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Magnificent Forest

Magnificent Forest

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“You are entering a fragile, ancient forest,” the sign read. “Please stay on the trail.” So we entered the woods with reverence, walked quietly along the path, and guessed the age of the towering trees. 

To be old growth, a forest must contain trees more than 250 years old. Seattle’s Seward Park has them, though many of its specimens are “only” in the 200-year range.  But the Western Hemlocks are dying, the sword fern too.

How to protect them, to understand and prevent their demise? How to keep this “Magnificent Forest,” as it’s called, as dark, mysterious and magical as it is now? Researchers are working on it. And yesterday, we did our part: we looked, we marveled, we stayed on the trail. 

Kwanzan Up Close

Kwanzan Up Close

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The Kwanzan cherry had barely begun to leaf this time last week. But the warm temperatures of early April have sent it into overdrive. 

I’m spending some time this morning just looking at the tree, observing how the big-fisted flowers bend its branches to earth. 

The Kwanzan is not as ethereal as the Yoshino cherry, which typically blooms a few weeks earlier. It’s an earthier, later blossom.  It’s best photographed up close, I think, against a bright blue sky.

The Volunteer

The Volunteer

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Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough.

I don’t have many lines of poetry at my fingertips, but for some reason, I have these by A. E. Housman. Today, I’m thinking about — and looking at — the pale pink weeping cherry in the backyard.

It wasn’t planted, and I wasn’t even aware of it until we almost lost it in the great tree debacle of 2018. But it must have been there, growing slowly and a bit crookedly, trying to reach the light through a thick canopy.  

But now the yard is open, tree coverage is sparse, and the delicate plants, including this earnest volunteer, have a chance to shine. 

Such is the life cycle of a forest, even when the forest is in a backyard.

(This volunteer may be kin to another I wrote about several years ago.)

Deadwood

Deadwood

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It’s a cold, blustery day. The cardinals and sparrows that usually throng the feeder are tucked away in roosts and thickets. I can imagine them puffing up their feathers against the bitter winds. 

I have my eye on an errant limb dangling from a white oak by the fence. It seems to be attached to nothing from my vantage point (a second floor window), but must be be hung up on a branch at least 70 feet above the ground. I just hope that, when it falls, it doesn’t take out part of the fence. 

The small forest that used to grace the back of the backyard is now a few paltry trees. But because they are paltry they are precious. Even care and pruning can’t stop the deadwood from falling, though. It’s what deadwood does. 

Up in the Air

Up in the Air

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The crane seems like a stunt double from The War of the Worlds, a 100-plus-foot behemoth that takes up most of our suburban lane. It was brought in as reinforcement when two men and a chainsaw were unable to complete the removal of dead limbs from a lopsided oak last week. 

In a move that has gotten our carbon footprint off to a bad start for the new year, I’m afraid, the crane and two other large vehicles pulled up to the house early this morning. After 30 minutes of waiting for the crew to assemble, the real show began, duly recorded for two-year-old Isaiah. 

First, the crane operator slowly raised the contraption’s arm, extending it high before swinging it over the neighbor’s house to reach the troublesome tree. Next, in an act of derring-do seldom seen outside a circus, one of the guys who had been calmly putting on gear was hoisted up into the air. 

He hung suspended for what seemed like hours but was only a minute or two before reaching the tree, chainsaw swinging from his belt. A few minutes later, he was joined by another acrobat. Together they’ve been slicing the deadwood away from this (knock on wood) still-viable oak.

I write this post from the basement, the only sensible place to be. I can hear the grinder machine whirring. Most of the branches are down, I think. The show is almost over. 

(I generally prefer horizontal shots, but this post cried out for a vertical.)

Wreathed in Fog

Wreathed in Fog

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A soft fog last night as I drove to a meeting. A fog that made the lighted trees and homes send halo-like rainbows into the gloom. 

Our house is finally among the decorated, with candles in the windows and lights along the roof and a big old wreath that I bought as a splurge because it smells so much nicer than the artificial one — and also because it was made by Bradley’s mother. 

That would be Bradley from Whitetop Mountain, Virginia, the same fellow we bought from last year. He apologized that the trees cost more this December and said he would “work with us” on the price. I bought the wreath to up the total. Bradley and his family could use it, I imagine. 

And now the wreath and the lights are shaking their fists at the darkness. In less than two weeks, the days start growing longer. 

Verticality

Verticality

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Walking through the woods lately has brought verticality to mind. Tree trunks stand unadorned. Without leaves to distract us, their upright posture is all the more stunning.

I feel dwarfed by the size and grandeur of these trees, by their bare beauty.

In winter, our eyes and minds are drawn to the essential nature of things. 

A Glow from Within

A Glow from Within

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The most vivid tree in our yard is one we never planted. It’s a volunteer, little more than a weed for years and now coming fully into its own. 

Especially at this time of year, when it seems to glow from within.

The poplars and oaks are bare now, even the Kwanzan cherry has dropped its golden leaves. 

But the Japanese maple flames on…

Leaf on Leaf

Leaf on Leaf

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Yesterday’s walk took me on the Reston trail that loops behind the church, a lofty forest and a most beauteous sight on a warm and breezy late fall morning. 

I paused several times to snap a photo, to catch an angle of light, a leaf in its falling. 

I noticed how tumbling leaves sometimes snag and catch, land on other leaves, which cup and protect them, as if to say, we’ll keep you here another day, here on a branch and not on the ground. We’ll keep you upright, limb-bound, a creature of air not yet of earth. 

The Harbinger

The Harbinger

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It’s happened here, and no wonder. The recent rain and chill have probably driven them to it. Or maybe it wasn’t the weather at all. Maybe it’s just their time.

Whatever the reason, the dogwood leaves have begun their march to extinction, their lovely russety turning. And berries have formed, their brightness a contrast to the subdued tone of the leaves.

I look at the dogwood a lot these days, since Copper likes to stand near it while we’re outside. And it has become for me a harbinger of another season, one of burnished brightness and long, still nights.