Trail Wood #31

Trail Wood #31.2.09 by Earl Plato

Memory Walks with the Teales
“Wherever we go, all our walks today are memory walks.”
Writer’s note: Two summers ago we walked the trail Io Firefly Meadow. It was thus marked. Edwin Teale’s Trail Wood is a place to visit.
“When we descend the slope of Firefly Meadow
we come to the spot where I stood in the snow photographing the stars at midnight and to the area we traversed in wandering in the midst of the fireflies in June. When we look back we see the hickory trees towering above us, the trees where the katydids wrangled endlessly during warm and moonlit nights. On other paths we come again where the flicker flicker and I took sunbaths, where Nellie stepped aside to watch the skunk parade go by, where along Shagbark Trail we went nutting in the fall.
On a slow circle of the pond we walk with other memories. It was here that the chipmunk set out to swim across the water; here that I found the tiny warbler nest built among the feathery ferns; here that Nellie waded into the pond trying to rescue the floating grackle and here, near the rustic bridge, that she encountered a black and white warbler in the midst of its broken wing performance, and another time two woodcock bathing in the shallow flow of Stepping Stone Brook.