Zip showed up this morning covered in cobwebs, but he cleaned himself off before hopping into my lap for my morning meditation.
Someone above us is eating an apple.
I know because tiny bits of it rain down landing in the shiny black fur of the cat on my lap. Apple confetti sparkles rainbows out of the corner of my eye. They’re small, but land with purpose.
I hear the squeak and know it’s a chipmunk.
It’s the way they eat, sprinkling the world around them with their food. I’ve seen what they leave on the rock wall, the same tiny pieces only shriveled with time.
The real rain comes and I move onto the back porch.
The first, end of summer, geese fly low enough for me to hear the groan of their wings.
Last years leaves, translucent with rain, glow like fairy lights decorating the young beech trees. The ground is papered with oak leaves and spotted with red buds from the maples.
One big beech tree fell across the path up the hill. It’s more woods than path now and I have to pay close attention to find it.
The first bright orange Salamander surprised me. I thought it too early, not warm enough. There are so many I watch where I step.
The rain has unearthed the crystals that pop up every spring like wildflowers. I pick up a crystal as well as a crushed beer can.
Skunk Cabbage flower
I stop to look around me. I see the white mushrooms cantilevered from the dead tree. Someone buzzes close to my ear, it bumps into my eye then is gone.
The Fallen Hickory. Soil and rocks from the root ball are beginning to fill in the small pond of water that Zinnia loves to wade in.
Broken trees Twisted twigs Bunches of branches
And every once in a while, a tree, bigger, older than the rest. The ones who were here before the logging, before the stone walls, before the grazing sheep, before the trees that I’m looking at right now.
This is my woods, not mine really, but the woods I walk in the woods who I’ve gotten to know and who I feel have gotten to know me too.
Mostly tall skinny trees, branching their leaves at the sky. But also, ash whose bark sags exposing its scarred bones, the elms who don’t live long enough to get old.
And the still standing trees, naked with old woodpecker holes, alive with the animals who live in them. Birds, chipmunks, squirrels, spiders and moths.
And don’t I wish a wood duck or two. But I know, that just because I haven’t seen them, doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
The Wolf Pines are deceiving. White pines that grow thick quickly and look older than they really are.
But not the Maple
The one with the three fingers thick as trees reaching up so high I can’t see the tips of them.
The one on the edge of the clearing recently logged that lives in a haven of moss, rocks and circle of spruce.
