Contrary to what some may think, the woodland experience is not one of static permanency. Each year, I see changes, some subtle, some not, that suggest to me nature is endlessly rearranging the furniture.
It could be a shrub that wasn’t there last year, or maybe it was but wasn’t yet large enough to notice. Or it might be a limb fallen across the path I blazed two autumns hence and that has slightly altered its character, necessitating that I take a small detour around it. Stones appear where none were before, their leafy mantles blown off in a gale. Shadowed areas appear at the bases of rotting stumps, indicating new shelters for the wild creatures. Crows’ and hawks’ nests appear almost overnight, and each spring, without warning, I come across the single lady’s slipper that grows on a small slope above my front yard.
Just this morning, I looked out my kitchen window as I do first thing everyday, and I noticed excitedly how deeply into the woods the vernal pool across the road extends. It’s always been there, visible from its eastern end during my walks. But for the first time today, I was able to glimpse its frozen surface gleaming white through the trees. The heavy rains predicted will surely replenish its supply diminished by a dry autumn. This small body of water, despite being a haven for mosquitoes, is also home to frogs and turtles, and it’s a joy each year to watch birds flying over it between the hemlocks that grow there.
Lately, I’ve been watching one particular paper birch that fell awhile back in the woods behind my shed. It hasn’t yet detached itself from the nearby maple that broke its fall, but it will in time, as others have done and that are now strewn about the forest floor like a pile of pick-up-sticks. Just the right combination of forces will eventually return it to the earth from whence it came, a small, eager sapling invisible at first until it grew large enough to be noticed, and important enough to forever alter the landscape.
Many forces are at work unheeded by those who travel this dirt road each day, and even I, with a bit more time to my advantage than most, miss much. I make it a point whenever I’m outside to walk down the road to the culvert where the water from the hillside drains and wends its way toward Swan Pond. It habitually becomes clogged with leaves and stones dislodged by the rain and the heaving, frosty ground, so I dig it out faithfully each time to keep things running as smoothly as possible.
Nature has a way of rearranging this road, too, during the early spring rains, when huge rivulets open up in it literally overnight and that must be refilled anew each year, a temporary appeasement at best. The effect is that this road hasn’t looked the same two years in a row since I’ve been here, and I suspect that the same was true long before I got here.
It’s raining now, a freezing sort of rain that is imparting everything it touches, porch and tree alike, with a glistening sheen that I hope has melted a bit by the time I have to go out for more wood. While I am often not prepared for what awaits outside my door each day when I awaken, I do know that there will be more surprises, more new reasons in the days and weeks to come to gaze with awe upon this landscape, as nature continues to insist on tampering with perfection, and to no ill effect at all.
— Rachel Lovejoy is a freelance writer living in Lyman. She can be reached via e-mail at rlovejoy84253@roadrunner.com.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
