Journal of First Class at The Clearing in Door County, Wisconsin 1957
October 11, 2015
Apple buds were pink, just opening. Everywhere, pastel new leaves had come on the trees, though the large-toothed aspens had only just put out their curious, folded, silken white leaves which looked almost like flowers or a strange form of hoarfrost.
Tree buds, and the amazing expansion of new leaves; the tenacity of the arbor vitae to grow and survive on almost solid limestone; the opposite or alternate plan of twigs and leaves as a means of identification . . . the tastes, smells, feels and sounds of the May woods . . . and just the enjoyment of renewal and fulfillment of springtime as expressed in these woods, filled the morning.
These woods were carpeted with young maple and beech seedlings, some just sprouted and still sporting their long, food-packed cotyledons. Thousands of infant beech and maple seedlings were busily about their task of bringing a climax forest to the often devastated, shallow earth of the rocky peninsula. Birds, however, in spite of the fine weather, were not abundant. A previous warbler wave and migration flood had gone through the week before, according to Mertha Fulkerson, who watches the fascinating progress of the seasons across the mobile face of THE CLEARING. We were now evidently between bird waves.
Nevertheless, ovenbirds sang abundantly. A splendid gem of a bird, the black-throated green warbler, clean and shining in the spring sunshine, came down quite low on a twig for all to see. If all birds, especially the warblers, came down so obligingly, how simple bird study would be!
But sometimes, hearteningly, the rare and wonderful is revealed to us. This happened on that first morning when, with a sudden loud cackle, a pileated woodpecker detached itself from a dead tree and flew at eye-level past us, through the sunlit woods. The scarlet crest upflung and brilliant, the great white wing-patches on black wings bright.it was a stirring view of a bird which is usually not so easily observed and is often sought vainly for many years.
After dinner we took the stone trail down the bluff to the dazzling white rocks of the shore.
Niagara limestone in layers marked where an ancient coral reef degenerated to muds which gradually build up the cliffs. In the shallows were mayfly nymphs and black leeches, while gulls soared past at high speed on the bright wind, swallows scimitared their way across a brilliant sky, and the old cedars draped over the bluffs as they have draped themselves for hundreds of years, wind-punished and hungry. They have endured much, have survived much. Inside the split-open trunk of one giant, we discovered the marks of old charring from some fire long since past.
That night, Rutherford Platt showed the unedited motion pictures which he took on his history-making voyage by schooner to the Arctic with Admiral Macmillan, during which he collected close-up photographs of remarkable, tiny Arctic plants of incredible beauty. We shall always remember the awe-inspiring, terrifying, silent procession of the great icebergs slowly marching down past Greenland and menacing boats both large and small.