Centennial Woods – Colby's Place

Annoyed at myself for spending too much time indoors the past week, I grabbed a friend (fellow NR1 student Liz Palmer) and together we went for a hike in Centennial Woods. As the hike began, we lamented not coming more often. We discussed our journey down to these woods in the very beginning of the school year to complete the Centennial Woods Lab and our later trip down to identify trees for the upcoming tree quiz. We remarked on how much each of these trips had opened our eyes to a new understanding of natural environments that revolved around not just hiking in the woods but really examining our surroundings. In just a few short months we had learned to look at the forest in a whole new way, so much had changed.

For much of this hike, we walked in silence, each appreciating the break from the constant city noises and chatter from the swarms of people who live around us. Often we would stop and stand still for a second, each attuned to an unusual bird noise that broke free from the silence. At one point in the hike, we each stoped suddenly at the sound of a small woodpecker picking away at an old pine snag. We slowly creeped forward until we were within range of the little bird, later identified to be a downy woodpecker. I lost track of the time we spent watching the woodpecker in complete silence. The creature moved up and down the snag making small holes in the wood, tapping away at the wood and occasionally slurping down a bug. A little farther away, another woodpecker flew by, a flash of white against the brown forest.

What struck me the most about this experience was how seemingly oblivious the bird was to its surroundings. Planes were flying overhead incessantly and the light drone of a nearby road was exceedingly present. After a while, Liz and I began to talk to each other and the bird kept tapping away. The downy woodpecker appeared almost accustomed to the noises of the human world, unaffected by our presence.

With so much discussion lately on the topic of a human’s place in a natural landscape, my thoughts instantly jumped to reflection on the interactions between the human and natural world that had made this moment special. I was struck by how we had come to Centennial Woods to escape the noise of the human world yet this did not happen. Rather than entering a setting free of human interference, we instead noticed a new aspect of our world. In an odd sort of juxtaposition, the woodpecker fit in perfectly to the human noises in its surroundings, adding a new rhythmic sound of its own. The little bird was a small piece of the surrounding environment just as the planes, nearby road and Liz and I were. Somehow we were all managing to coexist and add our own sounds to the euphonic vibrations of the forest.