When you walk out the backdoor and down the backyard steps, (be careful, they get slippery this time of year), take a left onto the paved path. You’re in Battle Creek Regional Park now, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where I grew up. Take the path past the waterpark and the playground, across Upper Afton Road, and into the woods next to the dog park. You can take a right or a left—it’s just a circle—but the shorter way is to the left, past the elementary school and up the hill on a ski path, until you hit the pine trees and an old wire fence built by the correctional facility. This is the spot I’ve chosen.
On the other side of the park I live on, there is a small red pine stand on a hill. It has a rich undergrowth of Canada goldenrod, wild bergamot, white snakeroot, and honeysuckle. Sticking out of the snow are the browning reed canary and orchard grasses. The curly dock hovers above the others, looking after them until it too is bogged down by the weight of the winter. Far above them, easily visible thanks to the lack of understory, are the red pines. They stick out as the few conifers in the area, still green while the maples and the oaks have all lost their leaves.
This spot is not unlike Salmon Hole, as the climates of Burlington and St. Paul are surprisingly similar. Perched on a grassy bluff, these pines face the brunt of winter gusts that blow through the park. At Salmon Hole, I would expect these trees to be eastern white pines or northern white cedars, but here, they are red pines. I couldn’t hear any birds in this spot, nor did I see any signs of wildlife—although that could just be because my dog scares away any living thing. Unlike Salmon Hole, this spot is not located on a water source, so I did not see any water-loving mosses or sedges, but rather an abundance of prairie grass. Reflecting on this place, it strikes me how much this landscape has been shaped by people. It is believable that Salmon Hole would have looked much the same pre-colonization, but it is certainly a stretch of the imagination to picture Battle Creek Park without its paved paths, benches, and restoration projects.
