The Big Vine

Trail Wood #64 Earl Plato
Writer’s note: I hope that you don’t tire of my attempts to share Edwin Way Teale’s - Walk Through the Year at Trail Wood. This early April log account evoked special memories for me.
“A landmark in our South Woods when we came to Trail Wood rose beside a red maple tree- an immense and ancient grapevine. Its main stem. A few feet above the ground was larger than I could reach around with my two hands. I measured it with a steel tape. It showed its circumference was fifteen inches. Ascending the maple this vine spread in an interweaving network of smaller vines throughout the tops of the surrounding trees. The total length of all the sinuous coils in this canopy must have been at least 1,000 feet. This patriarch is now gone. But its memory is retained in the Big Grapevine Trail. That’s the name we gave to the path that threads among the birches and maples above the slope…”