During the pandemic, Buzzard Swamp was a regular haunt for me. It’s a big bird sanctuary on the Allegheny National Forest, not far from the little woodland town of Marienville. But it definitely has a remote feel. The roads out to it are long and lonely, as are the trails that run around all the many ponds. There are far more hunting camps than year-round homes in this area. The roads are narrow and pass mostly through miles and miles of trees. It’s so beautiful.
I regret the name “Buzzard Swamp” for such a lovely spot. It’s really not a swamp at all, just a series of pools and ponds where birds shelter. The area is broad and mainly level, grassy with woodland all around. I used to come out here to camp alone just inside the woods near Pond # 1–which is the largest body of water, not the one pictured here. The frogs would croak into the night, and deer would wander down to the water’s edge to graze. This place is home to an abundance of birds: all manner of billed waterfowl and songbirds. More than that, it’s a stopover for migrating birds whose range is wider, including snowy owls. My last sighting of a snowy owl was near here, about 17 years ago.
The autumn season is well advanced up here in the North Country. I always believed that fall in New England is pretty much the same as fall anywhere else in the Northeast, but a recent trip to Maine disproved that theory. With the abundance of sugar maples, New England’s autumnal glory far outshines ours. Still, the fall season is lovely here, if more than a little faded by late October.
Here’s the thing: I came here out of spite. I was mad that I even had to come to Buzzard Swamp. But I’m stuck with all the damn pets my family collected down through the years before going away and leaving the pets and me in our house in Pittsburgh. Each time they wanted a new animal, I said, “No. You won’t take care of it. I’ll end up taking care of it, and I hate living with animals.” “No, I’ll take care of it, I promise,” they always replied. “Please!” Now I’ve got my wife’s dog, my daughter’s dog, and my other daughter’s cat—none of which I wanted in the first place.
So now when I go up to my hunting camp near the Allegheny National Forest, I have to take at least the younger of the two dogs with me. And though I do like that dog, it’s no hiker. Ah, but perhaps I’ve complained of this before…. In any case, on future trips up north, I’ll be leaving that dog with a nephew en route. Judge me as you will, but I do not like sharing my life with an animal.
The brooding autumn skies lent themselves to introspection…or maybe just…brooding. I did not want the little dog I had on the leash. She’s too nervous and excitable for hiking. She wants to chase birds and squirrels. You can’t let her off the leash or she’d get lost. But when she’s on the leash, she’s in such a hurry to sniff the ground ahead of her that she pulls you behind. She’s either running or stubbornly standing still. She can’t navigate real trails, so I had to take her to a place where the trails were essentially gravel lanes. That’s why I came to Buzzard Swamp out of spite, or at least with spite in my heart.
And yet, it’s always lovely to be here. I’ve been to this strange place in every season, and it never fails to enchant. It’s never crowded. You rarely meet another soul on the trails. The open skies and the silence of the place have an almost Western feel, except the topography puts me in mind of the moorlands in parts of Great Britain. Occasionally you’ll hear a distant, human-seeming voice that turns out to be a goose or a duck.
On this visit to Buzzard Swamp, I got back to my old autumnal habit of memorizing a poem while I hiked.
I’m not a birdwatcher yet, but I might be getting there. My closest friend from college is already a birdwatcher, albeit not a very disciplined one, and also a cigar-smoker, which I will never be. You can do the entire main loop around this place in a little over an hour, and there are additional trails aside from the main loop.
Click HERE for a photo dump of my early-October trip to Maine.
No comments:
Post a Comment