The Green Pathway Into the Woods

There were weather disasters looming all over other parts of the U.S. But for those of us in the great northeast, the forecast called for a spectacular weekend, sunny and pleasant during the day, but with some pretty chilly nights.

So my husband and I took off on our first backpacking trip of the fall. We had kicked around heading into Quehanna's Valley of the Elk, but we decided to postpone that one till next time. So early Saturday afternoon found us following the green pathway that you see above into the woods of Sproul State Forest.

It had been months since we'd backpacked, and it's surprising how quickly you get out of practice. It took longer than usual to get packed up, I felt more confused than is typical, and we forgot a key thing or two. But we had most of what we needed, plus a bit of new gear, and off we went.

The new gear I was testing out on this trip included a new Big Agnes inflatable sleeping pad (which promised to be much better than anything I already had), a new air pump to inflate the pad, a new bamboo travel pillow (covered in a bamboo pillow case from home), and a brand new pair of ladies' super lightweight high-tech long underwear for the coming cold night.

It's not a very long walk into our campsite, and shortly we were there. We camp in a big pine stand, and we were startled to hear loud noises coming from the tops of trees not far away. What was it - porcupines, or bear, or what? If we had monkeys living in these green woods, you might think they were in the treetops, lobbing things at one another.

I noticed that there was more pine pitch than usual, plus lots of pine cones glistening with pitch, along the forest floor where we usually put our tents. Pitch is the enemy of good camping gear; like acid, it can eat holes right through your gear faster than you think.

So the first order of business - as we listened to Penn State put a good shellacking on Pitt on the radio we brought along - was to clear out the pine cones and pitch, which we did. Our hands were covered in pitch by the time we were done, and we removed it with hand sanitizer (you'd be surprised how quickly sanitizer takes it off).

My husband, his curiosity unwilling to be satisfied with mere conjecture, finally walked over to one of the noisiest areas and discovered that the trees warmed by the late afternoon sun were shedding pine cones like crazy. And so it was pine cones falling - not miscreant monkeys - that was the source of the loud, weird noises we had heard. As the heavy pine cones fell (sometimes in clusters), they broke off dead limbs on their way down.

At half-time, I put up my tent, and when I was done, I set about filling up my new inflatable sleeping pad with air. So into the tent I went, and I pumped Big Agnes for a good twenty minutes. That gave me a pretty good fill on the pad, and I hoped it would yield me a better night's sleep.

The evening was lovely, and we sat listening to some tunes as the dusk fell. We heard coyotes in the distance, but they were nowhere near, so there was no cause for undue alarm. I can report from experience that there is enough light until about 7:30 p.m. under the tree cover to put up a tent; maybe as late as 8 p.m. out under the open sky.

If it's a tent you haven't put up before, you'd want to start earlier than that so you have better light to read the instructions by. And so it was that with the September moon rising, we settled into our home away from home for our first backpack of the fall.

Here's a song to accompany this woodsy outdoor scene: Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, One Sweet World.