Starting in June of 2013, I spent a year making weekly visits to the same little spot in the forest on the side of the ridge where I live in the Shenandoah Valley. During each visit I jotted my observations in a little book. It was a fascinating experience to notice the changes in one small patch of forest over the cycle of four seasons.
Here, at THE EARTH CONNECTION, I have been, from time to time, sharing some of those observations. Below are some of my jottings from the months of January and February of last year:
- The ground is covered in snow. And with the leaning tree trunk that always marked the spot now fallen, I have to do some searching to find my ‘spot.’ I notice quite a few footprints. Clearly, animals have been making their way across my spot.
- Crows call in the distance. I hear the wind blowing in the treetops, high overhead, but all is quiet on the ground, where I sit on a log.
- Subdued winter beauty in all directions. The snow-covered ground is punctuated with brown twigs poking through the whiteness, angling every which way. To see some green, I must raise my head and look high into the tops of the giant White Pines.
- The air is still, except for a woodpecker, hard at work in the distance.
- The forest is mainly brown now, except for a stripe of snow here and there, hidden from the sun in the curve of a log or the lee of a stump.
- The wind picks up. Downed, dead leaves whisper among themselves as they whirl about, disturbed by the wind. I hear from down the hill a tree creaking under the wind’s push.
- Now, toward the end of February, bits of color are starting to emerge. The tiny, outermost twigs growing from the thin, woody plants in my spot are red! Just a few of them! They are even tipped with tiny red buds. Spring can’t be far off!–April Moore