This is quite the melancholy post. I know that I’ll be able to visit my beloved spot next year, or even within the end of the semester, but I likely won’t be recording my thoughts and observations like I do now.
My spot hasn’t changed that much since the beginning of the year. The creek has maybe become wider, muddier, and maybe faster from the April showers.
There is still the fallen tree, which has become a small bridge over the creek and mud. There is still a triangulum of hemlocks that I sit in the center of when I rest here. And of course there’s the creek, the telltale sign that I have found the right spot. It helps that my area is just under the crest of a hill, so I am able to find the familiar slope that I associate with my site.
I sketched three images of my place when I sat there yesterday. The topmost is an arial, and how I’ve come to understand this area. I remember when I first found this spot, the crisscrossing grasses, young trees, patchy mud, and slow water aws hard to decipher. I felt like my eyes blurred over and did not understand the terrain. But now, I understand how the water flows. I understand the layers of trees and grasses beyond the creek.
The middle image is from where I was sitting, looking towards the left. The tree that is there was darkened from rain, and had a thin green layer of moss on its roots. The ground beneath it was scattered with orange pine needles, and beyond the tree and the slight hill it is on, is the creek. Young trees are growing on the bank of the stream, and the fallen tree-bridge is laying next to these saplings and ferns.
The last sketch, is of the tree that was in front of me. It was made up of three trunks, that seemed almost braided with each other. During this last sketch was when I was able to take in the grasses behind the stream that had always seemed so blurry and chaotic when I tried to picture the area.
I did not grow up going on hikes, or exploring the outdoors. My parents are very much academic home-bodies. I think this is maybe why when I go into a wooded area, the trees take a while to sort out, and make sense to me. I think when most people picture forests, there are very old, very large trees, and a neat and tidy understory. In some ways I’m guessing this made it harder for me to see the woods. Harder to understand the patterns of the grasses and saplings, and the veins drawn in the mud from the stream’s current.
When I ask myself now, if I understand this space, the answer would tentatively be yes. When I sat here on my visit, I was a part of the systems. When the breeze came by, I felt it just the same as the needles that were stirring at my feet, and the ferns that swayed by my knees. When a spider landed on my friend’s thigh, I plucked it off her and placed it near the tree in front of us. I was cooperating with the things that live there, and I was living there too. Noa did not like the spider that had landed on her. But because I had spent much time here, and had accepted that sitting to look at the beauty of the creek and trees meant sharing the space with the ants and spiders, I was able to help our new spider friend move along. In that instance I felt like a neighbor saying hello. It made it feel all the more peaceful, and all the more harder to leave.
I’ll leave this journal with a pair of images that make a lot of sense to me now, to compare to the images from my firsts posts, when I struggled to make sense of the flow of the space. My biggest mistake was thinking that the trees around me were dying, and the woods with it. It feels more alive than ever, and I can’t wait to see how it grows! As you said, Ian, a messy forest is a good forest.
Goodbye for now to Centennial Woods. I’ll see you soon, or in a handful of months. 🥲