Entries in deer mice (1)

Sunday
Aug162009

Sunset, Sunday, 16 August 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Before I shall have become quite a man again I shall probably exist as a park, a sort of natural park in which people come to rest, to while away the time.

– Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

I’m glad it took me a little too long to mix my palette, because by the time I did, everything changed – at which point, of course, I had to mix my palette ...

What I had been fixing to say, yesterday, about Bradford Angier and his wonderful book Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants – before I found out he was a more famous figure than I knew and that he had apparently swiped material from another of my favorites, Stewart Edward White – had to do with wild black cherries. So I think I’d better get back to them. They’re not as confusing.

For years I’d deprived myself of these because I assumed they were just chokecherries. Big mistake. In that period in August – very much like this period in August – when you’re out in the woods and wish you could find a few more blackberries, but they’re gone – black cherries are a small but refreshing consolation. Or consoling refreshment.

In some ways I’m a poor observer of the woods. I don’t know how many long-dead “red oaks” I cut for firewood before I realized they were ... the very same wild black cherry. They can grow as tall and as stout as oaks – that’s about my only excuse. They don’t burn with quite the same strong heat or make the same sort of coals, but their effect is very pleasant and fragrant. And sometimes it’s actually better to have a more moderate heat, as country folk who avoid black locust will attest.

Anyway, I had trouble finding wild black cherries in Angier, because he calls them ‘rum cherry’. The line that caught my attention:

Deer mice and chipmunks deem the pits a favorite repast, the latter storing them in quantity for the periods during which they rouse and eat in wintertime.

Putting aside the charming idea that mice and chipmunks would ‘deem’ cherry pits a top choice, my hat’s off to anyone who could have observed chipmunks as they ‘rouse and eat in wintertime’. And, if by chance Mr. Angier did not observe them directly – if perhaps he was making stuff up even as he was cribbing from my man Stewart White – I think he would still deserve kudos for the expression. I can see those chipmunks and in my mind they resemble happy peasants in a feast by Brueghel.