right themselves and continue on their determined way – although the "way" may be the exact opposite from where they were headed.
Naturalist Edwin Way Teale, author of "Stalking the Wild Asparagus," once spent several days working with wooly worms. On remote highways, he’d find one headed east, then turn it west. No matter which he pointed the little fellow, it seemed to consider its journey in the opposite direction just as important as the one it had chosen originally.
I’ve spent about 10 minutes (which is enough) doing the same thing -- flipping wooly worms -- and can report that Teale (who was probably getting paid for such foolishness) was absolutely right.
The big secret, of course, is that the colorful caterpillar is searching out a snug place to sleep away the winter. Whether its eventual bed is in leaves, bark and forest litter above or below the road doesn’t count for much.
But a word of warning. If my grandmother was right, and broader bands do foretell a hard winter, we might be in for a lot of snow and snuggling weather.
Maybe it was just the angle from which I looked at them – down on hands and knees in the middle of a remote country road, hind end pointed skyward, face against the pavement – but it seemed to me that the brown middle bands are just a tad broader than normal.
A word to the wise is, in most cases, sufficient.
END
Of the all the attractive but simpleminded natural fauna you’re likely to see rambling around in the fall of the year, the wooly worm caterpillar is perhaps the most abundant and easily recognizable.
(Come to think of it, those are the same words we used to describe my weird brother Tosh in his salad days – attractive but simpleminded, and way too abundant.)
The wooly worms – sometimes called wooly bears or wooly boogers – are everywhere. Crossing roads and sidewalks. Inching up door facings. Inside the house.
Whatever the local name, we’re talking about a caterpillar that will, in spring, turn into the tiger moth. The caterpillars are black on both ends with a reddish-brown band around the middle.
And that brings up one of the most interesting aspects of the wooly worm.
For generations, checking out the breadth of the brown band on a wooly worm is supposed to predict whether the coming winter will be mild or a real rip-snorter.
A narrow band of brown means a moderate winter. A broad band means snow galore, so you’d better gather in an extra pile of seasoned oak and hickory for the stove and extra flour for the gravy.
And here’s another mystery. Why does a wooly worm cross the road? The highways and back roads are where we see most wooly worms in autumn, diligently and single-mindedly humping it across a very dangerous piece of real estate.
Cars squash them into juice. Others are rolled like fuzzy little tumbleweeds by the backwash of a car traveling half a hundred miles an hour.
The ones that aren’t squashed almost immediately right themselves and continue on their determined way – although the "way" may be the exact opposite from where they were headed.
Naturalist Edwin Way Teale, author of "Stalking the Wild Asparagus," once spent several days working with wooly worms. On remote highways, he’d find one headed east, then turn it west. No matter which he pointed the little fellow, it seemed to consider its journey in the opposite direction just as important as the one it had chosen originally.
I’ve spent about 10 minutes (which is enough) doing the same thing -- flipping wooly worms -- and can report that Teale (who was probably getting paid for such foolishness) was absolutely right.
The big secret, of course, is that the colorful caterpillar is searching out a snug place to sleep away the winter. Whether its eventual bed is in leaves, bark and forest litter above or below the road doesn’t count for much.
But a word of warning. If my grandmother was right, and broader bands do foretell a hard winter, we might be in for a lot of snow and snuggling weather.
Maybe it was just the angle from which I looked at them – down on hands and knees in the middle of a remote country road, hind end pointed skyward, face against the pavement – but it seemed to me that the brown middle bands are just a tad broader than normal.
A word to the wise is, in most cases, sufficient.
END
