On the Sunny Side of the Street

This morning the sun was shining encouragingly, the dog was sound asleep in his basket and the housework assured me that it would still be here when I returned, so I felt released to venture out into the world. The spectre of great nastiness looms over the balance of the week courtesy of the weatherman, so the call of the wild feels urgent.

I decided to return to the Foulds Tract which is just across the road from the forest area that I walked yesterday. I drive past an unusual tree as I enter the parking area. Its leaves are down but it is covered in papery seed pods that look like little pine cones and individual pieces of which, litter the ground.

Each piece is shaped like a pumpkin seed and through its thin wall you can feel a small seed. These seed pods look similar to hops so this small understory tree is called Hop Hornbeam or Ironwood. It is a slow-growing tree which has the densest and hardest wood of any native species. Apparently "hornbeam" is a centuries old word and the "horn" is a reference to hardness, and "beam" is rooted in the German "baum" for tree. (It did seem important to know this.)

I had parked underneath another small deciduous tree, the Witch Hazel. When I was growing up, witch hazel was a bottle of clear liquid that my mom kept in the frig and dabbed on her face occasionally. I didn't know that it related to this  native tree that produces these unique flowers in the fall.

Those flowers become these seed pods, which after they dry, burst open and fling their contents some distance away. The branches of witch hazel have been used for centuries as the divining or dowsing rods to "water-witch", or locate water in an area. There is much speculation as to whether this is actually effective, but my husband remembers both his grandfather, and his uncle, doing this to find water for wells in rural Quebec. As to the mysterious bottle in my mother's refrigerator, the bark and leaves of witch hazel, when distilled, produce one of nature's oldest beauty products, a gentle and non-irritating astringent.

I turned my attention to the path which beckoned me to enter through a gentle archway of saplings to the sunlight beyond. It was astonishing how different this forest felt from the previous day's walk in the section of forest just across the road. It occurred to me that perhaps this lies in the difference in the composition of this tract. This forest area is primarily deciduous, so at this time of year it is open and spacious, whereas the other tract was more evenly balanced between conifers and hardwood trees, leaving large sections dark and hidden. 

The lower story of trees was mostly bare, while tall maples still glowed yellow above them, and towering oaks bloomed in gold well above the maples. It was the warmest of glows as the sun shone on the remaining leaves, suffusing the air with honeyed light and burnishing the carpet of fallen leaves below.

Every so often the expanse of tree trunks was broken by the presence of a  beech tree, that seemed to beam as though lit from within.

The pond reflected the blue of the sky while the leaves made the water at its edges seem as though it too had turned to gold.

In the midst of this deciduous domain is an Eastern Hemlock. One. It is a beautifully shaped tree with short almost delicate needles and tiny cones. It can evidently live for hundreds of years, and its boughs seem to reach out to cover one with a sense of with warmth and protection. I read that tea can be made with its needles, and should you feel so inclined, the the fresh shoots of its branches produced in the spring, are quite edible.You feel that this is a trunk that you can sit and lean against and ponder deep thoughts.

Amidst this reverie, I was also mindful of smaller details while I walked, like these puffballs, probably the largest number that I have seen on one trunk. 

and this fungus,

and these, which I believe are King Alfred's Cakes. These are so named because apparently King Alfred, whilst on the run from the Vikings, took refuge with a peasant woman, and she asked him to keep an eye on the bread that she was baking. His mind however, was on weightier matters, with the outcome being that the peasant woman's bread was burnt. Why one might connect these very small fungus balls with said "cakes" is a matter of conjecture.

This solitary wasp was climbing very slowly up this small sapling. If he hadn't been at eye-level I probably wouldn't have noticed him there. Although, since only the new queens survive winter, this might have been a she. The drones having, after mating, outlived their usefulness, die with the old queen and the new queens hibernate for the winter.

I was pretty sure that if I just waited long enough, somebody would pop out of this cavity. It was too high up to stick my nose in for a look, which might not have been a really good idea anyway. 

 I was completely alone in the forest on this glorious day, except for this little guy who came to see me off. It was silent and so completely peaceful, and while I always enjoy time spent in the woods, this walk, in this place, on this particular day, had an almost spiritual feeling. I came away renewed, cleansed of care and so blessed by the beauty of this place. I don't know why this specific time was different, but I think this is what Shirin Yuko is about. The forest bath; complete immersion in the place and the moment.

And I am grateful.