Mullane: Earth Day passes quietly in the woods, and with no fear

It came and went during a turbulent week of verdicts and shootings and a country still convulsed by COVID, but Thursday was Earth Day, so I took a walk in the woods.

I’ve taken these Earth Day jaunts for years. It’s usually the only time I’m outdoors simply to enjoy nature. Most of my outdoor time is impoverished, walking from my house to my car, from my car into a store, and back. It may be the same with you, I don’t know. Probably.

Usually the Earth Day jaunt is brief, pleasant and uneventful. But two things happened this year — the hup-hup guy, and then the red fox. First, the hup-hup guy.

The place I went is a small neighborhood park. On the edge of the park are woods with trails. A creek runs through it, and when the water is low and slow, there are rocks that form stepping stones to cross.    

I took my kids there when they were little. Some of their best childhood memories are exploring the woods of Levittown’s woodland greenbelts. Mine, too.

In the park was a guy walking fast, his arms and legs moving in a syncopated way. He was exercising, making a hup-hup-hup sound as he went. He wore a mask. I didn’t. His eyes locked on me. Uh-oh.

At about 20 feet, he swerved off the macadam path, giving maskless me wide berth, as if I was radioactive. We were the only ones in the park. The breeze was strong and cool. Sunshine drenched us. Even Dr. Fauci would say there’s no safer place to be. Well, this week. Next week, it might be different. Science.

I nodded to the man as he passed, but he did not nod back, and when he was about 20 feet past, he returned to the path, hupping along.

Guess he left his face shield in the car, I thought. I continued toward the woods.

My annual Earth Day jaunts aren’t happenstance. I was inspired by the late Sam Snipes, a Quaker and small town lawyer in Yardley, who grew up on a farm in Falls, which his family still owns and operates.

Sam would invite me to his farm in Falls, usually before dawn, where I’d meet him in his barn, and he’d hand me a bucket of feed to toss to the animals. Or, he’d hitch up his horses and we’d clip-clop through Morrisville, or across the bridge to Trenton. He’d pick up his mail at the Post Office, leaving me to tend the horses curbside, feeding them carrots.

Once, driving the wagon around his property with me at the reigns (he insisted I give it a try) he’d stop and point out flora and fauna, describing the flora in Latin.

“Do you know what that tree is?” he’d ask. Inevitably, I didn’t.

“Nyssa sylvatica, sometimes called the Black Gum. It is the last to leaf out, and the last to lose its leaves in fall, but its autumn color rivals any of the great maples.”

He didn’t understand why more people didn’t use it in landscaping.

“It’s native to the area,” he said.

Birdsong was another quiz.

“How many can you name?” he asked.

“Pigeons,” I said.

He made no judgement. Sam was that kind of man. But he believed the general population’s woeful environmental illiteracy was due to the climate-controlled bubbles in which we’ve chosen to live. This was not good. Separating ourselves from nature, and therefore the Creator, were among the chief sources of despairing minds and hardened hearts, from which so much social vitriol flows.

At the very least, each of us should know the most common plants and birds of the area, what makes them thrive, and what doesn’t. Birdsong is as good a barometer of an ecosystem’s health as any lab test.

A hundred years ago, he said, there wasn’t a child in Bucks County who didn’t have a natural connection to the outdoors. Kids could identify birdsong, and knew the names of woodland trees and the yellow and purple flowers that grow wild on the county’s roadsides. This because they were always outdoors, in fresh air and sunshine, at peace with nature.

And so, thanks to Sam’s influence, I resolved to be outdoors more often. But life gets busy. Which is why Earth Day is the one day I make it a point to take a walk in the woods.

On my Earth Day walk last week, I stopped by the creek in the woods and listened. Spring music, really.

When I turned, there was a reddish fox, maybe 10 feet away. It startled me. We looked at each other for about 20 seconds. Then the fox sniffed the ground, eyes still on me. I froze, not knowing what it would do.  

But then it turned and left. It didn’t run or high-tail it. Just nonchalantly padded away. It made me feel good, like there was a natural connection. Like we both knew neither intended harm to the other. There was no suspicion.

Unlike the hup-hup guy, we had no fear.      

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Columnist JD Mullane can be reached at 215-949-5745 or at jmullane@couriertimes.com.