Two New Books Add Flare to Your Campfire

The recipe for Skillet Squirrel with Dried Morels may sound like a meal scrounged up in an episode of the Discovery Channel’s Survivorman, and the variation beneath it suggesting that cooks use "young muskrat" if no squirrels are available might even be reminiscent of a Fear Factor challenge, but it’s only one option the long menu that A.D. Livingston’s latest cookbook offers for your evenings by the campfire.
Skillet Cooking for Camp and Kitchen (The Lyons Press, $14.95) isn’t exclusively for the hunter at the deer camp, though. After all, the book is subtitled More than 101 Modern and Old-Time Recipes for Jackleg Cooks and Practical Housewives and includes instructions for preparing even the most traditional fireside fare.
Take, for instance, Trout Hemingway, a recipe Ernest himself wrote up in his own outdoors column in the Toronto Star. As sparse as the Hemingway style itself, the recipe simply consists of trout, bacon, cornmeal and Crisco.
What this recipe represents even more accurately is Livingston’s message that skilletmanship is an art in which the how is more important than the what: "It’s a hands-on kind of cooking, in which success often depends more on technique, skill, and tender-loving care than on a complicated recipe with a long list of ingredients."
Livingston encourages camp cooks to find the right skillet for the right recipe and doesn’t rule out flea markets and junk shops as the places to do so.
But simplicity doesn’t mean that this cooking columnist for Gray’s Sporting Journal ever skimps on the more unique dishes. In an entire chapter dedicated to "Exotic Meats," Livingston opens readers’ minds (and maybe even their mouths) to such treats as cod tongues and fried soft shell turtle.
And while Livingston suggests buying your ingredients for A.D.’s Cricket Crisps at the local bait shop, his next chapter, as with the Hemingway dish, again disarms the reader with a variety of fruit and vegetable favorites like onion rings and fried apple slices.
A common element to many of Livingston’s not-so-common recipes, though, is the mushroom, an ingredient that need not bring you to the bait shop or even to the grocery shop. By foraging the very woods in which you camp, you can gather the main ingredients for several of Livingston’s dishes, and while mushroom hunting can be intimidating- and even dangerous-, there’s another new book that can help you along the way.
North American Mushrooms: A Field Guide to Edible and Inedible Fungi (Falcon Guides, $25.95) is a 592-page encyclopedia that is essential for the risky business of mushroom gathering. Virginia Tech professor Dr. Orson K. Miller and his wife, mushroom expert and cookbook author Hope Miller, together create a comprehensive guide that teaches readers everything from a mushroom’s anatomy to its geographic distribution.
The challenges of the forager in search of edible mushrooms on our continent is evident in the size of this guide, but the Millers’ expertise make this task a safer one. The authors, however, use designations as varied as "edible" to "poisonous" to "edibility unknown," so they stress the rule of "when in doubt, throw it out!"
The Millers, however, do an exceptional job of diminishing that doubt. From the start, they insist that a spore print be taken for positive identification and explain just how to do that. In addition, the Millers’ text is complimented by 600 color photos that make this guide a must-pack for the mushroom hunter.
Among the recipes in Skillet Cooking that call for mushrooms are Alaskan Dried Mushroom Camp Gravy, Easy Wild Mushroom Omelet, Mushroom Smothered Chicken, Sauteed Chanterelles, Wild Mushroom Fritters, and, of course, Skillet Squirrel with Dried Morels.
By combing the know-how in each of these books, you can practice the self-reliance we all look for in the woods. Just as the campfire is a source of pride for its builder, the meal cooked upon it should be, too. Both titles are practical guides that can each add to the skills of the most experienced outdoorsman. By packing them with the skillet itself, whether you prefer squirrel or a muskrat, you can rest assured that the morels in that skillet will only add more flare to the fire.

Thirty Two Hours on the Mohawk-Appalachian Loop

I tried to keep my pack streamlined with only the essentials, but I needed something to pass the long night I’d be spending alone on the Mohawk Trail. Besides, how much could a paperback copy of Treasure Island weigh?
The resident mice at the Pine Knoll lean-to sat in the rafters, as if reading over my shoulders, while my headlamp burned into the pages of the greatest adventure story of all time. I had just started the book and was at the part where Dr. Livesey and the squire are trying to make sense out of Flint’s cryptic map: ". . .The bar silver is in the north cache; you can find it by the trend of the east hummock, ten fathoms south of the black crag with the face on it."
It reminded me of the nine year-old copy of the Connecticut Walk Book I had been using all day to get here. The directions were clear enough, but the lashes on my shins and the deer tick I found embedded between my fingers made it even clearer just how quickly nature can swallow up a trail when it’s hardly ever used.
The Mohawk is a twenty four-mile blue-blazed trail that was once part of the Appalachian’s original route through Connecticut. Today, the Mohawk connects with the current Appalachian near Cornwall Bridge in the south and at Falls Village in the north, together creating the thirty seven-mile loop I had set out to complete with just one night of camping.
"This is a different world," said the man at the gas station at Cornwall Bridge when I asked if my truck would be safe at the trail head overnight. I don’t know what he was comparing "this" to, but I knew he was right. A hiker in the northwest corner of Connecticut is waved to by motorists as if he were a familiar neighbor, whereas the same backpacker might be seen as a homicidal drifter anywhere else in the state. So I set off into this different world, believing that if I got hurt- if I failed to close this giant loop for any reason at all- I would somehow find a way back home.
My truck was twenty miles away now, and while the hard floor of the lean-to felt good on my sore back, I knew that the next day’s seventeen mile-hike would be my biggest challenge, but not because the terrain would be any harder.
In fact, I found the Mohawk’s terrain to be much more challenging than that of the loop’s thirteen southbound miles on the Appalachian. The Mohawk Trail alone brings you up and over seven Berkshire peaks that are over one thousand feet in elevation, two of which are over sixteen hundred feet.
For the most part, I maintained a two-mile an hour pace and made a point of resting at the top of each hour, even if I didn’t need it. These five-minute breaks were just enough for recovery, but not so long to cool down and stiffen up.
That is, until I chanced across one of the most elusive animals in the state, stalling my trip for nearly twenty minutes.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about my desire to see a black bear in the wild, but kept to myself my even stronger wishes to see a bobcat, figuring such a sighting was a little less likely. Six hours into the hike, though, I spotted an animal about twice the size of my own house cat, stalking something in a grassy field near Route 43 in Cornwall. I straddled an old stone wall that was lined with "No Trespassing" signs and snapped a few photos of the predator, about fifty yards away. When I heard a car approaching, I hopped off the wall which frightened the cat to the edge of the woods where it sat waiting for me to leave.
When I got home, I e-mailed my grainy photos (see post below) to the Department of Environmental Protection. I quickly received a response from Paul Rego, a wildlife biologist with the State who confirmed that it was indeed a bobcat. Rego, who specializes in furbearing animals, said that most of the bobcat sightings reported to the DEP come from Connecticut’s northwest corner.
What had proven to be even more elusive on the Mohawk, however, were hikers themselves. In twenty four miles, I only came across one young couple on a short day hike, the husband carrying their infant on his back.
Early on my second day, though, after struggling up and over the 1,230-foot Barrack Mountain, I connected with the Appalachian Trail and I was no longer alone. Heading south now, I continuously ran into northbound through hikers, who, crossing into New England here in mid-August, will happily find themselves in Maine at the beginning of the fall foliage.
The heavy traffic of the Appalachian is also what made its terrain a sight for sore legs. While the Mohawk Trail is often overgrown, rocky, and at times ambiguously marked, the Appalachian’s path is distinct, sometimes even smooth, and seemed like it would be a nice homestretch back to my truck.
I was still in the Berkshires, though; my last five miles were punishing. But late in the afternoon I finally crested Breadloaf Mountain, the 1,050-foot peak where the Appalachian reconnected me with the Mohawk, which I followed for one more mile to close the loop at my truck, safe and sound, right where I left it thirty two hours earlier.
The Mohawk-Appalachian Loop, however, doesn’t need to be rushed. There are enough campsites and water sources to map out a two or three-night trip. You wouldn’t want to rush it either, because while I certainly made some great finds along the way, I’m sure that if you take your time, there’s a much larger cache of treasure waiting for you in our northwest woods.

My Recent Bobcat Sighting

Last week, while hiking the Mohawk Trail near Cornwall, CT, I saw what I believed was a bobcat stalking something in a field. I was lucky enough to get a couple of photos before it got scared and bolted into the woods. I e-mailed these to the CT-DEP, which confirmed that it was indeed a bobcat.

Challenges of Connecticut's Box Turtles

All within a matter of seconds, my mind overloaded with possible explanations for what I was looking at: a new species, a mythological creature, a freak of nature. But once the situation became clear to me, I realized it wasn’t some hybrid beast; it was just suppertime here at Wharton Brook State Park.
I was about to run the mile back to my house to get a camera, but the more I moved the more I frightened the northern water snake that was trying to swallow an entire sunfish at once. Finally, my presence was too much for him and he spat up his meal and disappeared between the stones of the brook.
I felt bad for disturbing the feeding snake because reptiles had been good to me all last week. Just a few days before, I set out on a hike on the blue-blazed Tunxis Trail in Southington. Not even a quarter mile into the woods, I came across a turtle, its high-domed shell camouflaged much more appropriately for autumn than for August. Its shell was also the clue that made it easy to pick her out of a lineup of turtles in my field guide, though the name the book gives her is unfortunately becoming more and more of a misnomer: "Common Box Turtle."
According to the Department of Environmental Protection, the box turtle is becoming less and less common. In 2004, a DEP advisory committee focusing on reptiles and amphibians for a revision of Connecticut’s List of Endangered, Threatened, and Special Concern Species was particularly alarmed by the decline of the state’s box turtles.
"This group of herpetologists is very concerned about the box turtle," says Julie Victoria, a biologist with the DEP’s Wildlife Diversity Project and facilitator for the Reptile and Amphibian Advisory Committee. She cites a variety of issues that threaten the box turtle in Connecticut.
"The number one reason why the numbers are declining is road mortality," says Victoria. "Box turtles have a very small home range. It can be between one acre to five acres. Usually, once they get into that home range, they never leave it."
Therefore, when people relocate turtles in an attempt to bring them to a seemingly better habitat, they are actually doing the animal a disservice. The turtles try to return to their original territory, where mates and food sources are known to them, and often have to cross busy roads to do so.
"They don’t see the car as being an enemy, so they get killed," says Victoria. If motorists do see a turtle, they are asked to simply carry it to the side of the road the animal was facing.
When box turtles do survive these challenges, they can live for decades, sometimes well beyond the human life span. There have even been instances where a turtle’s shell displayed Native American carvings from over a hundred years earlier.
I was curious about how old the Tunxis Trail Turtle was, as she (a female’s eyes are brown while a male’s are usually red) seemed to be on the larger side of the five to six-inch average shell size, a sign- at least to me- that she has done well here.
"You’d have to see the belly," said Victoria. "A species that lives a long time like that, they have a lot of wear on the bottom shell so you usually can’t accurately age it."
This life span, ironically, is what has made the box turtle such an attractive pet to bring home, which is another threat to the species as a whole.
"That is a big problem," says Victoria. "We have changed the law so that you may not possess a box turtle."
In 1993, the DEP put a one animal limit to the number of box turtles a resident was allowed to own. Anyone who had more than one at the time of the new regulation was supposed to contact the Wildlife Division, but no one did, according to Victoria. Five years later, the DEP made it illegal to bring a box turtle home at all. In addition, the box turtle is protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (www.cites.org).http://www.cites.org).
With all these other challenges to face, I was concerned to see that three hours later, the Tunxis Trail Turtle hadn’t moved an inch. Victoria, however, said that this is normal behavior, especially in the heat we’ve recently experienced.
"Like turtles hibernate in the winter," she explained, "sometimes in the summer they find these little wet areas and they pretty much shut down and just sit there until the heat has passed."
The concern I felt reminds me that most people have not purposely harmed the box turtle. It seems to be our instinct to want to admire, protect and coexist with the animals we meet in the woods.
In the case of a box turtle, though, if she’s in the woods and not in the street, most likely she’s doing okay on her own.
"Hikers should leave them alone," said Victoria. "That’s what these turtles need."
To tell you the truth, my walk to Wharton Brook later in the week was a shot in the dark to find more box turtles. Instead, I met a two-tailed snake. I went back the next morning, hoping to surprise it again, maybe during breakfast this time.
But he was gone. The dead fish was still trapped in an eddy, its eyes a little foggier now. As I walked along the brook, a garter snake seeped down into the grassy bank. A common species, I thought, but never to be taken for granted.

Sharp Outdoorsmen: The Mud and Muck Society

My wife and I had just returned from Cape Cod, where my eyes became trained to scan the tide line for interesting stones and sea glass. So, when I walked through that portal of time travel known as the Comstock Bridge in East Hampton, my eyes remained fixed to the ground as I hiked through Salmon River State Forest.
This is the only reason I even noticed the bright white fragment jutting from the side of the trail.
Exactly an inch and a half long and just under an inch wide, the symmetry of the triangular stone made me take a closer look. Like a foggy chip of ice, its edges looked serrated- either by design or convenient chance- and when I tapped the stone’s point against the soft flesh of my forearm, it certainly felt sharp enough to plunge into a hunter’s quarry. I imagined that hunter, hundreds of years earlier, tapping this same stone against his own flesh and finally feeling satisfied with his handiwork.
I stowed the rock safely in my pack and walked the two miles back to the only covered bridge in eastern Connecticut, through which I returned to the modern world. Once home, I e-mailed an image of my find to Steven Gagnon, Recordkeeper for the Mud and Muck Society, a group of amateur archaeologists who surface hunt for Native American artifacts in Central Connecticut and beyond (www.mudandmuck.com).
Gagnon, who is a goldsmith by trade, later confirmed what I had hoped- that I found my first arrowhead.
Having been a hiker for decades now, I admit I was almost embarrassed that I had never found an arrowhead before this. But then again, I hadn’t really been looking.
"As far as how you found it," said Gagnon, "I would say that it’s a once or twice in a lifetime find. The problem is most people don’t take the time to look closely at the ground."
For relic hunters like Gagnon, however, this is second nature. I had only recently developed the habit at the National Seashore but I still didn’t know what I had in my hand.
"Being able to recognize it as an artifact is part of the challenge," said Gagnon. "Most people would walk right by and see it only as another rock."
Gagnon believes that my arrowhead was made by a Mohegan people during the Woodland Era, sometime in the past 1,500 years. He also said that the milky quartz from which it was manufactured is common throughout Connecticut and was an ideal material for primitive tools.
"Because quartz is like glass, it chips and breaks in a way that can be formed into a sharp tool," said Gagnon.
Over the years, Gagnon has found hundreds of ancient tools, including celts, hoes, pestles, gouges and drills, all of which are now in safekeeping.
The Mud and Muck Society was formed ten years ago and not only believes in having fun while looking for artifacts, but also in being responsible by keeping detailed records of their finds. The members also belong to the Archaeological Society of Connecticut and the Friends of the Office of the State Archaeologist.
"We don’t plunder and sell our finds on E-Bay," said Gagnon, who will one day donate his entire collection to a museum. "Instead, we preserve their history and plan on seeing to it that our collections are preserved for the future."
Gagnon has made many of his finds in the Connecticut River Valley, but he says that there are state and local laws regulating both surface hunting and digging.
"All [artifact hunting] should be done with permission," said Gagnon. "Digging on state land is a no-no. As far as private land, surface hunting can be done with permission."
I found my arrowhead exposed right on the trail of a state-owned forest. It wasn’t until I was home and doing research that I realized I was wrong to take it with me. While many people keep arrowheads without question, I wanted to write about it here and report what the proper procedures are for finding a relic on state land.
I called the office of State Archaeologist Dr. Nick Bellantoni. I had Bellantoni as an anthropology professor at UConn eleven years ago. He’s a passionate teacher, who I remember pacing up and down the aisles of the large lecture hall, keeping hundreds of students simultaneously intrigued with his stories of Connecticut lore.
Bellantoni was out in the field when I called, I but was told that I should have left the arrowhead where it was. I was then given instructions to record with precision the exact spot and time at which I found the arrowhead and to mail it to the Connecticut Archaeology Center if I couldn’t bring it to Storrs myself.
It may have been my first find, but I was able to share it with readers so I have no problem returning the artifact to the good hands of Dr. Bellantoni.
"In many situations, that artifact may only be exposed for a brief period of time," said Gagnon. "If it is not collected it would be lost possibly forever."
I’m sure I’ll find more, though. Gagnon says that arrowheads are plentiful despite the luck involved with my recent find.
"Think how many arrowheads a hunter would need to make to feed his family over a lifetime," explained Gagnon. "Then multiply that by thousands of people over thousands of years."
And luck, by the way, isn’t the only factor. According to Gagnon, if you want to find relics of the past, then you should learn as much as possible about the people who created and used them.
"Research, research, research," said Gagnon. "Then get out and look. You don’t find if you don’t look."

CT DEP Offers Black Bear Safety Advice for Hikers

A few weeks ago, two coyotes trotted into the beams of my headlights as they crossed Route 80 in North Branford. This wasn’t far from the place where I once spotted a coyote wandering a residential neighborhood like a lost dog. My very first coyote sighting, though, was a few years ago in the Texas panhandle as my wife and I followed Route 66 across the country.
What all these encounters have in common is not necessarily the animal, but from where I observed that animal- a car. In other words, certain species that have been historically reclusive are adapting to- or at least dealing with- life in developed areas. The Department of Environmental Protection reports that the first coyotes migrated into Connecticut only fifty years ago, but since then, it seems that everyone has a coyote story to tell.
Who I’m really envious of, though, are the nearly 1,000 Connecticut residents who have been lucky enough to acquire black bear stories in the past year. According to the DEP, between July 28, 2005 and July 27, 2006, there have been 986 black bear sightings reported in Connecticut. The town with the most sightings is Avon with 103.
Even if this includes bears that have been spotted numerous times, it is certainly more than what was being reported just a few decades ago. After the Connecticut population of black bears was nearly destroyed in the 1800's, the state’s numbers have significantly grown in the past twenty years and that trend is supposed to continue.
Once only seen in the northwestern corner of the state, black bears have become more and more commonplace throughout the rest of Connecticut, including reports from New Britain, Durham, Haddam, East Haddam, East Hampton and Southington. Just this past May, a 175-pound male bear (males can weigh up to 400 pounds) had to be removed from a tree near a Meriden elementary school.
So, if seeing a black bear while toting a lunch box to school is possible, then meeting one while cooking a freeze-dried meal in the Connecticut woods isn’t too unlikely either. For instance, hikers on the Appalachian Trail near Sage’s Ravine- at the bottom of Bear Mountain no less- have reported numerous encounters with bears while camping in recent years.
The DEP, therefore, provides hikers and campers with some helpful "Do’s and Don’ts" for any black bear encounters you may have while in the woods.
First of all, black bears usually smell you coming and head the other way when they do. If, for some strange reason, it misses your scent, you should announce your presence by making noise and movement.
It is common knowledge that mother bears are particularly protective of their young, so the DEP suggests that all dogs be kept on a leash while hiking so not to present a threat to any cubs in the area. If you do surprise a bear, you are supposed to walk away from the area slowly. With speeds up to 35 mph, it is unlikely you’d be able to outrun a bear. Also, resist the temptation to climb a tree, as black bears are renowned climbers.
Black bears are not known for attacking humans, but they are eating machines, and where there are people, there is usually food. The bears’ great sense of smell will find that food, too. My good friend spotted his first black bear in New Hampshire recently, and while he is an avid hiker, his encounter was with a bear that was eating from a garbage can. Therefore, any food waste accumulating while camping must be properly handled, either by storing it in a car or tied up in a tree out of the reach of a bear. In response to the amount of bear spottings around Sage’s Ravine, a lockable bear box was installed for food storage while camping.
Finally, the DEP reminds hikers to admire bears from a distance. If you do see a bear, you should report it to the DEP’s Wildlife Division at (860) 675-8130.
Despite the fact that all my encounters with coyotes have been from a car, I know that if I keep going to the woods with the numbers that are being reported, I am bound to see a black bear. You are, too. If we act responsibly when that opportunity does present itself, we will have great stories to tell.