Tales from Shawangunk, Part 69

Shawangunk nature preserve, cold brook TALES FROM SHAWANGUNK Chapter 69 by Peggy Spencer Behrendt

Daughter Becky feeds the latest pet Chip

In 1974, Tim and Peggy Spencer Behrendt set off on an adventure. They began a new life in the woods of Cold Brook, NY, without modern conveniences like electricity or indoor plumbing. These are excerpts and reflections from Peggy’s journal chronicling their adventures and also her childhood memories growing up in Westmoreland.

The late summer garden is not just an epicurean feast of fresh, juicy, healthy vegetables and fruits. It is a poem of taste, texture, perfume and colors. Yes, last spring, we delighted in the infant rows of green sprouts nestled in rich, chocolate brown loam. And in early summer, we relished the dramatic, vigorous growth of our lovingly tended adolescent vegetables. Now, however, is the time of fulfillment, the fruition, the epic of reproduction and harvest of life-sustaining food.

There’s something very comforting about a well-tended garden: the ordered rows of healthy plants, the plethora of green shades and textures of leaves, the aroma of sun drenched flora. It’s an experience of greens and golds, with little jewels of red, yellow and orange fruits sprinkled here and there playing a symphony of exquisite plant music in the sun, rain and gentle summer winds.

Each exudes its own deliciousness. You may have rubbed the leaves of celery, sweet basil or mint as you pass, and put your fingers to your nose, just to savor their heavenly scent, but have you ever noticed the subtle, earthy fragrance of a carrot when you pull one fresh from the ground?

Even our cat, Mittens, enjoyed spending time in the garden with me, keeping me company and “helping” just by being there. After nineteen years together, my feline friend was finally taken this year by the sad, but inevitable temporality of life. Losing a beloved pet is such a deeply profound and personal loss that is inexpressible.

For now, I am turning to our wild chipmunks for furry friendship. Like living with a cat, this has its pros and cons. The good thing about them is that we never grieve their loss, because every spring, a chipmunk shows up, and they help me in the garden by storing little caches of sunflower seeds that sprout up. All I have to do is separate and transplant them to create a sunflower garden. Besides their tawny fur and sporty stripes of charcoal and white, chipmunks are soft, and cute, and beg so charmingly raised on back legs with trembling front paws hanging helplessly and great, dark eyes full of yearning. Sometimes they stuff their cheeks so full, they can hardly close their mouths!

The bad part is that they sometimes

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u p - root young cucumber or squash plants to reach the ghost remains of the seed below, so I have to cover them with hardware cloth or pieces of old, metal screening.

Chipmunks are easy to tame. Simply crouch as close as you can with open hand extended holding a little pile of sunflower seeds and stay as still as you can. They will see it, and will not directly approach, but will pretend to ignore you, scouting right, left and behind before letting it appear that they are interested. If you are very, very still, and quiet, eventually, they will risk approaching, and you will gain a new friend.

Their little claws clasp your fingers gently, but firmly, and an initial test nibble on your finger will startle you, but not hurt nor pierce your skin. I wouldn’t try this with Red Squirrels, but have had only positive experiences with chipmunks since I was a child, watching them dive into Grandpa Joe’s shirt pocket for bits of cracked corn.

In fact, one is scampering across my computer keyboard as I write this in our screen gazebo, which is obviously not totally bug (or rodent) proof. This is a charming annoyance, since I confess I’d rather be weeding, watering and admiring my garden than writing about it. I’m further distracted by a cacophony of calls and long talks by a blue jay family across the garden, fluttering about in the ebony shadows of towering forest trees. At first, I think they must be “helicopter” parents offering endless and repetitive advice to their young about survival, but two of them land on fence posts near me and I can see that the now adult-sized youth, with unblemished, brilliant, blue plumage is following its beleaguered parent, with wings fluttering and pestering chirps. This is appears to be more a situation of “adultolescence” since the youngster is obviously capable of getting its own food, but still expects the parent to feed them.

Our children, grandsons, and now two great grandchildren are spending much of their youth at Shawangunk. One grandson came for summer visits from a very different, urban environment. I recorded his reactions in 1987, when he was four years old.

Early in the summer Brandon & (his older brother) Todd went to the Holland Patent “Mud Days” with their parents. Brandon was quite amazed at the behavior and events. He saw one man get hit in the back by a can thrown by another man. It

looked like there was going to be a fight when they confronted each other and the man who was hit said: “What “_” do you think you’re doing?” as he pushed the other guy.

“You “_” didn’t even recognize me!” replied the can thrower as he grabbed his old friend by the neck. They wrestled with each other for a bit and departed without anything more to say.

I guess these Mud Days are the place to be obnoxious, loud, and belligerent and still be accepted. When the trucks drive by after a race, they cheer and compliment the winner and boo and say derogatory comments to the loser; “Why don’t you drive that to the junk yard!”

Brandon asked; “Why do we always like the winner?”

A person nearby an

Tim and Peg bike most every day

swered sarcastically; “Because nobody likes a loser.”

This influence did not please us. When he taught Phys. Ed., Tim made a point of rewarding all participants who made a good effort, and ironically, ended up with a champion track team. At home, he developed new rules for games like basketball and football, which involved working cooperatively to achieve a goal together, rather than just beating the other guy. Yes, there’s room for many different approaches to games.

At home in the forest, Brandon’s first impulse was to destroy anything moving;

“Look at the pretty moth, Brandon.”

“Kill it” he’d say, and try to stomp on it.

“Put the little fish back into the water now or it will die,” I’d say.

“I want it to die.” He replied.

After a summer of feeding chipmunks out of his hand, feeling minnows tickle his bare feet in our brook, watching baby robins hatch and learn to fly, walking through a flutter of swallowtail butterflies dancing all around him on our road… he reacts differently.

“Look at how the butterfly flies, Brandon.”

“Why does it do that?” he asks.

Brandon was also introduced to Family Meetings, which we raised our kids with. We felt it was an important way for children to feel empowerment and learn democratic techniques for interpersonal problem solving. Each person

Grandsons Todd and Brandon graze on Sugar Snap peas.

had a chance to voice their opinion for two minutes on the topic for which the meeting was called, and then another minute to react to what was said by others, before brainstorming for possible solutions or compromises. Then we’d vote.

Brandon’s first meeting was about popsicles.

Grandpa Tim said to him one morning; “No more popsicles for the rest of the day if you don’t finish your oatmeal.”

I thought that was extreme, so we called a meeting and took turns expressing our opinions. I thought he should be able to have one after lunch if he finished it. Brandon thought he should have one “right now.” His older brother, Todd, said he should be able to have one after supper. Tim still held out for no popsicles all day if he didn’t finish his oatmeal.

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We voted, and Brandon voted with me, so he didn’t have to finish his oatmeal, but boy did he eat lunch! He ate lots and lots of corn bread and lentil soup and his little tummy stuck out quite a bit for a while. After eating his popsicle, he and Todd had a grand time playing in the creek all day, totally soaked from dumping water on each other.

One day, Brandon & Todd helped their Dad work on our friend’s camp and Brandon especially loved hammering nails. The next day we asked him; “Do you want to work or go to the beach, Brandon?” “Work.” he replied. ( He became an Airplane Mechanic, and Todd became a Dean at a college.)

At the end of summer, when it was time to go back to the city, Brandon said that he wanted to “stay forever.”

Our tomato plants are heavy with fruit, and it’s time to start canning. It’s too hot to cook inside, so I set up an outdoor kitchen. The kerosene hot plate I used forty years ago has been replaced by a portable gas one, and Tim constructs a wind break for the flame. “Chip”, the ubiquitous chipmunk, often keeps me company. Meanwhile, Tim goes through our tools and replaces broken handles with stout tree branches. He tends to make them very long, which I find awkward, but they’re easier to shorten than lengthen. We keep good track of them with an assigned place, and sometimes, an outline and label for each implement. This way if we see one is missing, we announce a “Tool Alert” and brainstorm for its location while our memory is fresh on where it was used last. My Great Grandparents hung their garden tools in the low branches of a tree, with handles dangling down like disconnected saplings. I guess this was quite handy, but they must have rusted from rain.

Cucumbers are sneaky vegetables. I try to pick them while they’re still very small, but they hide in the shadows of their leaves and it annoys me to find great, big, seedy fellows skulking on the back side of a cucumber trellis post. I made pickles for a few years, but now that I have a small freezer, prefer to cook and puree the excess, thus creating a base for a soup in the winter, which has the delicious, fresh taste of high summer.

I recently came up with a sugarless recipe for lemonade that we love. Just mix five parts organic apple juice with one part organic lemon juice. It’s tangy, sweet, and easy to make.

We ride our bikes at the end of a late summer’s day through pink mists and fields dressed in goldenrod. In the hedgerows, white & purple asters, and tiny red leaves dappled among the gold foretell the glory of autumn to come. The sweet melodies of song birds are mostly gone now, but we are accompanied by the purring of crickets and the occasional song of a cicada. The last of milkweed blossoms offer wafts of sweet perfume and I always wonder why no one has marketed this incredible ambrosia? We are reluctant to let this evening end when we return, so take a walk through dew-drenched mosses on our old airstrip meadow which is lined with blue-bottle gentian, reminding me of spring crocus. These are listed as “Exploitably Vulnerable in New York At the far end, where deep moisture lingers longer and hot sunlight is tempered by towering forest trees we admire a rare carnivorous plant; the beautiful sundew (Drosera) which traps insects on its sticky tentacles and digests them. Listed as endangered in some states, the primary threat to sundews is loss of wetland habitat.

We carefully wend along the dusk-shadowed path from the road to our cottage without a flashlight, because this is the best way to savor the symmetry of patterns created by wild “Cinnamon” and “Sensitive” ferns that border it. Their leaves no longer blend into the mass of greenery as they do in daylight, but shine distinctly above the shadows of night that have gathered on the earth below them.

Like Brandon, we want to stay here forever, and probably will. •

The Shawangunk Nature Preserve is a deep ecology, forever wild, 501©(3), learning and cultural center. Tim and Peggy still live there and can be contacted through their website. www.shawangunknaturepreserve.com

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