middleblog-a suburban babble brook book

The Winter Forest

The forest behind our house is a wonderland.  With each successive foray I have ventured further into it, using as my landmark a giant, moss crowned tree whose wide spread branches can be seen through the straight trunks of the white pines.  There is an old granite quarry, floored with thick ice in the bitter cold.  The snow, frozen, melted, and frozen again, reflects the setting sun in golden sparkles.  The meandering main path, demarcated by nature conservancy trail markers, makes me wonder who established it.  It could be an ancient Indian trail.  The tracks of the wild things have lost definition in the old crust of  snow.  Beyond the giant tree, which consistently defies my attempt to capture it in a photograph, lies an eerie badland of tumbled granite boulders, moss crowned and black footed, full of dark angular holes and crevices.  Deadfalls have tumbled to create even more black holes, large, gaping.  Beyond these badlands (shot through on one flank by a fieldstone wall in spookily good condition) towers a granite wedge.  Easily forty feet high, it rises like Moby Dick's forehead from the land.  I will scale it on my next expedition.  I couldn't bring myself to negotiate the Badlands today, as they truly resemble something from Lord of the RIngs, with their bright green slimy tops and rotting leaves squelching around their feet.  I know where there's a spring, now, though, because the dog was drinking just beyond an especially frightening dead tree, black and thick, wrenched and twisted to reveal the tortured red heart, roots hoisted like a drunkard's skirts for the Wild Things to hide beneath.