Today, not so bad, but that may be because we are becoming acclimated to the unbearable. And the forecast continues to look grim—multiple episodes below zero, and not a single poke above freezing. I did take a peek at a long-range forecast, and saw a 50 on March 1—so, "Hold on Knute, we may be finally heading for the rhubarb."

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From Laurel Hill to Siler’s Bog
The Walking Adventures of a Naturalist
John K. Terres

Author’s Note

The last extensive wild land, close to its campus, owned by the University of North Carolina, is the Mason Farm. It is a land that Mrs. Spencer and the Mason Family loved for its birds and wildflowers, its woodlands and sparkling waters, which were so much a part of her life and of the people of the university town who walked its fields and groves. It is in the spirit of Mrs. Spencer's love of pure waters and trees and all wild things and their preservation, and their study by students, faculty, and others, that I have written this book. It is to tell of the strengthening of body and mind to be found in the fragrant fields and marshes; to describe senses made razor-sharp watching wild animals by day or by night, with the simple joys of discovery; to sing the spiritual renewal that awaits one in these small wildernesses so close to home; and to relate, in the story of one North Carolina farm, the healing solitude of the still-wild lands, and our unending need for them…

If I became philosophic about the wild things I studied on the Mason Farm, it was because I had learned to understand them. Over and over, the creatures of fur and feathers had shown me that they enjoyed living quite as much as I, or perhaps even more. With senses far keener than mine, they lived only from moment to moment, high-keyed, sensitive beyond powers of any human kind. For them, the instant is played to its fullest to satisfy some insistent need: to glory in savage pursuit, to taste quick fear and wild flight, to know in the next moment blessed forgetfulness or the full belly and innocent sleep.

To become a part of their world, I used methods known to hunters and photographers of wildlife — the blind, or "hide" — and skills of the wildlife management men — the live-trap, the mark on the individual animal, and then its release so that it may be followed and studied and recognized again.

What the naturalist needs, then, is as much of his days and nights as he can spare, to crouch motionless and in silence, cramped in a hidden observation place — a thicket, a canvas blind, a platform in a tree — his endurance and his interest holding him there through bitter cold or intense heat, hovering along some trail much traveled by the wild things he has chosen to observe.

It is in these small, wild places, refuges kept wild by their isolation and the protection of the animals in them, that naturalist finds the Last Frontier. And in this much-civilized land he is that unusual paradox: both a cultured and a primitive man. With love for the wildlife that he studies, and with songs and poems in his heart, he has returned, hundreds or even thousands of years, to his hunter-trapper ancestors to learn the language of sign — the trail in the dust, the lone feather, the traces of wild fur on the tree — that tells him what animal has passed there, what it fed upon, and where it has gone. But when he crushes the grass under his feet, it springs up again, and there is no blood in his tracks.

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