Episode 65: Healing Nature, Ferns, and Fairies

Healing happens when we ingest certain foods and medicines, but many other factors come into play when a person is fighting for his or her health, as have I for some time.

Healing, however, does not necessarily come from what we put inside our bodies; healing can come from without. My wonderful massage therapist Hania is a case in point--after an hour under her ministrations, I feel like a new woman.

In my case, though, the greatest sense of healing comes to me while in the forest. Yes, many of the plants I've identified in my woods and yard do have medicinal properties, but in this case I'm talking about healing on an aesthetic and spiritual level. And this is where ferns and their allies come in.

Ferns are not edible except as fiddleheads, the newly emerging sprouts in the spring, and only two or three species of ferns produce palatable fiddleheads:  the ostrich fern, lady fern, and, arguably, bracken. Eating fiddleheads of other ferns may make you sick.

But ferns are healing to me without their ever touching my body, much less going inside it. A woodlands filled with ferns and their allies, moss and Solomon's seal and Jack-in-the-Pulpit, to name a few, is not just a forest; it is a sanctuary.

Although there's no lake in my yard, my woods remind me of one of my favorite lines by one of my favorite authors in one of my favorite essays--one I can't decide whether or not to teach this fall given its "old-fashionedness" (however, this is also a point in its favor).

In "Once More to the Lake," E. B. White describes an early morning on the lake he'd visited as a child. Of moving through the waters in his canoe, E. B. writes that he is "keeping close along the shore in the long shadows of the pines . . . being very careful never to rub [my] paddle against the gunwale for fear of disturbing the stillness of the cathedral."

That's how I feel about my woods. A cathedral with a ceiling painted not by Michelangelo but by the filigreed limbs of maple, basswood, and black oak.

I have been unaccountably blessed in life to have purchased my modest home, my "cottage," as I refer to it, which sits on the edge of a forest. With its northeastern exposure, my wooded mountain slope produces countless members of woodlands species.

It is here, while I sit under the green hardwood canopy on one of the huge sandstone boulders scattered across my property, that the stresses of hypertension, cardiomyopathy, and neuromuscular/degenerative disease fall away from me. No longer am I Mary Dell, individual human with compromised vigor and health; I am a part of the forest, this vital ecosystem, this magical place where fairies still roam.

I breathe in the ancient air, knowing my landscape of ferns and moss is one of the oldest to exist on this planet. I breathe in the rich scent of humus--that moist, nearly black soil resulting from the slow decay of yearly leaf litter, fallen from trees that in autumn turn my little mountainside gold and red. I breathe in the eons of this planet in this sacred place. I breathe in the healing that comes from nature's undiluted elements.

"My" woods--highlighting hostas; I will post a new
photo filled with ferns and moss soon! You can see
a few fern fronds on the right here, though.

I'm thinking that "nature therapy" needs to become more emphasized for the chronically ill--for anyone who is in need of healing, in fact, whether mental or physical. The idea formed (though I realize now it's not an original one on my part) after watching a Facebook video in which several firefighters grant the request of a man dying in a hospice. They roll his gurney with him, gaunt and pale and looking hundreds of years old, lying there, from the pavement to a wooded path, and then they take him through the woods. The man's dying wish was to be outside among the trees and flowers and underneath the blue sky, not a bright white ceiling with blinding hospital lights.

Where would you rather die?

So that got me thinking. It's a crime, really, how we close up oldsters in ever-smaller spaces that have little to no access to the wild, wonderful outdoors--or even a nice, tame park. I'm struck when watching older television shows, and some more current ones from the UK, in which persons trying to heal spend time in sanatoriums or other spaces that include expanses of grass and gardens and woods--and the sick persons can be found outside on a bench, or even sitting in a wheelchair, not stuck in bed in a tiny airless room.

Nowadays, sick equals small, supposedly sterile places. And that's just wrong.

In fact, I found a Web site, naturetherapy.org, that describes the very approach I envisioned. It's somewhat annoying that they have trademarked the term "Nature Therapy," which seems so simple it shouldn't get a trademark, but so be it. At least the healing arts are on to this wonderful approach.

The healing aspect of the forest doesn't end when I leave it. My healing also comes from learning all I can about the plants in my woods and anywhere else. While it's certainly possible to find healing in simply sitting outside and soaking up the sunshine and perfumes and microscopic things-we-know-not that check the degenerative processes (I have to believe), another way of connecting with and becoming part of "nature" is learning as much as we can about it. (I use "nature" in quotation marks because we are ourselves a part of nature, of course; we cannot truly be separated from it--but we humans do a very good job of removing ourselves from our Mother Earth with structures and pavement and ideas favoring urban life and man's "primacy" over everything else on this blue marble.)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher whose ideas helped spawn the French Revolution (and the U.S. one, actually, through English writers who took up his ideas), called botany "the salutary science," or the "remede dans la mal" (remedy for illness). That was in the 1700s, for heaven's sake! Why have science and medicine taken us so far away from our valuable relationships with the plants that surround us and through which our planet, and we humans, breathe?

Well, so much for philosophy. No doubt you'll hear more of these ideas on upcoming episodes.

In the meantime, here I will mention the ferns I've found on my property, which may or may not be of interest to you, Dear Viewer--but call this my virtual plant collection. Rousseau also recommended this nearly lost diversion; gathering and pressing flowers and plants was a pastime of his while in exile from France for his revolutionary ideas. This is a gentle activity that can be done even by the likes of me, as weak as I've become in the last few years.

And so I've started my pressed plant collection by attempting to preserve fern species in my yard. I'll post photos if they turn out.

Ferns are notoriously difficult to identify. Since I haven't positively identified all the ferns in my yard, I'm listing some that may well grow there, based on descriptions and photos from a wonderful Web site, Discover Life.

I'll put a question mark next to those I'm unsure of and, if I make a positive ID, will then take the question mark off. Obviously, all of this is far more useful to me than you, so feel free to go on to another episode of The Mary Dell Show!

Ferns Found on My Property

Eastern Hayscented Fern - Dennstaedtia punctilobula

Glade Fern? - Diplazium pyncocarpon

Goldies Woodfern ? - Dryopertis goldiana

Intermediate Woodfern? - Dryopteris intermedia

Interrupted Fern ? - Osmunda claytoniana

Lady Fern?

Marginal Woodfern ? Dryopteris marginalis 

Mountain Woodfern ? Dryopteris campyloptera

New York Fern ? - Thelypteris noveboracensis 

Northern Maidenhair Fern - Adiantum pedatum

Rock Cap Fern - Polypodium virginianum - I discovered this darling little fern on a boulder behind my house and transplanted a small amount to a rock in my woods-edge garden. It's done extremely well and has even spread a little.

Spinulose Wood Fern ? -  Dryopertis carthusiana

Virginia Chain Fern ? - Woodwardia virginica

Ferns I've Found In the Area (Not in my Yard)

I am more certain of these IDs because they were impressive finds, and ones that don't look much like others.

Lycopodiella appressa - It took me a while to identify this strange-looking plant. Little did I guess it's a type of fern (well, fern-ally, actually)! I found it in the Savage River area near Honey's summer place on the River.

Hanging Clubmoss, Creeping Cedar,  - Lycopodium digitatum - (Actually, a fern ally, not a fern per se) - This is a creeping plant with needles or leaves (I'm not sure which) that look like cedar. This grows very close to Honey's summer place on the Savage River. He tells me of a man his mother had seen for many years, a sort of mountain man, who knew "everything" about the woods. He would collect this pretty plant and make wreaths of it for Christmas.

Ostrich Fern - Matteuccia struthiopterus - This is a real beauty, and a Very Big Fern. Ostrich fern fiddleheads (early sprouts) are one of the two species that are palatable when sauteed.  I've seen this fern growing in many places in Garrett County, Maryland, one of the state's three Appalachian counties and the county next to mine.

One day, on my way to teaching English at the community college, I stopped on the roadside and tried to dig up one of these oversized ferns, but I couldn't dig deeply enough to actually uproot it! They like very moist areas, even growing in streams, and I got my feet wet that day to no avail!

Honey's sister has a huge swath of very large ferns in her yard, and she bequeathed us some when she and her husband thinned them out. I don't think they're ostrich ferns, however, because they don't have that huge, meaty root. A few of these to-be-identified large ferns ended up over at the cottage, and I can't wait to see them take off. If they're happy there, I should have a nice swath of them as well, since I planted them in a moist, shady place similar to their home in Honey's sister's yard.

The woods behind my home are filled with ferns, and I've been transplanting a number of them into the yard proper. Every moment I spend in those magical, fairy-filled woods makes me stronger inside and out.

Episode 63: Still Truckin' On -- Pursuing Interests to Forget About Health Problems

I'm tired of discussing health problems on The Mary Dell Show. I never intended it to be all about my declining health, but that issue has dominated my life and thoughts for the past couple of years, so I've defaulted to that topic.

Problems continue, including an ambulance ride to the Emergency Department earlier this month thanks to breathing, heart, and blood pressure problems and even more disturbing signs of losing my language abilities due the neurodegenerative stuff going on--but I'm BORED with all of that!

For now, I'm putting health problems out of mind by concentrating on hobbies and interests I've always had but haven't had much time to pursue. I still don't have a lot of time in any given day since I sleep an average of 15-17 hours in a 24-hour period, but I want to make my waking hours worthwhile whenever I feel up to it.

First is sewing. I learned to sew in eighth grade Home Ec at Rollingcrest Junior High School with Mrs. Poole. Mrs. Poole was a cool teacher who showed us how to do stuff and then would let us go at our machines while she worked on her own projects. First, though, she had shown us how to do our steps so well we could work fairly independently.

She let us talk about anything as long as we were working, and we quiet ones listened to the fascinating commentary of one girl who just loved to talk. I remember her saying how great the song "Benny and the Jets" was--a surprise in those days when our school was somewhat divided on racial lines, and this gal was black--and that Elton John would be on Soul Train. I remember thinking how cool all of that was. Meanwhile, Mrs. Poole worked on a big, fluffy, fringey white jacket. She was that good.

I then began making a lot of my own clothes. It was the Seventies, when peasant dresses and hippie clothes were popular and homemade clothes were valued. When I was nineteen, I made my wedding dress and four bridesmaids' dresses, and I stopped sewing for decades. I'd had quite enough, thank you.

"Paisley Callie"--Given to my Honey's
grandniece, with FUN "Paisley Jungle" 
fabric by Kaffe Fassett.

I loved my wedding dress pattern, from Vogue. And the part I loved most was the lace overlay to the bodice and the unlined lace sleeves with bell cuffs and tiny pearl buttons for closure. I'd asked my sister, a bona fide hippie in those days, to be my maid of honor and told her she could go out and find a dress she liked. She came back with a dress that shocked me a tad. I'd pictured some sort of frothy bridesmaid-y frock, but she'd found a navy-blue gingham halter dress with an embroidered collar.

A BEAUTIFUL dress.  A dress that would be exactly perfect for a wedding if I were having one today. But back then, a mere 19 years old and, at the time, rather a traditionalist, I was getting married in a very conservative church I'd given up all my sense to join. Halter dresses were a definite no-no. However, this was my wedding, and if my sister wanted to wear the dress, so be it.

I hadn't planned on bridesmaids, but my hubby-to-be had four younger sisters, and it seemed a shame NOT to include them as such. So I then had to seek out a pattern similar to my sister's dress, and I made them lighter-blue gingham dresses with eyelet collars. They also wore cute white floppy hats, though my sister wore just a flower in her hair.

Close-up of "Paisley Callie"

In the midst of making those dresses, I thought, "I'm going to look wrong with my long sleeves with everyone else in sleeveless halter dresses." I'd just finished my sleeves, with their pretty bell cuffs with lace-scalloped edges, though I hadn't yet added them to the bodice or sewed in the pearl buttons.

And then I thought, I can't use these sleeves. So I made facings and wore my dress sleeveless instead. It was lovely, but I did miss those sleeves! I still kind of do to this day, though the marriage is long, long over. I should have just put them on the dang dress! Silly, silly me.

Today, it seems, a resurgence in appreciation for homemade and handmade items has occurred. To assuage my blues over never having had a baby girl (though I wouldn't trade my two baby boys-now-men for anything!), I started making toddler dresses. Or baby dresses. Depending on whether or not a one-year-old is toddling, I guess. I chose that size because I love that time when babies are just learning to walk. And these little garments take a lot less time to whip up than a full-sized dress.

"Garden Frock" - with WONDERFUL
fabrics--I just wish I had the
names of the fabrics and designers, but
I don't. That top fabric is to die for,
but that was the last of it for me,
and I can't find it on the Internet.

Close-up of "Garden Frock. I ADORE the top fabric--
if you look close, you'll find bumblebees and dragonflies.

The amazing thing is that the machine I'm using is a little Kenmore my father gave me for Christmas in eighth or ninth grade. It's still running like a top, and I've only had it professionally cleaned once. Sewing makes me feel closer to my father. He enjoyed watching me lay out fabric and cut out pattern pieces, which I had to do on the living room carpeting to have a big enough space. Dad would sit in his chair in the evenings with his beer or martini and watch this process, my least favorite part of sewing. One Christmas, either before the sewing machine or that same year, Dad gave me a good set of sewing scissors. "I've watched you wrestle with those dull scissors all this time," he said, "and it's time you had a proper pair of scissors!"

What a good present. The best presents are those a person chooses based on a need they've seen in your life--and I'll never forget that thoughtfulness on Dad's part. And I learned immediately to value a good pair of scissors. It's all in having the right tools, and my dad, an engineer, understood that.

"Happy Flowers." This was so fun to make.
I also contrasted these fabrics on a purse
I made a few years ago--both are now
available on Esty at my shop,
Woodlands Cottage.

Every time I lay out and cut out my fabric, I think of my dad. It makes the process a lot less tedious. And every time I sew on that little Kenmore, I think of him. Yes, my mom liked my sewing, too--she was over the moon about an apron I made her for Christmas one year--but this is one area in which I know my dad was proud of me.

In my little town is Mountain City Traditional Arts (MCTA), a store that features the arts and crafts of local folk, mostly old-timey products such as quilts and dulcimers and crockery. Our university's Appalachian heritage program runs the store, and the person in charge is a friend who is a Sociology professor at the uni. She "liked" the photos of my dresses on Facebook, and I said I'd like to make some "old-timey" dresses out of ginghams and calicos, etc., as well as some bonnets and head kerchiefs to sell at the store, if she thought they would, and she replied, "I know they'd sell!"

And so I've been whipping up these fun little frocks and headgear for the past few weeks, trying to get some inventory together for my display. The store is on hiatus for a few weeks, so I have a little time.

"Cherry 'n' Checks." I adore cherries on baby
dresses, so when I saw this pink cotton homespun,
I knew it would be perfect for my traditional
arts line, and it is! This dress has plastic
cherry buttons, a crochet flower hem, and
a full slip. Currently on sale on Etsy at my
shop, Woodlands Cottage, but will be put
 in a local store when it re-opens.

So here are a few of my dresses for the traditional arts store. I used old-fashioned fabrics such as gingham and homespun, but I also updated them a bit for babies today. I think they're adorable, if I do say so myself! A few of these dresses were made before I thought of selling them at MCTA, so they are with more modern prints. I had put them on Etsy, but I think I'm going to send them all down to the store. Sewing is a "traditional art," no matter what the fabric!

Along the way, a brilliant idea occurred to me. Our town gets tourists due to a scenic train that stops here. Folks wander into town, and I'd imagine MCTA is one of the stores they "hit" most. But what if young parents forget to bring something to put on their babies' heads on a sunny day? Baby bonnets might just sell--but even better might be little head kerchiefs for tender little heads! So I've been working on both, and will also do kerchiefs for girls and women.

"Gingham Flowers." I am in love with these gingham-look buttons, and they finally arrived after I'd ordered them on E-Bay. I love
how they look on this little dress!

"Gingham Flowers"  I used an "old timey" gingham
updated with fun, fresh flowers.Tiny eyelet trim 
on hem and cute plastic gingham-look buttons.
Available on Etsy under Woodlands Cottage.

My model is a bunny that once belonged to
one of Honey's kids--I need to send the
kerchief to his niece to try on her new baby--
Gotta get the size right before churning these out!

However, posting the dresses to Facebook has left me indentured (in a good way) to two friends--one asked me to make her a garden party dress, which I'm in the midst of doing, and the other asked me to make dresses for her six-year-old nieces. Tomorrow, she and I will go to the fabric store to pick out patterns and fabrics--SO much fun! And the other friend picked the most fun, fabulous peacock fabric--I'll post a photo of that and hopefully a photo of the dress, with her in it, preferably, when it's done!

I've missed working on my toddler dresses, to be honest--but I want to do this other work as well. I've never had to adapt a pattern because my body was always "off the rack"--tall and slim. (Alas, the slim part is not so true anymore.) Sewing patterns were made for me. But this is a skill I've wanted to develop, and I appreciate my friend's giving me the opportunity to do so without a lot of pressure going with it. I'd planned to charge her $20 for my labor (dirt cheap, I might say)--but I've decided to just give her the dress. Buying the patterns and fabric is not cheap these days, and I'd brought a 20 percent off coupon that had expired the day before, so we couldn't use it. I'll just let her be my walking advertisement--IF it turns out!

Kerchiefs are traditional Appalachian headgear,
but I've updated the concept with some fun fabrics.
Each kerchief will have contrasting/coordinating
fabrics and will be reversible.

And traditional bonnets, of course! These are ALMOST done.
I'll probably turn out a few of these with fun fabrics, as well ...

A decade or so ago, I made dresses for my nieces. They both loved to play dress up and become characters in their books, and they were going through the Little House on the Prairie" series, so I made my older niece a prairie dress and bonnet. I then followed up with a colonial dress and bonnet for my younger niece. Aren't they adorable? [photo to come]

Many moons ago, I'd also made a prairie dress for one of my ex-husband's sisters, long before the wedding, actually. She wanted to learn to sew. She was about 11, and we made a pretty prairie dress she wore for a play. She later gave me the dress, so I'll post a photo here soon!

I also made both nieces nightgowns with matching ones for their American Girl dolls. A friend told me I should think about making doll dresses as well as the toddler dresses--though American Girls are really for an older set.

I decided to do a line of "Appalachian Girl" doll dresses to sell at MCTA, and I will put on the sales tag that I'll make a matching girl's dress if contacted. I researched American Girls and was sad to see that Kirstin, the prairie girl doll, had been discontinued. Boo! But that doesn't mean little girls can't imagine their dolls as girls living long ago on the prairie or in these Appalachian Mountains.

I've been doing a lot of crafts lately, but, with my blazing ADHD, I've had trouble finishing products. But I'm turning out baby dresses lickety split!  A few years ago, I did a line of purses that sold in a local arts gallery until it closed. I was proudest when a gallery owner from out of state purchased one of my embroidered purses. I'll post some photos of the purses, too. I came up with a fabric version of Van Gogh's Starry Night I'm particularly in love with. It used to be in a number of Etsy treasuries, but I'm no longer sure I want to sell it, so I don't have it on Etsy anymore. I have a few still hanging around, literally. I need to get those on Etsy one of these days.

So, I AM staying positive and being productive despite the daily trials of chronic illness--being short of breath and being hypersomnolent, among other fun symptoms.

But I've also decided I need to exercise my brain, since it's decline is the scariest part of all my symptoms. I've always had a good mind, and I don't want to lose it entirely. So I reapplied to my alma mater where I'd completed a Master's Degree in English and had completed a number of classes toward my PhD.

And guess what?  I've been readmitted, and I may only have three more classes to take to finish my coursework!  I was amazed I am that close, so it would be dumb not to finish it. I'll never have the stamina to teach full-time again, but even if I'm unable to teach a class or two in person I should be able to teach online. And having the PhD instead of just the Master's will really help in getting those jobs. I'd hate to lose all that I learned in the field until now.

I'm hoping exercising the brain will prolong its integrity and no do the opposite. If I can't handle the course work anymore, I'll give it up--but I do have to try.

So, there IS hope after being diagnosed with chronic disease, even neurodegenerative disease, and there's no reason to wallow (any more than you have to, and, yes, I do wallow when I have to). I try to get something productive done every day, and even if it's a small thing, I count it as a job well done.

Episode 51: Nature Notes, OR Close Encounters of the Critter Kind

Before his death, biologist Ken Hogsdon published a column in our local newspaper titled "Nature Notes."  I was told when I moved here not to bother subscribing to the paper because it was just a rag for the Good Old Boy Network that ran things around here in those days--and still does, for the most part, which is one reason our biggest "city" was recently named the 6th poorest in the nation.

However, the paper was worth it back in those days because of Hogsdon's charming "Notes." My title is in homage to this man who told stories of his daily, mostly backyard encounters with the region's wildlife.

In that vein, and in an effort to get away from depressing stories about my health, or lack thereof, I am now sharing my own "Nature Notes." Actually, a couple of earlier episodes also shared some "Nature Notes":  Episode 10: Happy Halloween With Some Creepy Plants and Critters, most notably.  (Depending on copyright, I hope to add some of Hodgson's own columns to the show, since I can't find anything about him or written by him on the Internet; his death predated the Web.)

The Cottage

I live in a "cottage," as I like to call it, on the edge of a hardwood forest in Appalachia. My small plot--a mere .6 acres--has several microenvironments: first, the aforesaid forest filled with American basswood, sugar maple, and black oak with a smattering of other species including shagbark hickory.

Beneath the trees grow magical species including Jack-in-the-Pulpit, May apple, trillium, several types of ferns, mosses, and more.

A second environment is what I refer to as my "meadow"--a strip of land along the edge of the forest behind the cottage that is the sunniest location in my yard. My place lies cradled in the side of Big Savage Mountain, which looms to the west and, therefore, blocks most sunlight by 4 p.m. or so even in the summer. This little strip of land holds onto the daylight longer than any other. In the meadow are several types of goldenrod, asters, mugwort, wild phlox, dame's rocket, asters, and more.

Finally, my yard proper makes up the third microenvironment. Actually, my yard isn't so proper: I am slowly allowing low-growing "weeds" (I prefer to call them "wonders") to take over the grass in the hope that someday my lawn will no longer need mowing. Aren't the heart-shaped leaves and happy purple faces of violets preferable to a bunch of straight, boring blades of grass?

Many of my wildlife encounters have taken place on my property, while others occurred in the surrounding beautiful, mountainous terrain.

Here are a few stories to begin this "series."

The Earth Moved

Outside my back door is a concrete slab I hope to someday make into a flagstone patio. I often leave items such as flowerpots needing planting back there. One summer evening I came home with some new flowers, so I chose a fairly large terracotta pot filled with dry soil as their home. I carried in the pot and put it in the sink, turned on the faucet, and walked away since I knew the hard soil would need a good soaking

From across the room, however, I glanced over at the flowerpot and, to my shock and momentary horror, the soil began to GROW.  The dirt rose up in a large lump, and my heart stopped as my brain tried to process what the heck was going on. The soil began to shape itself into a sloped head with eyes blinking.

And then I realized what I was seeing--a toad, who had made his home in this warm little pot of earth, had experienced his own rude awakening, and he also wanted to know what was going on! He looked like the biggest toad on earth, all covered in soil, as I sprang across the room and gently covered the flowerpot with a saucer and took my new friend back outside--whereupon he quickly vacated what must have seemed like the ideal place to hang out. At night, my porch light would have attracted to his lair all the tasty morsels he could eat!

Had I known of this squatter, I would have happily allowed him the real estate rather than ungraciously evicting him in favor of a mere flower.

Tiny Ring-Neck Snake

Other objects end up on that concrete slab, and one day I picked up a piece of wood I'd placed there for some reason, and beneath it was the tiniest snake I'd ever seen.  I hadn't even known snakes came that small!

This one was about two inches long and very slender, all black, other than a bright yellow ring where its neck might be said to be. This was a hatchling of a fairly common type of snake in the area, the Northern Ringneck Snake (Diadophis punctatus), though I didn't know that at the time.

No, this isn't my hand--
Photo from the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory

For all its evils, the Internet sure is a wonderful innovation. Anything that piques my curiosity can easily be answered with a few choice search words. In this case, "ring" and "neck" and "snake." Can't get easier than that!

Green Greetings

Admittedly, my threshold for thrilling surprises may be low, but I'll take these little green surprises--each of them found on rocky ledges--over a surprise mink coat any day.

The first happened many moons ago when my two boys and I began exploring our new environment after moving from Washington, DC, to Appalachia. At the time, J., my older son, was about ten years old and had bought a book on West Virginia at the local bookstore, after which he hounded me to visit all the wild, wonderful places in that closely neighboring state. Well, "hounded" is probably too strong a word--it didn't take much encouragement at all!

That's how we ended up numerous times at the rather amazing Dolly Sods Wilderness, an apparent remnant of the Ice Age when glaciers covered this part of our country. The vegetation is characteristic of much more northern (as in northern Canadian) terrain and includes sphagnum bogs and heaths on its rocky mountaintop--not to mention a bounty of blueberry bushes, as we found one fall when they were bursting with fruit. Son J. was also fascinated with the area's "flag-form trees"--trees with branches growing only on one side due to the intensity of winter winds on the boulder-strewn mountaintop.

Dolly Sods Wilderness at Bear Rocks - Photo from Nature Conservancy

The strange name, according to Wilderness.net, is for the Dalhe family who "used the open grassy fields called 'sods' for grazing sheep in this area." Even stranger are the signs on all the trails warning that the area was a pre-World War II training area--and if a hiker were to find a stray mortar round in the "wilderness," he or she should leave it alone since it could still be live! Talk about cognitive dissonance!

105-mm Howitzer round found at Dolly Sods--
Gee, what a symbol for the masculine nature of war!
Photo from West Virginia Highland Voice

Meanwhile, younger son A., who loved to complain about hiking, nevertheless had a great time jumping from rock to rock in a heart-stopping manner whenever we arrived at outcroppings. After one of his treks to the edge of the Dolly Sods plateau, he came running back for me, calling out, "Come here! Look what I found!"

So I followed him down a few boulder stairs and looked where he was pointing--and there, curled happily on a miniature cave-like rock ledge, was a Smooth Greensnake (Opheodrys vernalis) in all its emerald glory. Again, I'd had no idea snakes came like this!

Photo of Smooth Greensnake from Maryland's Department of Natural Resources

A couple of decades later (sigh--really?) a similar green encounter greeted me most unexpectedly. This time, I was in a canoe, resting with a beer as my Honey paddled us around the Savage River Dam, a reservoir surrounded by the Savage River State Forest, a setting not unlike, I imagine, the Scottish lochs my Honey's and my ancestors enjoyed.

We floated along a shore bounded by a wall of rock--a wall with plenty of crevices and ledges for other creatures wanting to enjoy the fine day and the lovely body of water--including, in one, a small, brilliantly green frog! 

Tonight I searched Maryland's Department of Natural Resources site to try to figure out what these species might be, which is how I identified the Smooth Greensnake (there's also a Rough Greensnake but it does not live in our neck of the woods, while the smooth one does).

The only bright green frog I could find is the Green Treefrog (Hyla cinera), and its description fits our sighting: Their habitat includes "Swamps, borders of lakes and streams, floating vegetation . . . ." This little guy was indeed on the border of the lake, perched happily on his little balcony where he, no doubt, waited for flying insects to try to pass by.

Photo of Green Treefrog from Maryland Department of Natural Resources

Swimming Salamanders

The frog-occupied rock ledge holds back a finger of land that, on its other side, has a rocky beach easy to "land" on with our canoe.  Last summer, Honey and I pulled up on the beach and walked over to the other side where we sat on the ledge and enjoyed the view.

"Remember that green frog we saw?" I said--we'd seen it on one of our first canoe voyages on the Dam, as we call it--probably some nine years ago, back when our relationship was tenuous and I never imagined I'd be back there with him nearly a decade later.

In fact, he is another reason the local newspaper was worth reading back then--he was the editorial page editor ten years ago; I wrote a letter to the editor; and the rest is History. Actually, so is his job at the paper, because that Good Old Boy Network didn't like the politics in his columns and, in an affront to journalistic integrity everywhere, told him to pack up and leave after fourteen unblemished years of employment. Needless to say, I don't read that rag anymore.

BUT I digress. Back to happier topics:

I looked over the ledge and, to my surprise, saw a populous little world I'd had no idea of--dozens of salamanders swimming around, and even a few that had ventured onto the hard, rocky ledge where we sat! I hadn't noticed the ones on land because they were so well camouflaged. The place seemed a harsh landing spot for salamanders, as it was covered with nothing but red dirt and small pebbles, but perhaps they, like the green frog, also pulled up into the shaded rock crevices below when they needed a rest.

No hope in identifying what they might have been from memory, as many species of salamanders live in our region, and these were brown and nondescript, as many of them are. They may well have been the adult version of our newt Ethel, an Eastern Red-Spotted Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) who is in her terrestrial juvenile stage, known as "eft."

Ethel, our Eastern Red-Spotted Newt Eft, in her Florida room,
actually an intact old French's mustard jar we found in the woods

More Ethel

I found Ethel, and her now-deceased mate Fred, in my yard after a spring rain, like orange jewels among the brown leaf litter. Actually, efts are neither male nor female; newts do not become sexual beings until their adult, mostly aquatic (and mostly brown) stage.

Next summer, I'm going back to that ledge with a field guide in tow, and maybe I'll be able to figure out what species lives so thickly in that little part of the lake.

One thing I do know--they weren't hellbenders! Hellbenders are endangered and huge (for a salamander); in fact, they're known as giant salamanders, and the few that are left live in Appalachian streams near us. Now, that would be a sighting, and I haven't given up on seeing one yet.

Adult Eastern hellbender, photo from Maryland Department of Natural Resources

In the meantime, I'll just enjoy a giant burrito at Hellbender's Cafe in Davis, West Virginia, another "find" when the kids and I used to explore the state! Now, THOSE are monsters!

GREAT big burritos at Hellbender's in Davis, West Virginia

More Nature Notes to come!

Episode 43: Of Newts and Poisons and Efts and Fathers and Ghias and Hard Drugs

1st WITCH.  Round about the cauldron go;  In the poison'd entrails throw.— 

ALL.             Double, double toil and trouble;
                     Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.  

 2nd  WITCH.
                     Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
                     Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
                     Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
                     Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
                     For a charm of powerful trouble,
                     Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Those witches in MacBeth knew how to cook up a poison stew.

Today I'm thinking about poison after the demise (I believe) of my pet red-spotted newt, a creature whose skin is toxic enough to kill college students drunk enough or challenged enough by peers to eat them and die.

Now, as long as you don't plan to eat your red-spotted newts, keeping them is perfectly safe, though washing hands well after handling them is an obviously wise move. They actually do well in captivity, living up to 20 years, according to a former amphibian zookeeper whose site I'll cite here soon. (Misplaced modifier alert! No, the zookeeper isn't an amphibian; he cares for amphibians in a zoo, ha.)

Of course, you must carefully care (no redundancy there) for these little creatures, and they do require specific care, such as calcium in their diets, to live very long. I asked said expert whether I could keep them in a terrarium filled with the soil and moss from my back yard, the place where I'd found my pets, periodically replenishing that soil with new from the yard so the tiny organisms the newts feed on would be restored.

The expert told me I could easily keep them ten years with this system, especially if I augment their diet with freshly caught tasties such as (small) earthworms dusted with calcium powder and rolly-pollies aka potato bugs. The latter's tiny armadillo-like exoskeletons contain lots of calcium. The humus-rich soil and leaf litter from my yard contains the newt's favorite delicacy, the snow flea, so Fred and Ethel would get many fresh batches of their comfort food.

Eft is the juvenile, terrestrial stage of the newt. A bright orange jewel on damp brown leaf litter after a rain is how you'll most likely find one of these creatures that are so prevalent in Appalachia.

In the case of one of my adorable missing eft, HE was not poisonous. I was. 

Episode 38: Weeds and Wonder, OR Stalking Euell Gibbons

A wrong attitude about nature is almost an integral part of our culture, and all the crying we're doing about the environment is going to come to nothing as long as such an attitude persists.

                                                               --Euell Gibbons, 1972, qtd. in Smith

I'm channeling my Euell Gibbons tonight. Children of the sixties and seventies knew Euell as the craggy naturalist picking cranberries in the snow to add to his GrapeNuts breakfast cereal. We saw him on popular talk and variety shows. And we laughed at Tim Conway's impersonations of him on the Carol Burnett Show.

If you are a child of a different generation, here is a video of one of this iconic forager's commercials to get you up to speed; his cache in popular culture is not greatly diminished today, forty years after his death.

"Ever eat a pine tree?" Gibbons reportedly asks on one of his GrapeNuts commercials, but thus far I've found no video proving it. (A chapter in one of his books, though, is similarly titled.) I've watched the two commercials referred to above, and neither mentions pine. Another claim with this possible myth is that, later in that ad, Gibbons compares the taste of GrapeNuts to that of wild hickories. However, he does say that in the commercial posted above, and I doubt he'd make the same claim in a second commercial. I suspect the true speaker of that line may have been Tim Conway or some other impersonator spoofing Euell. Gibbons does, however, devote one chapter of Stalking the Healthful Herbs to white pine, which he states was a major food for Native Americans, though his experiments with it, he stated, never eradicated its turpentine-like flavor.

N.B. I was recently scolded by a math professor in my writing group when I insisted that Wikipedia is not a reliable scholarly source. He cited a new academic journal article in which researchers compared the information on the popular free, open-source encyclopedia to more authoritarian sources and claimed Wikipedia is just as accurate as they are. I don't believe it, though I'll often go to the site first to gather information, then verify it with the references given in the text or through my own research. In fact, the pine tree commercial Wikipedia cites is linked to its "source," the video posted above in which cattails are the wild food highlighted. In neither that nor the cranberry commercial is a pine tree mentioned. Ever the librarian and, hopefully, scholar, I maintain that quoting from Wikipedia does not enhance one's credibility whatsoever. That doesn't mean the site is useless; it just doesn't belong in a scholarly bibliography. 

See the end of this article for a list of my sources; those providing unique information are also cited within the text of this "episode."

Episode 35: Weed or Wonder? Early Spring Greens in Appalachia

Weed or Wonder? is a column I wrote for the Appalachian Independent for a couple of years. The online newsletter was developed by a group of concerned citizens--concerned about the journalistic integrity of the local newspaper and wishing for fresh voices and more divergent views via a "Dialogue of Democracy."

My true passion is our natural world, from turtles and newts to tigers and owls. And plants. Particularly beautiful flowers. Particularly wildflowers. Particularly edible and/or culinary plants. Particularly gardening. Particularly foraging. Particularly fungi.

But fungi will have to wait for another episode--especially since my hours of scouring the forest floor today led to the discovery of not one single morel. Still too early, for one thing, and for another: I've never found a morel in my woods. Yet my woods should  produce morels. My woods have a northeastern exposure. My woods are hardwoods, particularly oaks and maples. My woods are moist and filled with secret little woodland plants known to grow where morels do. Morels, where art thou? Have you merely hid beneath the leaf litter each spring, camouflaged from my inexperienced eyes?

This year, if a morel exists on my property, I will find it. Now that I no longer can work, I can certainly spend an hour or two in the woods, even if my butt is glued to a boulder because I don't have enough energy to risk my ankles to the deep spring-and-boulder field on the mountain rising behind my "cottage." And now that fungi have stolen two entire paragraphs--they have a way of sneaking up on us, don't they?--I'll list below the plants I've found thus far this spring, and they are few and far between at the moment--we had snow yesterday, for heaven's sake.

Morels - Fungus Par Excellence

Episode 34: Something Other than Health Problems: Muskrats! Field Voles in the Cottage!

Never did I intend this blog to be so consumed with health issues--BO-RING! But those have consumed me of late, mostly because of not having a definitive diagnosis to explain all my increasingly debilitating symptoms. At last, we seem to be on the right track vis-a-vis both of those things. I'm still convinced it's mytonoic dystrophy or something very similar, and I'm waiting for a date for my consultation at the Johns Hopkins Muscular Dystrophy Clinic, which wonderful Dr. A is referring me to. Alas, I thought a DNA blood test would be cheaper than a spinal tap, but he told me they run something like 2 grand, and he wanted an expert to evaluate me and test me.

More about that in a future episode.

So, WHAT ABOUT MUSKRATS, the title of this episode? You know me. Digression is my middle name.

Episode 8: Effexor, Mugwort, and Dream Pillows

N.B. Feel free to skip portions surrounded by [brackets], as these represent tangents and, at times, diatribes.

In Episode 6, I discussed my recent identification of a heretofore "noxious" weed (in my estimation) in my yard. The tenacious thing pops up in all my garden beds and, as much of my lawn is uninitentionally turned over to weeds (because I don't have the energy to work it the way I want to), this monster grows to as high as 4 feet in the "prairie field" behind my house. I have precious little sunlight in my yard, which sits on the northeast-facing slope of an Appalachian mountain. The sun sets early on my house, like 4 p.m. So I know my sunny zones, one of which is a stretch along the northern woods where certain patches enjoy daylong sunlight that flows over the house's roof, past its shadow, and into that narrow strip before my yard ends at the wooded (and wonderfully natural) lot next doors.  Other spots, other than a 20 x 20 patch just in front of the house and before 100-foot spruces block it. This is completely extraneous information, but I do try to describe my setting now and then, since most of The Mary Dell Show, in homage to its precursor (see the Pilot Episode for the history of the show) will be devoted to herbs, plants, mushrooms, and such.  At least I hope so.  Medical problems are cropping up--pun intended--at an alarming rate.  These topics occur to my rambling brain during ramblings in my small, mostly wooded 1/2 acre lot, and sometimes the surrounding woods owned by my neighbors, who don't mind.

Mugwort, photo from Horizon Herbs

Episode 7: Hypochondria and Bear's Head Teeth

After texting my twenty-eight-year-old son about my latest health issues, he texted back, “You’re a hypochondriac.”

I texted back, “I wish.”

Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit and the more recent Unbroken, describes her battle with chronic fatigue syndrome in the New Yorker at http://www.cfids-cab.org/MESA/Hillenbrand.html.

I am eminently grateful that my health issues are not as debilitating as hers.

But there’s no question that I have morphed from a healthy, active person for more than half of her life to someone who is no longer at her best physically and, I’m afraid, quite often mentally as well.  I haven’t quite given up on the possibility of recuperating to the point of being as physically robust as others my age, and so far I’ve done a decent job adjusting to the need to write things down to remember them.  It’s the fatigue that is relentless.  I do still have good days, and I relish those.  I recognize them as they are happening … “Hey, I feel damned good right now.  I have some energy!  I can do some of the things I want to do!”

Unfortunately, in my ADHD fashion, I go in about seven different directions when I’m feeling well, so the overall gain is less than it should be.  Something that frustrates me even as it happens.

I’m not interested in hashing out the details of the latest diagnosis in my endless permutations of chronic disease, but just to give this episode some context, I’ll just say that the doc says I have “reactive airway disorder” or some such medspeak.  I’ve had a bad chest cough for the past five or six weeks.  It won’t go away, and it exhausts me.  Over this time, I’ve popped two “Z-Paks,” prepackaged week-long dosages of Azithromycin, a heavy-duty antibiotic, to no long-term avail, so my doctor just prescribed an inhaler, some Prednisone (a steroid that reduces inflammation and, by the way, made my mother psychotic when she took large doses to increase her white blood cells so she could take radiation treatments for her cancer), and another hardcore antibiotic. 

Episode 4: Amanita muscaria var. guessowii ... and other things

Today I found an Amanita muscaria var. guessowii in my front yard. Of course, I had no idea that's what it was when I plucked it from the earth. I've been riding a mushroom obsession since I visited my best friend from sixth grade (forty years ago, in other words) recently after finding her on Facebook, and her German mother sauteed up some fresh mushrooms from her yard with onions in olive oil and served it to me on a toasted English muffin. 

In fact, forty years had not been enough time for me to forget this woman's culinary talent.  She made a dish so delicious one night when we girls were eleven that I've dreamed about it ever since.  After telling her this, she and I both thought it might have been a spaetzle, but it also had dark noodles or something in it, as I recall. Unfortunately, she isn't sure, and she never uses recipes, of course, so the dish lives only in my memory. Those recent mushrooms came close, though. 

This wonderful woman, Alice, lived in Germany through the war and scouted for mushrooms to bring home, as food was scarce.Her strategy for determining whether a mushroom is poisonous is whether she sees the bitemarks of little critters on it.  "Nature is smarter than we are," she says. However, this is not really a good rule of thumb whatsoever. Turtles, for instance, are known to eat mushrooms poisonous to humans who have died when eating those turtles.

My Audubon Field Guide to Mushrooms warns not to believe any folk tradition for determining a mushroom's edibility. It's true, however, that Miss Alice has lived to the fresh and spry age of 77, eating mushrooms from the German woods and her American lawns from the time she was a child, and I'd eat anything she handed me.

I, however, haven't had the guts to eat anything yet without identifying it first in the Audubon guide or on Roger's Mushrooms, a great site for helping in the ID process. I'll talk more about Miss Alice on a future show, as her story is inspiring, but I must get back to our subject today, photographed with my iPhone: 

Amanita muscaria, var. guessowii from my yard, 9/24/11
Feel free to use, but I would appreciate an attribution.
(Copyright Mary Dell Spalding)