We enter through the northeast corner, at the intersection of North and East Parkways.
A crushed locust seed pod on the asphalt park road like an omen warned us that pristine nature was going to have be earned today.
We stepped into the woods, into a flat open space obviously used as a camp by homeless people. Clothes and potato chip bags lie scattered on the ground. A computer speaker – its mesh cover removed – rests on its side next to a tree.
But we soon found unlittered woods
A huge fallen tree blocks the trail
its spired snag shattered at the top
It is not a warm day and only rare things are green: euonymus vines
Green berries on a brown stem
First leaves unfurling
A strange spiky plant growing in a dry creek bed
The ground is wet from last week’s ice and snow. Puddles reflect trees and sky.
Along the edge of the woods, a ditch built by the CCC during the Great Depression. Moss sprawls over the terraced sides
In the nakedness that comes with cold, the shape of the woods is revealed: the dips and rises, and also the accidental shapes of nature’s growth:
A broken limb that looks like a sculpture of a turtle’s head emerging from a shell
Robins shuffle leaves
A mushroom looks like a hooded woman sitting in meditation
A fallen tree whose mossy ridges have caught winged seeds
A nub on a fallen tree trunk looks like a haughty toad
A rotting tree trunk standing on a perilously rotten base
The underside of a fallen tree, its splayed roots looking like a frozen explosion.
Lichens growing on a tree trunk
A broken poison ivy stem, its hairy roots hanging in the air
A tree trunk pocked by pileated woodpeckers
And, high in a sycamore tree, a pileated woodpecker itself
Words by Stephen Black
Pictures by Jenn Allmon
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