Blogging Norfolk, Part I (Introduction)

I spent several days last week in Norfolk, England. Besides eating and drinking and pushing stuck vehicles out of muddy fields (welcome to Mud Season, girls!), I actually did some research for my upcoming book.

So what was it all about? Well, this book I'm trying to write is a general history of medieval heresy, and thus, will have a chapter on the Lollards. And since the overall thesis of the book has to do with the fine line between heresy and orthodoxy in the Middle Ages (how very Grundmann-esque), I will want to explore that issue -- and how better to do it than with Margery Kempe, from King's Lynn (formerly Bishop's Lynn), frequently accused of being a Lollard herself? The north of Norfolk was a Lollard hot spot -- and a completely fascinating place, to boot, what with some of the liveliest of English ports in the Glaven estuary: Blakeney, Cley, Wiveton, etc. Things are very different now, of course -- Blakeney is but a sleepy holiday village, primarily known for the seals on Blakeney Point.

But these three days wandering around North Norfolk allowed me to do a lot of thinking about change: changes in the land, in its use, and in the migration of populations. How we can identify these changes over the long haul. What remains, what disappears. How can geography help with history, and how can history help geography. A lot of this probably won't be very useful for my book. But I do think I can use it in the classroom. So while it's all fresh in my memory, I'm going to think aloud about it here. And I'll do it in a couple of parts:

Blogging Norfolk, Part II (Burnhams, Villages, Towns and Friars)
Blogging Norfolk, Part III (The Glaven Ports and the Evil Silt Monster)

Time to get to work!

Do Bears Sh*t in the Woods?

Well, I can't really say. Yet. Though I'm certainly still looking. Of course, it's winter, and the bears around here probably aren't sh*tting at all -- though today, it's nearly 60° Fahrenheit, so I suspect many of them have woken up from their "winter" naps to go mosying around. If it weren't raining so hard (flood watch until 6 pm), I would, too. Maybe tomorrow there'll be poop.

You see, Stefano and I have been eagerly reading our new book, Donald and Lillian Stokes' Guide to Animal Tracking and Behavior. We love this book. We've learned so much about red squirrel middens, voles, muskrats, beavers, and, of course and most especially, poop. There is the most amazing section on poop (which they genteelly call "scat" -- pp. 52-67). It even has life-size drawings so you can tell one kind of poop from another! Fascinating.

And I've been putting my newfound expertise to use while wandering through the Norris' sugarbush recently. At the bottom of the trail that leads into the "silent meadow," at the base of the ledges, there was quite a lot of interesting poop the other day. There was one that I naively thought might be bear -- well, it was large! certainly bigger than Astro's poop, which he thoughtfully deposited nearby for the sake of comparison. But when I got home, I compared what I had seen with the drawing -- and the next day, went back again to the poop just to check. Nope. Not bear. It wasn't bear because although it was full of hair, the ends of the poop were tapered, not flat.

So if not bear, what? Several animals have tapered poop, notably fox, bobcat, and coyote. The Stokes say that "the scats of bobcats are very similar in shape and size to those of the fox and coyote, so much so that it is impossible to identify them positively. You must use other clues." (p. 64) So I did. I decided it wasn't bobcat poop, first of all. Bobcat poop would probably be smaller, and moreover, bobcats like to poop "on some slightly elevated spot." We've seen what we now know to be bobcat poop on many trails -- generally on a rock in the middle. Bobcats are showoffs: "look at my poop!" There was actually a nice example of some showoff bobcat poop a little further up the trail. And bobcats do like ledges, according to the Stokes (p. 366), so this would be a good spot for them. In fact, when Astro and I bushwacked our way to the top of the ledges the other day, I think we may have heard a bobcat moving away from a sunny spot on a ledge beneath us.

But back to my poop. While it could have been either fox or coyote, I finally settled for coyote. "The best you can do is compare the diameters of the scats. Scats ¾ inch or more in diameter are probably coyote or one of its hybrids; scats less than 7/16 inch in diameter are probably fox." My mystery poop was closer to an inch in diameter, so I'm calling it coyote poop. Moreover, we've heard coyotes several times (fascinating yipping sounds in the night, sometimes very close!), but we've never seen foxes very close to here (alas!).

So do bears sh*t in the woods? Probably. The Stokes say they do. And since we've actually seen bears on the driveway, I suspect they even sh*t in our woods. But I'm afraid we'll have to wait to spring to find out for sure.

Addendum: Or perhaps not! Stefano spotted a story this morning in La Repubblica about a bear and her two cubs seen wandering across the ski slopes in the Alps. And here's the picture to prove it, with the size of Mama Bear's tracks indicated by this gentleman's cell phone (convincing proof, of course, that the photo was taken in Italy!):