H u g i n n // M u n i n n: Woods

Left, Drawing down the moon

The sound, not more than a hum at first notice, caught my ear as the night drew on. As the utterings of the dusk dissipated, leaving little more than the occasional buzz of a dragonfly's wings and the slap of a rising fish, the drone became clear. A distant motor, never coming closer, never moving away, distracted me. Ten minutes of pondering its source, and still it never moved; simply hung in the air, motionless and unnerving, an auditory cloud. As we silently trudged along, fifty yards offshore, my companion for the evening identified the mystery sound. I didn't believe him. My brother has been known to mess with me in the past. Once, while on a backpacking trip in the Colorado desert, he implored me to sleep with my knife beside me. Mountain lions, he said. Their tracks are everywhere. Though having noticed nothing in the way of lion tracks, I did as he instructed. The morning's result was funny indeed, to him. Fearing I would certainly be mauled and consumed should I leave my tent, I peed into my Nalgene bottle. And missed.

Thus, his proclamation regarding the sound I was hearing was met with some skepticism.

Mosquitoes in the woods, he declared. Not possible, mused I. For the noise I was hearing to be mosquitoes there would have to be billions of them. How could a creature so tiny produce this noise, even when accompanied by millions of other tiny creatures? As I continued to listen and attempt to place the source of the noise it became clear that he was absolutely right.

Our home for the week was Sylvania Wilderness, roughly 18,000 acres within the nearly one million of the Ottawa National forest. With an expanse of such magnitude, the numbers of mosquitoes in residence would be uncountable. In a cursory Google search, I found that there are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are humans on earth, which in 2008 was 6,697,254,041. Ottawa National Forest comprises just over 2400 square miles. Assuming that mosquitoes account for 1% of the insect population in a given square mile, there is the possibility that there are............well, a lot of mosquitoes. Possibly someone in possession of some math skills could figure that out and report back. I tried, but the number I came up with doesn't make any sense to me. So we can safely say that there are so many mosquitoes in the woods that most people (okay, maybe just me) could not even make sense of the number. This mystery number accounts for their motor-like sound, I guess.

Though it is not difficult to establish the rulers of the night woods, the same cannot be said for the daylight hours. While Ottawa is home to Gray wolf, Black bear, fisher, beaver, River otter, Whitetail deer, marten, badger, bobcat, mink, and weasel, it is rare that any of us returns from a day of flyfishing or kayaking with reports of any animals of the kind. The sheer volume of land assures that whoever might be around certainly does not need to frequent the same areas as humans. Silently cruising the shoreline in my kayak, I am stealthy indeed, yet even birds elude me. Looking into the woods I can see why. Moss hummocks and lichens are the only vegetation on the ground, which is carpeted by pine needles and little more. Occurrences of forbs are limited to the netherworld between water and land, with the majority of plant communities existing on fallen and floating logs. The woods appear desolate and uninhabited, and as far as I can tell, the mammal who reigns the daytime forest is the red squirrel. I see little else roaming the dim woods on my kayak jaunts.

If mushrooms were ambulatory we would get to see nothing at all in the woods. But as luck, or evolution, would have it, mushrooms do not have legs. So the fungal world is our source of daily joy and wonder--in some years the timing of our arrival coincides perfectly with rain and we are rewarded with multitudes, and as the same varieties are frequently at different stages of maturation, they often look to be different species entirely. Some for eating, some for photographing, some for thinking about eating, and some for dissecting. The eating 'shrooms in July are oysters. Though there are edible boletes in the woods we frequent, we tend to photograph them only. They are pored rather than gilled mushrooms, and this somehow makes them appear less appealing, though some are considered edible and choice. Also, as they tend to change in appearance dramatically (more so than other mushrooms, I think) as they mature, correctly identifying the edible species seems sketchy to me. As some stain blue upon bruising, any already damaged or old mushroom is a candidate for being field-dissected just to watch the flesh change from white to a purplish-blue. Amanita muscaria are the fungus we take countless photographs of, inspect closely, and, due to the hallucinogenic properties of, contemplate a bite or two. Not a whole cap, (though a fatal dose is calculated to be somewhere around 15 caps) only one bite for curiosity's sake, just to see what might happen......bowel clenching distress or boundless euphoria? Probably not worth the risk. Life itself is enough of a crap shoot; who of us truly needs the added stress of mushroom ambiguity?

As the night moves on, exchanges are made; mosquito and bat, owl and shrew, blue gill and mayfly. Our own alliances are called into question as well, we bid the woods good-night, and we each fade into the fabric of the day's passing.

Right, Indian Pipe