How to Find This Place!!
Pictures That Prove This Place is The Bomb!!
What is this place?-Leopold
You’re walking down the path, you hear the crunch of the snow beneath your feed as you meander your way through this forest. It’s quiet, you can almost hear the snow beginning to melt, it’s the first warm day this forest has seen in awhile. All around you are sugar maples, the air is tinted with the smell of syrup left from last years maple syrup boiling. Peaking out from behind the maple came are a few eastern white pines. Just a few, it’s hard for them to grow in a land dominated by sugar maples, yet the few preserver. You begin to wonder who planted these maples here. Did the ever imagine they could get so big? You pass the woodpile snuggled between two mid-size maples, it’s covered in mushrooms. These mushrooms are new, and plentiful. You’ve seen mushrooms in this stand before, but now they’re everywhere. You look up from the woodpile and see that mushroom have begun to climb up the tree to your left, they’re different than those coating the woodpile, they’re round and short. There’s been a lot of rain this year, maybe that’s why there’s so many more mushrooms than you remember. Every time you come here you find something new you didn’t before. You grew up here, you played hide and seek, weaving between the sugar maples desperately trying to keep from getting tagged by your brothers. It’s quiet, and it’s home.
How is this place different?
Both these spots are quiet, they’re a trek to get to, but worth every step. Burlington is new, you’re not comfortable with it, you’re not quite sure where your relationship with your Burlington spot is headed, you’re still getting acquainted. You know your home spot like the back of your hand, you know it’s quirks and it’s hidden gems. Your burlington spot is has a little walking bridge. It’s small, at first glance it seems relatively unimportant. But this bridge means that someone else has been here, this is not just your spot, it has been touched by development and man, even if just slightly. The only path in your home spot in the footprints you have left in the snow. It’s almost entirely sugar maples there, a few eastern white pines have snuck their way in, but the species diversity of mature trees is pretty low there. Your Burlington spot is full of many species, hardwoods, invasive, grasses. Some of the plants show evidence of being eaten by an animal or insect, yet you haven’t seen any there yet, maybe you just haven’t earned your chance for them to show themselves to you yet, time will tell. The trees in your Burlington spot are smaller, thinner. Suggesting that they are not as old as the great big maples in your home spot. Maybe this land was cleared before, allowing for rebirth and growth. Both these spots are hard to get to, they require work, yet are worth the wait. Your home spot is mostly sugar maples, and is covered in mushroom and lichen. The focal species at your Burlington spot is Buckthorn, and invasive. You’re not sure how it got there, and why it’s there. Perhaps as your relationship with you Burlington spot grows you’ll find answers to some of these questions.
