A Walk In the Woods With Coffee

By Bob Wire, 11-30-08

There’s something about watching a flock of wild turkeys lurch through the woods the morning after Thanksgiving that makes me smile. I don’t know if you’d call it irony or coincidence, but after gorging on one of their Butterball brethren the previous night, seeing this sizeable group makes me feel that I may have won the battle, but the turkeys won the war.

I awoke at 7:00 A.M. — early for a vacation day — and made a full pot of strong coffee for the house. I did some stretching and scratching while Mr. Coffee hissed and gurgled, then I poured a cup and went outside into the crisp, cold air.

We’re at the Sanctuary, my in-laws’ grand house in the woods of Western North Carolina. The trees have shed nearly all of their leaves, allowing light from a low-hanging sun to filter through the forest, a stark contrast to the dense green canopy of summer. I’ve never been here in the fall, and I jumped on this chance to grab a little solitude in the woods.

Steaming mug of coffee in hand, I trudged through the leaves up the hillside and stopped to rest on a log after a few minutes. There was a small copse of trees and bushes to my right, running along the crest of a ridge. Between sips of joe, I could hear something rustling through the leaves a couple hundred yards downhill, just the other side of the ridge. Then I heard a second animal, uphill a ways from the first. They were moving loudly through the leaves, obviously unconcerned with the racket they were making.

It wasn’t someone from our house; I was the only one awake when I’d left. Hunters? Not likely—I was only a quarter mile from the road. It had to be a black bear and her cub. Just yesterday Uncle Bob had told me how he’d recently had a bear on his back porch, pilfering birdseed. I sipped my coffee and waited until both animals were moving, and started working my way downhill. If I could get to the bottom of the thicket without scaring them off, I would have a view of the back side of the ridge where they were moving.

As I crept carefully through the leaves, I could hear them progressing up the hill. Then I heard a twig snap in the thick bushes directly uphill from my position, and I froze. More rustling, and I could see a black shape among the thicket, moving toward me. I tried to recall if it was brown bears or black bears that could climb trees. Suddenly a black animal stepped from the bushes into a small clearing. Then there was another. And another. It was a flock of wild turkeys.

I was looking at a dozen or so adults, and about eight white-headed juveniles. They strutted around the little clearing for ten minutes while I watched them scratching through the leaves, occasionally pecking at one another.

Then one of the adults gave an unseen signal, and the adults took flight, moving quickly across the ravine to land in the thick layer of leaves on the next hillside. The youngsters, not yet able to fly, ran straight up the hill, accompanied by an adult chaperone.

I watched for a few minutes as the two groups of birds worked their way up toward the apex of the ravine. They marched through the dense carpet of leaves and branches, sounding exactly like a couple of black bears.

I pulled my watch cap down over my ears, and zipped up my vest against the Appalachian chill, and trekked back toward the house for a fresh cup. I looked at my watch. Still early, but it’s never too early for a turkey sandwich.

[Now that Bob’s got this pensive vignette out of his system, click back to NewWest.net/BobWire every day to see what’s happening next.]

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