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4. Trout Lilies and Trillium: Hungry Hollow Road
- Syracuse University Press
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36 4 Trout Lilies and Trillium Hungry Hollow Road In tandem they come Trout lilies then trillium Before the spring hum One fall morning a squeal from a culvert caused me to pause and walk over to check it out. To my surprise an enormous raccoon emerged from the creek, shook herself, made a growl of disapproval because she had been disturbed, and waddled off up the hill. Her paws were wet and muddy. Her thick amble reminded me of a bag lady who might have been driven away from her favorite corner, and I apologized to her back. She could have been catching frogs or snails or dousing her food. With winter coming on, I suspect she was making a last-ditch effort to fatten up. A. K. Dewdney describes a raccoon he calls Lotor (after the genus name for the raccoon) as “the chief intellect of Hungry Hollow” (Dewdney 1998, 197) because of her remarkable memory, planning, imagination , and emotional abilities. In his creation of a composite place, Dewdney writes “Hungry Hollow is nowhere and everywhere” (Dewdney 1998, ix). Portraying a place that represents all the eastern deciduous forest regions of North America, his descriptions are thorough and insightful. But this Hungry Hollow is a real place, and the road that runs through it braids around Hungry Hollow Creek in the state forest known as Pigtail Hollow. [18.188.61.223] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:42 GMT) 38 | Walking Seasonal Roads The name “Hungry Hollow” dates back to the Depression and probably refers to the poor soil of the area. A farmer might go mighty hungry trying to farm this land (NYSDEC 20011i). But to me it was one of the richest roads we walk, and it offers wonders all year round, especially in spring. What brings these riches is the creek, and the road’s minstrel tagalong has a song for every season. In winter its music is muted and frozen, but when spring thaws come, it roars down the hollow. Cascading over thousands of slate stair-steps, tumbling from one to the next, the waterfalls carve potholes, ripples, and scallops in the rocks. In summer the tempo slows and the songs become raspy and weak. In fall the creek readies itself again for the long, cold quiet. The creek is clearly the artist that has carved the hollow as well as the gardener who maintains it. In some spots the hollow is several hundred feet wide; in others, only a little wider than the road and creek. Where it narrows and takes on the appearance of a gorge, ferns and moss deck the shale walls. It could be a landscape painting from the Hudson River School, maybe similar to James Hope’s Rainbow Falls. Lush green and almost tropical in summer, the colors shift to the red, yellow, and purple spectrum of the rainbow in fall. Because of the wildflowers, Hungry Hollow is my favorite road at winter’s end. Under a trellised roof among the fluted tree trunks, puddles of wildflowers paint the forest floor. The lower part of the road abounds in April with early meadowrue (Thalictrum dioicum). In the buttercup family, the plant grows best in the shade of oak and aspen. It crawls out of the ground purple and wrinkled like a newborn, and unfurls its green leaves to resemble maidenhair fern. Coin-shaped and spaciously arranged, the leaves create airy mobiles. The small hanging flowers that bloom in May produce droopy seeds, and when they wilt, the plant becomes a brown lacy collar accenting the road. Trout Lilies and Trillium | 39 The first flowers to emerge are the coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) known as coughwort. Nonnatives from Europe and Asia, they settle in like dandelions. In fact, they mightily resemble dandelions . They rise from the cold ground gray and stemmy, produce yellow-disk flowers, and bend over like candy canes. Only after the seed is set and the flower has turned to fuzz do they produce leaves. Their crooks and dandy flowers bring the first bright color to the winter road. Next to appear are the trout lilies (Erythronium americana), also called dog’s tooth violet or adder’s tongue. These colonial natives emerge as two mottled leaves the shape and color of brook trout, and yellow lilies soon arise from the camouflage. The lilies last a couple of weeks and then the plants disappear completely as if the effort of being ahead of the pack was too much to...