Trail Wood #13.09 Earl Plato
It was one March 2 when Edwin Teale wrote the following: “The trouble with looking at birds” an all-around naturalist friend of mine once observed, “is that you miss so much else while you are looking at birds.” The same might be said for looking at ferns or rocks or wild flowers or deer. Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous two-line poem in A Child’s Garden of Verses runs, “The world is so full of a number of things. I’m aure we should all be happy as kings.” For the field naturalist, however, this happiness is diluted from time to time by reflections on the number of things slipping by while he is looking elsewhere. When Nellie and I are circling the pond we are missing what is going on along the Old Woods Road, when we explore the area of Ground Pine Crossing, we have no idea what is occurring in Firefly Meadow.”
Writer’s note: So be it Edwin. We mere mortals are not “ All seeing.”
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
A Winter Thaw at Trail Wood
Trail Wood #13.09 by Earl Plato
Trail Wood - Ed & Nellie Teale - Spring Is Coming
“ Nellie and I roam over one pasture after another. We tread across a sodden carpet of faded grass that has replaced the snow. We watch combing the soggy ground crows and starlings picking among grass clumps and investigating the remnants of drifts, snapping up bits of food exposed by he melting of the snow. Again we look down on the winding tunnels of meadow mice. We see them three-sided, “on the half-shell” with their roofs removed.
It is when we come to the bridge where the lane crosses Hampton Brook that we encountr the most dramatic efect of this sudden release of water. The sream is tumbling over the rocks in flood stage, patches and islands of foam veering and bobbing, small ice cakes jostling together in the millrace of te current. Where the current reaches the opening under the great slap of rock that supports the traffic of the lane, it piles up into a churning, whitling, roaring maelstrom that gnaws into the stream banks and lifts its crest almost to the level of the roadway. Far into the night we hear this uproar of the floodwater that a single dy of anormal warmth has brought forth from the crystalline substance of h silent snow.”
Writer’s note: On that August day a few years ao we drove over a small stream. That was Hampton Creek! I could see on the right bank the ravages of a spring torrent. Yes, I love Teale’s Trail Wood.
Trail Wood - Ed & Nellie Teale - Spring Is Coming
“ Nellie and I roam over one pasture after another. We tread across a sodden carpet of faded grass that has replaced the snow. We watch combing the soggy ground crows and starlings picking among grass clumps and investigating the remnants of drifts, snapping up bits of food exposed by he melting of the snow. Again we look down on the winding tunnels of meadow mice. We see them three-sided, “on the half-shell” with their roofs removed.
It is when we come to the bridge where the lane crosses Hampton Brook that we encountr the most dramatic efect of this sudden release of water. The sream is tumbling over the rocks in flood stage, patches and islands of foam veering and bobbing, small ice cakes jostling together in the millrace of te current. Where the current reaches the opening under the great slap of rock that supports the traffic of the lane, it piles up into a churning, whitling, roaring maelstrom that gnaws into the stream banks and lifts its crest almost to the level of the roadway. Far into the night we hear this uproar of the floodwater that a single dy of anormal warmth has brought forth from the crystalline substance of h silent snow.”
Writer’s note: On that August day a few years ao we drove over a small stream. That was Hampton Creek! I could see on the right bank the ravages of a spring torrent. Yes, I love Teale’s Trail Wood.
Friday, February 6, 2009
March 1st Trail Wood Pond
Trail Wood#12.09 Earl Plato
Trail Wood: Writer’s note: We stood in front of Edwin Teale’s rustic writing cabin. In front of us was his pond, a large pond, perhaps an acre or more. We return to Teale’s March 1st log. “ Standing beside the pond where the wind has swept away the powdery snow that drifted down in the night. We see the molds of dry leaves, some descending to a depth of two inches into the ice. Through the greater amount of heat absorbed by their darker forms they have melted their way downward. Once we observe the perfect mold of an oak leaf, another time that of a maple leaf. For a minute or two we are mystified by several perfectly round holes, looking as if hey had been bored into the ice with a brace and bit. We peer down into them. At the bottom of each lies the dark rondo pellet of a rabbit’s dropping.”
Thanks Edwin for your daily observations at Trail Wood.
Trail Wood: Writer’s note: We stood in front of Edwin Teale’s rustic writing cabin. In front of us was his pond, a large pond, perhaps an acre or more. We return to Teale’s March 1st log. “ Standing beside the pond where the wind has swept away the powdery snow that drifted down in the night. We see the molds of dry leaves, some descending to a depth of two inches into the ice. Through the greater amount of heat absorbed by their darker forms they have melted their way downward. Once we observe the perfect mold of an oak leaf, another time that of a maple leaf. For a minute or two we are mystified by several perfectly round holes, looking as if hey had been bored into the ice with a brace and bit. We peer down into them. At the bottom of each lies the dark rondo pellet of a rabbit’s dropping.”
Thanks Edwin for your daily observations at Trail Wood.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Spring is Coming
Trail Wood#11.09 by Earl Plato
Nature writer, Ed Teale cheers us with his winter warm up.
“ How high the sun! How bright the sky! But how chill the wind! Under this sun, this sky, and this wind we enter the month of March, the month of another spring begins.
Behind us now receded the dead of winter. Ahead of us swells and surges closer the season of change. We seem standing with one foot in retreating winter, the other in advancing spring. Wherever we walk today we confront effects of the sun’s higher path across the sky. Already we sense the hidden rivers of sap flowing around us in the woods. Already we notice a difference in the calling of the birds."
Nature writer, Ed Teale cheers us with his winter warm up.
“ How high the sun! How bright the sky! But how chill the wind! Under this sun, this sky, and this wind we enter the month of March, the month of another spring begins.
Behind us now receded the dead of winter. Ahead of us swells and surges closer the season of change. We seem standing with one foot in retreating winter, the other in advancing spring. Wherever we walk today we confront effects of the sun’s higher path across the sky. Already we sense the hidden rivers of sap flowing around us in the woods. Already we notice a difference in the calling of the birds."
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