Ticks drop onto animals and folks while they walk in the forest. It is best to wear a cap in the forest during tick season, but that only keeps them out of your hair. They attach themselves to limbs and torsos, covered or not. When sucking blood, the little devils expand to what my untrained eye concludes to be ten to twenty times their normal size. Years ago, Jeanne picked more than 125 ticks in one day from our long-term house guest, a Beagle bitch.

Deer ticks are the tiny bad guys which cause serious disease. They are almost microscopic, from what I hear. Ours, the un-named variety, are the size of a tiny eraser at the end of a lead pencil.

It's spring and spider time again (in fact, we share the cabin with them all winter). I recently entered the pump house, behind and attached-to the cabin, encountered and squashed one of the truly-ugly, brown monsters. After all the years in the forest, I sometimes suck in my breath in shock when I uncover one of the big-brown-uglies.

Monday I encountered a mouse in the house. Before we lived in the cabin, when we used it for a weekend get-away, mice had the run of the place. One autumn, years ago, Granny trapped 18. Now it is somewhat rare to encounter a mouse or two. This time Jeanne returned from the city with a new plastic tunnel-mousetrap contraption; it costs more than the old wood and metal spring trap. It is set with peanut butter and on the floor aimed at the spot where I saw the mouse take its leave.

When the mouse saw me, it escaped back behind the shower stall. That led me to the pump house (and the dispatched ugly, two-inch-toe-to-toe, brown spider) to try and psych out how it had entered the cabin. As best I could determine, mice had been biting or clawing a hole in the wall board where the cabin water system drain pipe passes. I covered the hole and wrapped the pipe with duct tape. Then I duct-taped the mouse hole in the pump house door. Mice aren't defeated by much, but duct tape, so tough and gooey, usually does the trick.

These little-critter-pest vignettes happened within the last three days. If you choose to live in a cabin in the forest, you are going to have critter visitors. You couldn't be put off by nature's small creatures, or you wouldn't last a week in Jewell Hollow.

When Jeanne and I completed our round trip drive in the old diesel to Michigan over the weekend to Granny's house, the peach tree was in bloom. We drove to Granny's because son, Chris, Emily and their ten month old daughter flew from Baton Rouge to introduce Baby Helen to Granny, her namesake. The return drive began in a dangerous, freezing-rain and blizzard storm and ended in the 75 degree temperatures of Jewell Hollow.

The peach tree was a gift to Granny fifteen years ago. Son Geoff was a student at a university forty miles southwest of the cabin. His friends would occasionally join him in Jewell Hollow on weekends. Granny would bake cookies, cook up huge quantities of food, and generally make the young people welcome. Some of the guests from the college chipped in for the peach tree, which Geoff planted. It now produces serious quantities of fruit, given normal spring weather conditions. Last year, we were treated to a late-season ice storm; it killed peach buds throughout the county--no peaches.

The students chose a peach tree for Granny because she is near-addicted to the fruit. Lord willing, this August, Jeanne will can twelve to twenty quarts of peaches and make peach jam for Granny. Jeanne produces special treats for Granny, and all the family, whenever they sojourn in the Hollow.

Chuck daily released Duda and Attila from their pen while we were away. He is an open, happy man, exuding a good cheer, in or out of the Hollow.

Chuck used to live far above us in the Hollow; beyond the end of the state road, through a narrow private path, through an often-rushing stream and forward into cleared land and an ancient frame cabin. He lived there, just below Sam the Hermit's old shack, with his midwife-wife and two small boys. When old enough, the boys didn't go to county schools; they were home-schooled, but not truly: the midwife didn't teach the boys while Chuck was working outside the Hollow.

Eventually, the midwife left Chuck for midwifery in Arizona. It was sad. The boys were lonely and would come down the mountain to visit Granny; she would always give them cookies and conversation. Then the boys went away to wherever the midwife was at the moment.

Chuck met Jennifer in the village. She was attractive, intelligent, and single with a twenty year old son. Granny, Jeanne, and I attended their wedding reception in an outdoor pavilion, at the nearby lake. Chuck cut a fine figure at his wedding reception: he had changed into jeans below his white-tailed outfit -- sort of a mono-gender, city-country, cross-dressing; it came off well. The sun shone as we ate pit-cooked pig and other country delicacies.

Chuck and Jennifer created a proper home in the village for Marshall and Kai Willow. They have learned to read and write and are doing well in county schools.

Jeanne and I were concerned about Jennifer's pregnancy; she was in her forties and problems could occur. Last week I had to flag Chuck down on the state road to learn that Maya had been born. He rents his cabin to city folks for weekend mountain experiences; that makes him the only entrepreneur in the Hollow and an occasional passerby. We mail-ordered Baby Maya a little silver thing from Tiffany's; she can pass it on to one of her children.

Sunday
In an agitated voice, I called Jeanne to the front window: ducks were on our pond; Mallards, a drake and a hen. His iridescent, bright kelly green head reflected the sun; her brown and black plumage blended into the dead razor grass at the end of the pond, where the stream water splashes into the basin. They were eating submerged, new shoots of grass. Jeanne and I stood motionless.

Always in the past, when ducks landed on our pond, the slightest motion from the cabin would send them to flight. This Mallard pair was different. The dogs were outside. After a while, they too discovered that we had unaccustomed visitors on the pond. Duda rushed to the water's edge, front paws sliding into the water. The ducks calmly swam to the center, out of harm's way. These were very large ducks, with bodies approaching the size of a small goose.

"Those must be the same Mallards I saw on Ron's pond," Jeanne said. She went out the kitchen door and began quietly talking to them, as she would when we lived on the St. Clair River. She fed the Michigan ducks cracked corn and could call them out of the air for a meal. The new guests weren't frightened by her. Later I told Jeanne "wherever they come from, those ducks have been around dogs and people." They stayed for fifteen minutes, bobbing as if for apples at a child's party, as they munched on the grass shoots. Then, without an apparent danger-trigger, they rose into the air side-by-side in a looping arc which took them over the high forest trees facing the pond.

The following day, the dogs and I took a two-hour walk in an unsuccessful search for our first morel mushrooms of the season. We walked up the fire trail, far into the mountain. As we approached Chuck's rickety, old, shake-shingled-siding cabin, the wind was still and the silence almost eerie, though in full daylight of early afternoon. The dogs went to sniff around the out-buildings; I walked to the small pond.

I didn't see them in the pond; only when they took flight, again side-by-side, in a quick-altitude arc as they flew down the mountain to the northwest.

Thursday
The hen duck was on our pond this afternoon, alone.

"I hope nothing has happened to the drake," I said to Jeanne. As we stood outside the cabin kitchen door, she talked to the duck. The hen flew off after a suitable afternoon cruise. Perhaps the Mallard nest is near our pond. Perhaps the drake was giving her a coffee break from her nest-sitting duties. Perhaps, perhaps...

Last evening, as the last light was fading, we heard Attila barking at a higher pitch and more agitated than usual. We looked from the window to the pond. There, with what western light remained facing us, the Mallard pair cruised; two gray/black tin-type photo figures, serenely paddling through our small body of water.

Yesterday, I got lost in the forest. Seeking morel mushrooms, I was on a long head-down, staff-sticking stroll, with two dogs and a pint of water.

I found only three small morels on the sunny side of Bradley's ridge, always a sure spot for fungi when conditions are right. The slope is steep to the top of the ridge. When I returned to consciousness, after focused searching around rocks and under logs and leaves, I was halfway to the top. It was easier to climb to the summit, continue searching down the other side, and complete a circle to the cabin.

The dogs and I rested at the top of the ridge. Before I sat on the trunk of the downed tree, I pounded my staff on it. If snakes were within, the vibrations would bring them out. I stuck the end of the staff into trunk holes; I wanted to meet neither snakes nor wasps nor bees.

I sat with my dogs resting beside me. It was a very warm, clear day. I was near the top of the tree-line, surrounded by silence. A few redbud and white dogwoods bloomed among the hard woods. I sat in peace with everyone and everything. I was grateful for the moment, high on a wilderness ridge.

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