The forest is quiet after the snowfall, the crunching of snow under boots mark one of the few noises punctuating the stillness. The atmosphere of this wintery scene is decidedly different from several weeks back. Now the soil is no longer visible, nor are the logs covered in moss. Only the soft outlines of their shapes remain, despite this heavy cover some life pokes through. Ferns stoop over the snow half-caught, some of the snow shrugged off their still green leaves, so that the sun may still hit them.
Hailing from New Jersey, it’s odd to me to have this much snow in November, where if it snowed in late autumn it was half sleet turned ice at dawn. The snow forces the landscape into uniformity, trails begin to merge together one to the right mirrors her opposite on the left. If I had not visited two-three times prior I would find myself painfully lost, each tree stand having looked like the last. The site was not a non-place by no means, it had become a separate place. The snow made the site ancient, humanity had not touched it save for the thin path perpendicular to the slight slope.
The towering pine stood for a long time and seemed it would always stand in that place. Winter changed the site not just ecologically, but in its atmosphere. Centennial was no longer a part of campus, but seemed far away. Roads and society disappeared as trees towered and the snow crunched underfoot.
It could be any decade, any century in the woods. The snow blanketed humanity’s cosmetic changes, most specifically litter. The one grounding element back to the modern world being carvings on trees, showing people that had journeyed into the wood before you.