The Art of the Woods

I’m thinking about an art museum that’s not too far away and how rarely I get in my car and drive to admire the paintings and sculpture, but instead step out into the woods so familiar and foreign at the same time, right outside my door, where art and beauty beckon. In winter maybe you’d think them dull, but there is so much to notice.

The leaves still rustle underfoot, but not as loudly as in early fall when they are almost too loud and also slippery. Now the walking is easier, and less sticky than in the summer, when spider webs crisscross the trail—at every height probably, but especially, it seems, at the exact height of my face.

Although it is late January,  the mountain laurel is perked up and green, its twigs curved and curled. The Christmas fern lies prostrate but also green, its little boot-shaped pinnae one explanation for its name. And here are the overwintering orchid leaves, biding their time. The crane-fly orchid’s leaves are green on top and purple below, and the putty-root orchid looks like strips of seersucker on the ground. A pileated woodpecker call floats through the sky and I see it there on a tall snag. There’s a faint swooshing sound to the right—six white flags reveal the deer running away half-stealthily.

Tufts of moss in different colors and small fronds of something like grass still grow along the edge of the trail.  I scramble up a rise and down a dip. A shadow floats over. I tilt my head to see what I expected – the vulture circling.  It used to be there was no background noise at all in these woods, but now I hear the roar of trucks just a few miles as the crow flies. Once a map app showed everyone the shortcut, all the 18 wheelers take it and apply their grindingly loud jack breaks that sound like monsters fighting to the death. There are just a few things I wouldn’t give to have that quiet back again.

The weathered root balls of trees long fallen are exquisite works of art. I find one with what look like insect jaws pointed to a beech with snaky roots. The smooth trunks and branches of ironwood (Carpinus caroliniana) or hornbeam, also known as musclewood for how it looks like a muscular limb or body are among my favorites, maybe just because they are easy to identify compared to some of the oaks, hickories, and other trees, sans leaves.

In the foreground now I hear what are probably squirrels. A wind comes up in the tree tops and shakes the oak leaves still clinging. The beech trees already have their small copper swords ready to green up into leaf buds, but a big snow is coming they say.

I may be out here again in a day or so with the snowshoes everyone laughed riotously about when I bought them after the snowpocalypse of 2009. Stay warm everyone.