On foraging, noticing, and everything happening beneath the canopy
It usually just starts as a simple walk. Then a few minutes into the walk, there's a shift. Once you start looking at one thing in a forest, you start seeing everything else too. What started as an excited noticing of blushing berries turned into, yet again, another naturalist walk. Because after all, I was a naturalist.
Small curls of bark hanging off of a gnawed trunk. Lush electric green moss lying on the underside of a branch reaching across my head. Half eaten fruit scattered around my steps as I too enjoyed a mid day snack. Tiny, spongy mushrooms emerging through the damp soil. The woods of Northern California were a habitat of my sensory delight.
And then there were the leaves. Tens and tens of greens, in every shape and size. Thick and waxy, thin and papery. Fuzzy, smooth, serrated, lobed. Some smelled sharp and resinous, others like nothing at all, just plant. Needles, vines, broad flat leaves with veins you could trace with your fingertip. All of it growing in the same shady patch of ground, all of it doing something different.
Near the base of a tree I had noticed a few small porcupine quills. A few years prior I had learned that porcupine quills glow a soft blue-green under UV light, a revelation found on a campout in Central Texas. Researchers think this glowing may help their warning signal (the quills) be even easier for predators to see. Nature never fails to surprise me. While holding the quills up to the sun a breeze came through, and with it the heavy, musky smell of a woodland mammal I never saw. They probably knew exactly where I was.
Reading the Signs
Every one of those little discoveries was a clue about who had been there before me and what they were up to.
That gnawed bark was someone's dinner. Porcupines chew through the rough outer layer of trees to reach the soft, sweet layer underneath, especially in late winter and spring when not much else is on the menu. Black bears in the redwoods do something similar, peeling strips of bark off young trees in spring to lick up the sugary sap. The half eaten fruit at my feet meant a bird, a squirrel, a fox or raccoon likely beat me to it.
Forest animals read the landscape all year long. They know when the berries ripen, where the mushrooms pop up after a good rain, which seeds drop first in fall. Their whole lives are built around that rhythm. Foraging, even a little, starts to teach you the same thing. You begin to notice which plants like the creek beds, which ones crowd into sunny clearings, where the shade stays cool all afternoon. Slowly you start seeing the forest the way the woodland residents already do.
An Interconnected Web
The longer I stood in that patch of forest, the harder it was to see any one thing on its own.
Fungi were quietly breaking down fallen logs and old leaves, turning them back into soil. Plants were growing up out of that soil, offering food and shelter to everything around them. Animals were eating the fruit, carrying the seeds off in their bellies, and dropping them somewhere new with a little fertilizer for good measure. Birds were tucking twigs and moss into nests and lining them with whatever soft scraps they could find.
That mushroom was likely connected to the trees around it, trading nutrients back and forth through the soil in ways scientists are still trying to understand. The berries I found needed pollinators in spring and hungry animals in summer to carry their seeds off. The bears and porcupines left their marks on the trees, and the trees grew around them.
Pull one thread of this web and the rest of it shifts. The closer I looked, the more I realized how much was happening beneath that canopy at any given moment, most of it without a single person around to see it.
The Forest Forage Collection
Our newly redesigned Forest Forage temporary tattoo sheet is a hand-drawn collection of the many creatures that make a forest feel alive: a bear, a porcupine, morel mushrooms, berries, a bird nest with eggs, and leafy branches.
Wear each design on its own, or mix and match them into your own woodland collection.
Next time you're outside, slow down a few minutes into your walk. Look for what's been eaten, what's growing, and who passed through before you. There's always more going on than you think.
Shop the Forest Forage Temporary Tattoo
On foraging, noticing, and everything happening beneath the canopy
It usually just starts as a simple walk. Then a few minutes into the walk, there's a shift. Once you start looking at one thing in a forest, you start seeing everything else too. What started as an excited noticing of blushing berries turned into, yet again, another naturalist walk. Because after all, I was a naturalist.
Small curls of bark hanging off of a gnawed trunk. Lush electric green moss lying on the underside of a branch reaching across my head. Half eaten fruit scattered around my steps as I too enjoyed a mid day snack. Tiny, spongy mushrooms emerging through the damp soil. The woods of Northern California were a habitat of my sensory delight.
And then there were the leaves. Tens and tens of greens, in every shape and size. Thick and waxy, thin and papery. Fuzzy, smooth, serrated, lobed. Some smelled sharp and resinous, others like nothing at all, just plant. Needles, vines, broad flat leaves with veins you could trace with your fingertip. All of it growing in the same shady patch of ground, all of it doing something different.
Near the base of a tree I had noticed a few small porcupine quills. A few years prior I had learned that porcupine quills glow a soft blue-green under UV light, a revelation found on a campout in Central Texas. Researchers think this glowing may help their warning signal (the quills) be even easier for predators to see. Nature never fails to surprise me. While holding the quills up to the sun a breeze came through, and with it the heavy, musky smell of a woodland mammal I never saw. They probably knew exactly where I was.
Reading the Signs
Every one of those little discoveries was a clue about who had been there before me and what they were up to.
That gnawed bark was someone's dinner. Porcupines chew through the rough outer layer of trees to reach the soft, sweet layer underneath, especially in late winter and spring when not much else is on the menu. Black bears in the redwoods do something similar, peeling strips of bark off young trees in spring to lick up the sugary sap. The half eaten fruit at my feet meant a bird, a squirrel, a fox or raccoon likely beat me to it.
Forest animals read the landscape all year long. They know when the berries ripen, where the mushrooms pop up after a good rain, which seeds drop first in fall. Their whole lives are built around that rhythm. Foraging, even a little, starts to teach you the same thing. You begin to notice which plants like the creek beds, which ones crowd into sunny clearings, where the shade stays cool all afternoon. Slowly you start seeing the forest the way the woodland residents already do.
An Interconnected Web
The longer I stood in that patch of forest, the harder it was to see any one thing on its own.
Fungi were quietly breaking down fallen logs and old leaves, turning them back into soil. Plants were growing up out of that soil, offering food and shelter to everything around them. Animals were eating the fruit, carrying the seeds off in their bellies, and dropping them somewhere new with a little fertilizer for good measure. Birds were tucking twigs and moss into nests and lining them with whatever soft scraps they could find.
That mushroom was likely connected to the trees around it, trading nutrients back and forth through the soil in ways scientists are still trying to understand. The berries I found needed pollinators in spring and hungry animals in summer to carry their seeds off. The bears and porcupines left their marks on the trees, and the trees grew around them.
Pull one thread of this web and the rest of it shifts. The closer I looked, the more I realized how much was happening beneath that canopy at any given moment, most of it without a single person around to see it.
The Forest Forage Collection
Our newly redesigned Forest Forage temporary tattoo sheet is a hand-drawn collection of the many creatures that make a forest feel alive: a bear, a porcupine, morel mushrooms, berries, a bird nest with eggs, and leafy branches.
Wear each design on its own, or mix and match them into your own woodland collection.
Next time you're outside, slow down a few minutes into your walk. Look for what's been eaten, what's growing, and who passed through before you. There's always more going on than you think.
Shop the Forest Forage Temporary Tattoo