Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 31, 1994 TAG: 9402010254
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Monty S. Leitch
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This tiny stream originates in several underground springs. Those waters, when combined with runoff from the eastern face of Lick Ridge, feed Goose Creek and, eventually, the Chesapeake Bay.
Sometimes I think of that: what dances down out of our woods to nourish the oysters. If I could identify, with any certainty, which of the hundreds of mushrooms that grow here are edible, I'd have the beginnings of a fine, rich stew.
I own a whole library of field guides. Still, I'm never quite sure of what I'm looking at. Consequently, I never pick and eat mushrooms.
Last week, ice transformed the woods. Grasses and ferns that had been standing only days earlier were flattened. Fallen leaves and pinestraw were compacted into slick ground-hugging cover. Suddenly, it seemed, the woods were wider. Suddenly, it seemed, I could see through them for miles.
I walked across a marshy flat where, any other time of the year, mud would have sucked at my ankles and tussocks of grass would have grabbed at my knees. Last week, that same ground popped hollowly when I stepped on it, with the sound of pond ice cracking.
The normally hidden springs were marked by white, crusted pools. Rhododendrons had curled their leaves as tight as clenched fists. The woods seemed a black-and-white print of themselves, almost their own negative, but enlarged 15 or 20 percent for drama. At one point, I stood and puzzled for minutes over a type of scat I'd never seen, until I realized that those fuzzed black balls were rotted mushrooms, exploding with ice.
Every time I walk, I see things for which I can find no explanation in my field guides. I puzzle and study, and still end up mystified. Someone knows the answers to all my questions, but who?
I imagine being a little girl, holding a wise old grandfather's hand, listening carefully and remembering when he says, ``Now, look right here at these leaves. You see how they do? That'll tell you, next time you see them, that ... ''
And then he reveals, with absolute clarity, what the field guides only hint at. Identifications. Uses. Tales.
He knows what makes the shallow scrapes under certain trees, and why; how to spot a deer wallow; whether I should worry about bears.
So much of what I want to know now can't be found in books. This is astonishing to me, and extremely unsettling. Because up to this point in my life, I've always been able to rely on books. Now it seems that no matter where I turn or what I ask, books can't say the answers. I need mentors, guides, teachers. But look at all this gray in my hair! I look like the teacher myself.
Last week, I found a sprig of pipsissewa sprouting out of icy pinestraw. I'm pretty sure it was, indeed, pipsissewa, because someone else once identified this plant to me and I've confirmed the identification in two of my field guides. But would I ever say to a child holding my hand, ``Look there. Pipsissewa!'' I don't know.
And if I did, would I be right?
Knowledge flows like water, after all. In a manner of speaking, whatever I say will end up in a Chesapeake Bay. I'd rather nourish the oysters than poison them.
\ Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB