Tipping allows adventure in winter wood

I hang my woolen mittens on the low limb of a tree and start clipping and bunching, snapping and storing the fragrant balsam fir tips like a mad squirrel gleaning acorns for the long haul through winter. It’s a strange thing that overcomes a person tipping for fir: The more you gather, the more you feel you have to gather. I used to think this was a bizarre form of greed; now I view it more as a kind of stamina that enables one to endure the excursion into the woods and back home again.

Tippers enter the woods empty-handed and emerge laden with 50 pounds or more of branch tips that will transform the gray, seemingly lifeless world of winter into a festive display of evergreens. The redundant and methodical task of gathering tips is something akin to weeding the garden. The snipping, snapping and bunching yields tidy little mounds of tips that together make a mass worthy of bundling with baling twine gleaned from the barn.

If you harvest tips for decoration this time of year, you know in large part the weather determines the pleasantness of your journey. Even though it’s considerably more complicated to move about in the difficult months of winter, the forest is an enjoyable place full of stunning beauty. Walking through the woods we are as likely to have to slosh through water and slip on mushy, half-decomposed leaves as we are to have to tread through 6 inches of snow. Even so, it is what the forest reveals that is so precious at this time of year.

Fine, leafless stems of immature deciduous trees poke through the thin layer of icy snow. Tiny rings of snow have melted around the base of each stem as the sun warms the dark tissue. The perfectly round holes make it appear as though tiny colonies of maple seedlings are growing through a lacy network of Swiss cheese.

Mossy fieldstones of old rock walls crop up out of the snow, forming remnants of straight lines between long-overgrown pastures. Every once in a while a massive root system of a blown-down tree can be seen. At the base of the densely interwoven roots, ledge is revealed. That a mighty tree may grow for decades on nothing but stone is alone worthy of marvel.

Most deciduous trees in the woods have been stripped of their leaves. An occasional oak leaf clings here or there, but most have fallen to the ground, starting the essential decomposition process that feeds the roots of the forest. Beech trees are the only deciduous trees that hold on to their curled, russet leaves. Their “cone of juvenility” can be spotted from quite a distance: If one carefully scans the tree, it is apparent that leaves cling only to the youngest branches.

When we garden we develop a relationship with our land. No matter what the scale of our garden, tending plants and soil causes us to be more in tune with nature.

Being a part of the woods this time of year extends that relationship. The Maine woods are full of history, and an impressive and ever-changing testimony to the many generations passed. I revere those who tended this same Earth, generating their livelihood by it throughout the seasons, with less comfort and convenience than we who live in modern times.

Whether gathering greens or enjoying the outdoors, go into the woods this month. In the waning days of early winter, soak in the beauty, establish your connection to the past, the future, and the Earth.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, 512 North Ridge Road, Montville 04941, or e-mail them to dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.