I lock the doors against the night spirits, snuggle under the quilt and enter tired sleep, again pleased that I camp where humans have done so for 9,000 years. At the end of the Pleistocene, Cro-Magnon people made their way across the glacier, slipped off its edge a few hundred miles north of Peculiar Manor in Pennsylvania and made their way south. Away from the cold and damp, they increased and hunted and dug roots in these mountains. Here in this headwaters at a saddle, streams flowing north and south, they camped. They left their arrowheads. Here at Peculiar Manor, when there was 100 feet more soil above my bed posts, before erosion, early people camped. It is a good place, springs high on the mountain, next to a path between two mountains, and food.

I walk out of the cabin into the early-slanting sunbeams and tears often come. I am next in succession of 9,000 years of occupants. They saw the same long shadows, the same insect swarms in the beams. They arose from a fir bed in the forest. The tree species have changed but little else. Year after year, for 9,000 years! And here I am, in a cabin, in the same place. They didn't leave much ... and neither will I when seen after another 9,000. Here, there are periods of human use, the evidence left in the arrow and spear points found here. The first people that reached here after the ice receded, I imagine, were not at all like the apish sketches in the textbooks. Cro-Magnon here was a bunch of guys from northwestern China. I met some there in 1988 on the trains. Asians, like people "downtown, " are very varied in appearance. There people (called the Folsom or fluted-point people after their spear points, which is all that is left of them) walked across Northern Canada, bred, survived off the land, and ended up here on my sandstone mountain. They must have been extraordinary, an army ranger-like bunch, ready to take a dare ... and usually win. They had finely-crafted spear points, beautiful things, symmetrical, and with an indentation chipped out of the center so the split shaft would fit well. They were something! To the child's question: What would you like to be?, I usually think: a Folsom man or a shrew, Blarina, living life "flat out " all of the time.

What if pre-settlement (U.S.) people were animal-like and responded in the same way that wild animal populations? We certainly know more about people than any other mammal (even deer) so if we wanted to understand modeling and population dynamics, we might be able to work it out on fairly reliable data. We'd develop a computer model just as for animals, but study the human nature. We could use the Havens wildlife management area and surrounding as a focal area. Can American Indians survive is this area? An excellent student, Seth Diamond (1989) attacked and solved the problem.

We put a note in the local newspaper. Anyone have artifacts from the area? Several responded. We visited. One place turned out to be a goat farm (our Peculiar Manor area) and the owner showed us his cigar box of arrowheads. His collection was small, but revealing. Over many years he had picked up a series of points representative of five periods. The points were very different. I learned from experts that these represented cultural differences. There were "layers " in which beautiful, well-crafted points of a standard shape were found. Then there were layers in which it appears the people re-discovered arrow making or had heard an old woman tell of " arrow points " but could not remember much of what they looked like or how to make them. There were other layers, new periods, (carbon-dated and all that done elsewhere) in which new shapes, new thinness, serrated edges appeared. From Columbus to the present there is a mere 500 years. Since the Pleistocene, the end of the last great North American glacier, there have been 20 such periods - plenty of time for wars, diseases, and bad decisions to wipe out whole societies, shuffle them in several ways, even have them live here by the mossy spring at the back of the cabin. These were hunters and gatherers. They lived the good life, free of the enslavement of agriculture. I imagined a lifetime of stress, constantly seeking new sources of energy. Seth discovered I was wrong. They were well off, with time to spare - to explore to sit around , tell jokes, and to discuss the weather, the chestnut crop, and the stupidity of passenger pigeons.

There were buffalo too. There is a plant in the in the forest of Havens across the creek from the cabin. It is called buffalonut, Pyrolaria. A small shrub with a thick woody stem, the plant is heavily browsed by the deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in the area. It is the "candy " plant of the biologist and manager of a deer herd. If it does not show signs of being fed upon, the herd is not very large, far from damaging its environment and needing control to prevent that. If it shows signs of being heavily used, then the manager looks at other plants. These also provide signals. After deer have gone beyond eating most of the candy plants, they starting using the "steak plants. " As the population grows without predators and inadequate hunting pressure, they resort to the "spinach plants. " Knowing the plants and their palatabilities is one of the hidden dimensions of those people who can "read the land. " Pyrolaria is being hit hard around Peculiar Manor. I fear it will be lost entirely for with no vigor it may not produce fruits. The deer become so numerous without natural predators and declining hunters (1995) that this plant, as well as other rare ones, may be removed, lost to deer. That may not happen because as in periods of the pre-settlement people, there will be a disease outbreak that will sweep the population. Most of the plants eaten to the brink of oblivion, will have a few years (ten) to recover. Some will do so and a new period ... a thing some discerning future person will note and describe (improperly) as a plant invasion ... will have been started.

The buffalonut is shallow rooted and a plant "parasite. " It feeds upon the oaks. It has large leaves, always in the shade, and insufficient sunlight and energy. How can it survive? Not a bad strategy: get energy and nutrients from the overlords, the oaks. All plants have a common objective, obey the same laws (1) get energy, (2) store energy, (3) reproduce. These are the rules of biology. The differences in the plants and animals are only in the ways they have been allowed, by a variety of constraints and counter forces, to persist. The buffalonut has an unusual mixed strategy. Also, in storing energy, it becomes a superior food. One step ahead ... get energy; one step back ... have stored energy stolen. Life is difficult; behind must not exceed ahead.

Walking along the paths beside Pyrolaria, I force myself to sense the underworld. Not crime, but the volume. Land is not an area but a volume and the world is which we operate is biologically sparse. A few tree trunks, a few limbs, birds, bugs, a bear or two ... but altogether very sparse. Below the leaves is where there is real ecosystem "structure. " We don't study it diligently because it is too difficult. We can't yet do above-ground studies well. When we're through practicing, we'll start on the below-leaves world. Roots are evident. The extra white fibers there are micorrhizzae. Nasty to spell, these are fungi that, like the buffalonut, attach to roots, and form a "rootmass, " not all real roots, that brings water solutions of nutrients to the trees and other plants. They benefit from the tree root structure and substance but also provide a vast network with enormous surface area that can operate to move the molecules into the tree and shrubs. The micorrhizzae are "roots " of puff balls. The billion spores that puff out of these brown balls on the forest floor are wind borne and some few become new plants. These mushrooms are eaten by animals - mice to deer. They taste good " it seems (there's not much energy or protein so not much reason for animals to eat them, if the foraging theories are right). The "truffle " of Europe is the same type of mushroom and trufflepigs and trufflehounds are used to seek out the delicacy. Here, mice seek them. The spores are not digested and pass through the mice. They are "planted " underground by these black-eyed, all-seeing, bewhiskered night prowlers. The action of wild animals populates the underworld with the mushroom spores, eventually with the mushroom and its micro-rhizome-like underground structures. I think they probably increase the quality of an area for growing trees by ten to twenty percent, compared to areas without these fungal networks. Managing mice sounds a little silly, but managing them as a means to increase soil nutrient uptake and profit from tree growth sounds acceptable. There are politically correct phrases everywhere. It makes little difference, I suppose, as long as the clear objectives, well conceived, are achieved.

I have never understood why wildlife people talk about planting food patches and managing hedgerows and all manner of crop and grain strategies but never about managing prey. Manage for mice, manage worm, snails, and crawfish! There are animals of interest needing prey as much as bobwhite quail need seeds. Prey management will occur eventually, for it is needed by all of the carnivores, all of the raptors. Prey management is more than protecting snags and old forests! A teepee-shaped brush pile is one tactic in such management. A student studied many shapes of brush piles. Teepee is best. They can be placed at the corners of a triangular network over an area. The pattern allows low energy-of-movement costs for animals to forage from their year-around mansions. Without brush, wooden pallet "hotels " can be created. These point sites can supply much food, nest sites, as well as places to escape the weather and predators.

Brush piles are surprisingly affective in producing birds where there were none. Over the land around the cabin, 35 pigmy goats and seven grade goats had started eating bark off trees. There was cover only for birds in the upper canopy. Brush piles I created helped correct that after the goats were removed. It is a shame that brush seems to need to be burned. Each pile goes through its own succession, like an old fallen log. Insects, lizards, then birds, then a woodchuck digs under it, then rabbits and skunks use it. A phoebe hunts from its peak. A boxturtle over-winters in its organic flood. The tan earth darkens; now there are worms and grubs and nothing likes grubs better than skunks that also live in woodchuck dens. When a person builds a brush pile they can see ecological progress and an end. Seeing any progress is rare; more rare to see something finished.

Over there is the white-lipped snail. There are many species of snails here. I kept a few in a jar on the kitchen sink. They ate dry spaghetti and lettuce. Their feeding pattern on the spaghetti confirmed the text book. They have a rasp and simple muscles that pull it to and fro. Snails are to the land what crayfish are to streams - the raspers and shredders. They pass more stuff through their bodies than geese or bears. They must be a simple tube and process much food, but extract few, nutrients. Rabbits do similarly, but they pass it through again, eating their own feces. I've not seen snails do this. I imagine they serve up a wonderful organic cereal breakfast to mites, collembola, thrips, and the other barely-visible forest creatures that then prepare the table for the bacteria and fungi - each prepared to accept only the properly processed food. The bacteria are very particular.

The terrestrial snails, the pulmonates, are indicator organisms, integrators that, if studied well, will tell us much about forest communities. There are many species. The shell configurations have to speak of survival values that we cannot yet fathom. The taxonomy is not well developed. Their ecology is almost unknown. My snails in the mayonnaise jars stratified - different species sought different levels. Some snails are intermediate hosts of parasites of the bobcat lungworm and who knows what other parasites. I once found parasites under the skin on the back of a shrew. How many species of nematodes in how many species of snails must there be in the range of species in the wildlife area seen from the porch of Peculiar Manor - 1,750 to 3,200 feet elevations?

Snails are food. Turkeys scratch for them as well as for seeds. They rarely show in a feeding organ, the crop of the turkey. They are too frail. They are good protein, but a bad parasite potential. Snails are the intermediate hosts of some parasites. They are an essential stage or stopping point in a sequence to the next turkey. A turkey cannot pass a parasite to another turkey. It must first go to a snail. To reduce parasites, the manager might consider reducing snails. What shall the manager do? Produce five percent more turkeys, or work to reduce losses of five percent from parasites? The answer for the alleged rational manager: the least costly strategy.

Snails build shell. My guess is that they have precious little building materials. Mice consume deer antlers quickly because there is so little calcium and phosphorus readily available in the forest. "Readily available " is the key phrase. There is abundant calcium but, considering the snail as an example, imagine how much green leafy material must be processed to gain a part of a gram of pure shell. For these species consuming only dead tree parts, the difficulty is as great. Even in limestone areas, the readily available calcium has been leached from top layers of soil. That which is present is chemically bound, tightly The demands on all animals to produce young and to maintain their own bodies - muscle, hair, blood, bones - is a great demand for calcium. The snails will speak when we are ready to listen. Some species have one, two, or three nodes or "teeth " at the opening. These are expensive of calcium. There is survival value there. Why they have these teeth, I do not know. Their presence remains one of many mysteries at Peculiar Manor. When we learn how snails mobilize calcium and buck deer produce a large set of antlers every year, we'll incorporate that knowledge into healing and rebuilding human bone.

Some days I walk through the woods trying hard to see the wholeness of it, but that is a quest suggested by someone who thought it, but didn't do it. You can squint and see things fuzzily, but that is no feat. Clarity is needed. The wholeness is always from a perspective, as for an elephant, starting at the trunk. The wholeness is in a dynamic, a boxer never stopping footwork. First from here, then from there. The faster, the more whole, but never all at once. You have to see one thing well, then another thing related well to it. The more things that are seen well, with their relations, the more likely there will be a sense of seeing the whole. It is just a sense; we fool ourselves. We tire easily. Time is short and wholeness depends on ample amounts of time and this fancy, fast, tiring footwork to get to many perspectives.