Woodpeckered! and, A Walk in the Park

Friday, while working at my computer, I heard a loud bump against the window beside me. A downy woodpecker was hovering there, having flown into the window. He quickly retreated to branch on the adjacent bush, still looking toward the window with what looked to me like confusion, perhaps wondering "what the hell happened?" For all the birds that hang around that bush (which offers safe cover just a few feet from the feeder), I'm surprised one hadn't flown into the window before.



Between a crummy schedule, crummy weather, and a sore knee, I haven't jogged since last Monday. Tired of sitting around, I decided yesterday to walk a five mile loop along nearby dirt roads. About a quarter mile from home, I knew I wasn't going to make it. It was bitter cold yesterday with a stiff wind blowing from the north. By the time I reached the first road heading off the pavement, my face was nearly frozen. Seeking shelter, I turned into a forest preserve whose edge I had arrived at.

This park consists of about 80 acres of mature woods, being rapidly overrun by pink honeysuckle. There are a few trails, but when I go there I usually wander cross country. With the exception of a few areas, the forest is generally open enough for easy rambling. It seems to be getting more open too. There are many tall red pines in the park, and nearly all of them are dying off. They looked that way when we moved here six years ago, and they have grown noticeably worse since. It appears that quite a few have finally fallen over this winter. Good cover for birds and squirrels, I suppose.

Other evergreens do better. There are fewer white pines, but those all look healthy, and they do have some reproduction. There are tall (black?) spruces that thrive and scatter hosts of progeny aroud their bases. I like to enter the thickets of spruce. Though there are comfortable passages between them, the young trees screen out all views except up and down, but the effect is not claustrophobic. Going inside them, you find an intimate, sheltering part of the woods.

While out yesterday, I visited one of my favorite spots in the park, a rockpile standing next to a tall oak in the middle of one of these spruce thickets, quite a ways off any trail. There are many rockpiles in the park, though I have no idea who assembled them or why--perhaps farmers of earlier generations who hauled them away from fields to make plowing smoother. This one appears more deliberately constructed than most. It consists of a flat layer of stones with a large, oblong rock pointing up from the center. It looks like an altar of some sort, though not one regarded with any special reverence. A heavily used deer trail passes through the opening where the altar stands, and the four-legged travellers appear to make a habit of desecrating it with their droppings. Or sanctifying it, perhaps. I'm sure the oak and the young spruces appreciate the offerings.

Yesterday's walk in the park may have been less strenuous than my planned five-miler, but it was good to revisit a favorite but recently neglected place. I found some satisfaction in the sight of certain things holding together as others slid into a long-expected demise.

Tag:Nature