On the road…again!!!
Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek

 

The Grapevine Walking Stick

Moving along at age 87, the Footloose Forester has a cane or two handy, just in case. He prefers to call them walking sticks because even young hikers use walking sticks but youths are not associated with the need of a walking stick as a necessary item for hiking. Footloose Forester will readily answer to the label hiker. But there are several reasons why walking sticks on hikes are convenient—and very useful.

For starters, walking sticks can be used to probe into rock crevices and holes to ascertain if anything inside moves. A stick can prompt a reaction of a sleeping snake or a frog and get it to react.  Experienced hikers, especially in areas of thick brush and understory vegetation can use a walking stick to clear a path of cobwebs and nasty thorns. Where poisonous snakes known to be common, a longer stick is even more useful to tap a passage route by swinging the point of the stick left and right at ground level before stepping forward. The Footloose Forester often used a 7-foot bamboo stick for such a purpose, but also used a long, measured stick in measuring lateral distances when surveying an area.

A sturdy walking stick is useful for maintaining balance, whether you are a youngster or an aging geezer who still insists on wandering into the woods full of exposed roots and steep hillsides that are not easy to navigate. If this chronicle is beginning to segue into the underlying story of his prized grape walking stick, the hints point to the very same one that is shown in the photo below. Like many other things in nature, the walking stick has its own legacy and life history.

The erstwhile neighbor of the Footloose Forester had some time ago cut a length of a climbing grapevine from a tree he spotted in a New Jersey forest, because he believed that it might make a useful walking stick. That section of vine had the right length and diameter plus a knob-like burl at one juncture which would make a unique handle. So, Bob Wachter chopped out that section and brought it home to craft a walking stick. He sized it, sanded it, and shellacked that beauty.

It was in his closet the day that Footloose Forester stopped in to gift him with a walking staff made from a lateral branch of a Dawn Redwood tree.  Bob accepted the sturdy staff but then went to the closet to bring out a swap. The wood of the Metasequoia glyptostroboides staff and its botanical identity was unique enough, but so was the wood of the grape walking stick, chopped out of a climbing Vitis riparia, or wild grape vine.

The grape walking stick got its maiden voyage in the hands of the Footloose Forester at Watkins Glen State Park in New York.  Here it is, leaning proudly against a magnificent Northern Red Oak tree, just before he set off into the deeply carved and narrow valley where rushing waters and waterfalls shape one of the most iconic of humble creeks in the Appalachian Mountains. 

From grapevine to walking stick

You might have guessed that the walking stick was On the road…again!!! in other places. The most memorable were in Eastern Europe where the Footloose Forester hoped to wander in a forest or two in Poland and in Bulgaria, the places that seemed to hold the most promise for getting off the beaten path.  No dramatic stories evolved, but that trusty stick was in his hands most of the time when he wasn’t driving.  If future events are going to be anything like the past adventures, there will come a day when the grape walking stick gets a name, a fitting gesture for a prized possession with a legacy of its own.