Stephen Maier

29 October 2009

This afternoon, Thursday, October 29,2009, I was a little dismayed at how the day had proceeded; therefore, a walk into nature was entirely necessary to lift my spirits. I left my car at 1:33 p.m. with the sun was beaming down and heating Williamstown to a pleasant temperature of 62°F according to the digital thermometer in my dashboard. The worries once existing within me were gone when I noticed the horses grazing at the fence through which I pass on my way into the forest. There were three: one white, one white with Dalmatian spots, and the third was white with brown patches and black spots. They were majestic animals, strong looking and well groomed. I wanted to run my hand down their backs and tell them they picked a beautiful day to take a walk together, but I don’t know horses well enough.

I walked past them and followed the vaguely beaten path into the West Clark Woods. Today’s objective was to explore the various natural tastes existing here. The horses appeared to be enjoying the grass they were devouring, so I extrapolated and tried convincing myself that I, too, would appreciate the flavors of the forest. As my mind wandered over paper birch leaf dinners and hemlock pine needle desserts, I heard something behind me. I turned and noticed the horses poking their heads into the woods, seeming like they were checking on me.

With the sharp onion savor remaining from lunch, it was difficult to smell, let alone taste, anything else. I bit into a tree branch and got nothing in return, besides a bit of a toothache and onion. After trying another branch from the same tree and experiencing the same taste, I knew I needed to clean my palate somehow. Without food or water, there was not much of a choice. I had to press on, so I continued my adventure and chomped on some hemlock needles. Wow! The onion flavor was no match for the hemlock’s powerful taste. After two bites, the Christmas tree scent we associate with winter overwhelmed my senses. I was seeing, tasting, feeling, and smelling Christmas trees, oh, what fine memories. I had to spit out the needles immediately after chomping down, for they were unbearable to chew more than twice. After chewing on several different branches of needles and tasting their pungency, I felt my taste buds were adequately in commission so I surveyed the woods in search of something different to try.

During my wandering for edible entities, I came across four red squirrels, multiple birds, and a snake, leaving me to conclude the animals appreciated the weather, too. The snake was the most impressive of the bunch due to the rare appearance of its species. It was black and roughly a foot and a half long with a yellow stripe running along its ventral side. According to A History of the County of Berkshire, Massachusetts, by Thomas Hunt, et al, this snake is most likely a “striped or streak snake” (p. 41).

After my encounter with the serpent, I found a new shrub about six feet tall with bright green leaves still attached. Its leaves looked appealing and appetizing, so I indulged. It took several tastings prior to extracting a real flavor, but I eventually tasted the skin flavor of a pear or an apple. The leaf, clearly, didn’t have the juice that is so delectable in a pear or an apple, but it did have a hint of the pear or apple flavor. The best way to describe to taste is this: if you were to separate the skin from the inner portion of the pear and eat it, it would be similar in taste to the leaves of this tree. Perhaps this species is related to the species of pear or apple trees.

I didn’t taste much else because the alarming piles of horse feces scattered throughout the woods were enough for me to declare that everything on the ground was off-limits for ingestion. I did, however, sample some paper birch bark, which shared the identical taste of printer paper, and a yellow birch branch that I broke off a small tree myself. The yellow birch’s flavor was not as distinct as it had been four weeks ago on Stone Hill. I concluded the salicylic acid is produced directly proportionally to the leaf growth, in that as chlorophyll is being produced in the tree, salicylic acid is produced simultaneously. After making this hypothesis, I left the woods, just over an hour after I had entered. What a beautiful day.