Marcia Bonta

  • The Trees in Our Yard

    If someone were to ask me what my favorite tree is, I wouldn’t be able to answer.  It would be like choosing my favorite child.  Every tree species has its own special qualities, and no one is better than another is.  Take the 17 tree species that grow in our yard. When we moved here…

  • Mountain Meadows

    Imagine receiving a gift of 113 acres on Tussey Mountain.  That’s what happened to Mike and Laura Jackson back in 1988 when Laura’s parents, Richard and Phyllis Hershberger, gave them a portion of their farm.  The Jacksons named their property Mountain Meadows and built a home with large windows for wildlife viewing. Part of the…

  • Return of the Shrubs

    The good news is that our shrub layer is making a comeback in some places.  The bad news is that most of the shrubs are growing in places inaccessible or inconvenient to deer. Take common elder.  When we first moved here, 36 years ago, a line of common elder shrubs grew behind a barberry hedge…

  • Welcome Spring

    “Naturalist’s Eye” column for Pennsylvania Game News, March, 2007 I’ve closed our gate behind me after crossing the Little Juniata River and the main railroad line from New York to Chicago. Almost immediately I step into a different, older world this breezy, blue-skied day in late March. For weeks spring has played with us, blowing…

  • February Journal Highlights

    I’ve been updating my journal from the notes I take in my pocket notebook. Here are some excerpts from the first half of February. Bucks hanging out together, still wearing antlers February 3. Three degrees at dawn and absolutely clear. Winds cleaned the air and lowered the temperature throughout the moonlit night. At first, when…

  • Mountain of Ice

    We awoke, on the sixth of last January, to a mountain of ice. All night long trees and branches crashed down as our thermometer probe, encased in ice, registered a steady 32.4 degrees Fahrenheit. That morning an icy mist of rain continued falling, and so did trees and branches. I sat at our bow window…

  • Eternal Evergreens

    Now that the deciduous trees have shed their leaves, the woods seem bare and dreary. Maybe that is why I spend much of the winter down in the hollow among the hemlocks or up in the Norway spruce grove. Both offer shelter and comfort on the coldest, bleakest winter days. The birds and animals, too,…

  • Return to Enlow Fork

    I never expected to be conducting a choir of American toads at Enlow Fork. After all, this state game land (#302) in southwestern Washington and Greene counties is better known for its incredible diversity of plants and birds. Yet there I was, on the first day of May, surrounded by singing toads as I sat…

  • In Search of Old-Growth

    Every time our son Dave suggests a field trip in search of old-growth forests, I get nervous. I also grab my walking stick. That’s because these rumored old-growth remnants are always on steep rocky slopes that discouraged loggers back in the late 1800s. They also discourage me. Navigating up boulder-strewn mountainsides is not my strong…

  • Hurricane Isabel

    A dire weather report put us on alert.  Hurricane Isabel was headed in our direction after cutting a wide swath of destruction through North Carolina and Virginia. Memories of Hurricane Agnes, which struck here during our first year on the mountain, made me apprehensive.  In June of 1972, days of rain preceding the hurricane had…

  • An Irish Spring

    “I wake and hear it raining.” So begins Mark Van Doren’s wonderful poem “Morning Worship” and so began many of my mornings last spring. Van Doren goes on to list the wonders of the natural world he would miss were he dead, praising all the “sweet beings” that he knows will outlive him–mountains, huge trees,…

  • The Leaves of Autumn

    Weeks before the maples and oaks turn color, I have already been satiated by the brilliant hues of the understory trees, shrubs, and vines. From the time I spot the first scarlet and purple leaves on black gum trees in late August until the understory leaves fall in mid-October, I am surrounded by gold, purple,…