Welcome Back!
This week I will be showing you all the joys of discovering a new location. This past week I visited a site I frequented as a child with neighbors and friends. The site is located in a large expanse of woods between my neighbors house and the nearby highway. For years I have waked these woods and only now have I really been able to analyze the landscape and use the tools I have learned to understand its history.
Describing the Land – Leopold:
As I follow the faint path down the hill I can hear the harsh background of car white noise getting stronger. It interrupts what would be the sweet stillness of a sleeping forest. The November wind rustles through the trees above, clicking and clacking the bare branches together. The winter sun is peeking through the clouds casting a subtle shadows on the forest floor below. A scuttle emerges from somewhere in the trees. Little feet pitter patter, pitter patter, dancing on the top layer of the fall leaves. The last of the squirrels foraging for the last of the harvest. The remnants of a summer harvest remind me of the hidden root cellars dug by the original owners of the property. The rolling hills suggests a simple life of cattle and grazing was lived here. It is strange we can shape our land. We can dig, mine, clear but Mother Nature still wins. Life always finds a way back. From pasture to forest and back again. Soon I turn back, the noise of the cars turning from a harsh rushing to a faint music.
Comparison of the Land – Mabel Wright:
Falling all the day, the leaves falling all the day. Home, the leaves continue to fall. With a gust of wind the maple and oak leaves fall to the ground. Unlike my spot in Vermont the forest floor here is bare. A very cold picture of what life is. Water is the start of life. There is no visible water here. The sky is grey, the trees are grey, the life is grey. A mix of tall, sentinel beings scatter the landscape into a thick canopy. It is no surprise the ground in Vermont is thick with grass, a sparse canopy. The spot at home has no magic. But my spot by the river, an oasis. The curved trees, the fungi, the magic of a beech growing in a flood plain, everything is magic. Both lands touched by the hand of man, but both in different ways. At home, reaping the benefits of changing life. By the river, once a wasteland now a teeming bank of life and protection. The land so different, yet the ecology quite similar. The same bas of species. Maples rule. Pines guard. Geese the out casts and squirrels just behind. Now as the season turn both seem to lose all life but this is quite the opposite, they are in fact recharging, preparing to come back even stronger.
Link to New Location:
