May Day, Beltane,
I walk alone through unfamiliar woods. I have never been here before, and don’t even know where I am—somewhere in
Oh-oh, I'm on posted property and I just came up to a house, so I quickly turned back. I’ll have to go a different way. Hope I don’t get in trouble.
I don’t think these woods are large, but they are very pleasant, fill of rue anemone, mayapples in leaf and bud, spring beauties, vernal and permanent ponds and swamps. Deer tracks and trails.
I attempt some pictures of rue anemone (or, as Keith says, "ruined enemy"), but it is dark and windy, not a good combo. I am using Olly, the only camera I’m carrying at the moment. I walk down to view a Vernal pond. No, not a vernal pond, a longer than verbal pond. A permanent pond. It has duckweed.
Yellow violets are in flower. Chokecherry leaves are all the way open but not full-size.
The woods are full of deer stands, nailed to trees all around me. Deer trails and deer stands. I am walking along on the inside of the posted signs, not smart, probably.
There are squirrel nests and bird nests. Now the woods appear to be ending at a farm field. I’ve been walking 14 minutes not counting the maybe 5 it took to climb the hill. Do I dare walk out into the field for a few minutes? I don’t, I turn and skirt the inside of the woods.
I come to a place where there are arrows stuck into a tree stump—some sort of warning--gives me the willies--and a canoe by a pond. I get a little nervous, and start back the other way. I feel a unwelcome, though I have no intention of hurting or disturbing anything.
I've now walked far enough where I could retrace my steps if I’d made a straight trail, but I did not and don’t care to try to search for the convoluted path I took.. A hawk screams, over and over. I wonder if it is nesting nearby. Sounds like a red-tail.
I see a cemetery and also some interesting barns so I head along the hedgerow between the plowed but untilled cornfield and the pasted woods. I could walk back along the road, but then I won’t have walked long enough.
Did I say untilled? I meant unplanted. It’s been tilled, but the old cornstalks are still visible. No sign of new.
At the edge of the cemetery: a dump, with the strong scent of balsam. A goose, a single goose, flies over, honked sadly. I stick a blue cloth chrysanthemum in my hair and snap a shot of myself. It’s very windy, so I then stick the flower in my back pocket. I take a few shots of the farm, probably the farm that owns the cornfields, but not the woods, as the posted signs point out toward the cornfield. The farm shot is sort of ruined by a big satellite dish. Sigh.
When Keith and I were walking up the first set of hills together, we found some cages with dead animals in them--road kill, maybe--speaking of which, here’s one now. They were in the cages to remove the flesh from the bones. This one is a deer, still quite stink-ulous. But the skull is there, along with the rest of the carcass and of course, I’m tempted by it.
I walk up by the farm and take 2 more pictures of the barn and walk back toward the cemetery. I mark the place where the dead deer lies, its bones all chewed by predators as if they were in Wild Africa or some other nature program. Hah, I can’t believe I said that—the nature comes first and the program or writing about it afterwards. Not the other way around! The carcass is across from the cemetery and down 300 feet or so. Just past the cemetery is a curved snag and the skeleton is directly across from the first tree after that.
Now I am headed back toward Diane and Phil’s, where the party is. I’m almost ready to learn flint-knapping and whatever else is being offered. Keith bends intently over a table, deeply involved in something. I walked 46:12. Graham runs up and says I was gone 2 hours. I sit with the flint knappers and pick up some basalt, a leather shield, and a knapping tool.
Mary Stebbins
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