Snow Bridges

It was a very snowy winter. So much snow fell that year that it created bridges across the creek that ran through the valley below our house. Some of these snow bridges were thus in name only - they couldn't hold much weight and collapsed readily. Others, however, created real, usable pathways from one side of the creek to the other. 

Smidgen in the snow
Photo by Mary North Allen

Smidgen, our small black dog, could cross almost all the bridges, and she scampered back and forth, bounding through the snow like a little black ping pong ball, perhaps hoping that if she stayed in the air enough of the time, her feet wouldn't get so cold. Duncan, the collie, couldn't leap so readily, and he trudged more slowly through the deep snow, stopping to sniff interesting scents. Forty pounds heavier than Smidgen, fewer of the bridges remained intact when he ventured onto them. I, the next heaviest, experienced the snow more in collie fashion than in little black mutt fashion. With trepidation, I would step onto the bridges that Duncan had crossed. I didn't want to land in the creek! When I was able to cross a snow bridge successfully, I was triumphant. That fleeing architectural structure, with its ephemeral footing, had held me up and sustained me. And only when I succeeded in crossing would my older brother Tom follow, and if he succeeded, we knew we had a true triumph of winter engineering beneath our feet.

Stars

My older brother's high school class filled the hay wagon on a ride through the fields at night. The tractor buzzed and the teenagers around me were probably more interested in each other than in the mysterious of the nighttime. I was lying on my back, watching the stars. One kept moving - a satellite, unusual in those days. The stars, so many, so bright, so very, very bright against the black, black sky. White, twinkling specs of wonder, a whole panorama of them, silent.

And the moon, too, when it is visible.

I look at the stars every night, now. Blessed are You, Adonai our G!d, Source of all being, by whose word the evening falls. In wisdom You open heaven’s gates…ordering the stars on their appointed paths through heaven’s. Creator of day and night, rolling away light before dark, and dark before light, making day pass and bringing on night…Blessed are You, Adonai, who makes evening fall. And after these words, the words of the Mourner's Kaddish, in memory of my mother: Yitgadal v'yitkadash, May the Great Name of the One be magnified and sanctified...and there before me are the stars - the magnificent, amazing, glorious, mysterious, amazing stars.

Water Striders

I loved watching the water striders. The creek ran through a culvert beneath the driveway, and the embankment there provided a convenient access point to the creek that that didn't involve tromping through a muddy marsh. I liked to take off my shoes and socks and wade into the stream, and feel the cold water and the gravel and mud between my toes, and to see the water striders up close, from within their territory, the water.  

I still like to take off my shoes and socks
and feel the cold water and the gravel and mud
between my toes.

The water striders did just as their name says - they strode atop the moving water. The flowing water of the creek carried the striders downstream, and they continuously leaped upstream, just managing to remain in one place and not disappear through the culvert and into the woodsy marsh beyond. They walked on water. They didn't flit away. And, they didn't bite. They captured my fancy, these harmless insects that never seemed to get anywhere despite their constant movement.

Pod Meadow Walk

A light snow fell the night before we walked the trails at Pod Meadow Conservation Area, blanketing the ground with white.  Someone else had walked the path from Wallace Road before us, with a dog. We followed the footprints and I wondered about their walk. 


The path begins among some trees and then follows the aqueduct before reentering the woods above the ponds. Once in the woods, we followed the trail along the top of the bluff and then descended the steep, now slippery path into the sheltered area around the ponds. The sounds of traffic were muffled by the hills and I felt, as I always do in this spot, as though I could be among the hills and ponds of New Hampshire.


I happily walk the woods and fields near my home alone, but not everyone is comfortable doing so, and as we walk and talk together, I understand in a new way the importance of community, even in the woods. 

Other beaver work
NPS Photo

The beavers have been busy in the pond. We wondered at the incredible work they do, chopping down trees. Except they don't always finish. Some trees, a foot in diameter, were chewed only partly through and were still standing. Smaller trees, we saw only the stumps the beavers left behind. Other large trees had fallen, but only parts had been gnawed away. Dozens and dozens of trees had felt the teeth of the rodents.


We stopped atop a small bluff above the smaller of the two ponds and I read these words of Wallace Stegner: 

Neither the country nor the society we built out of it can be healthy until we learn to be quiet part of the time, and acquire the sense not of ownership but of belonging. Only in the act of submission is the sense of place realized and a sustainable relationship between people and earth established.   

Learning to be quiet. Even part of the time. Having a sense of belonging and not of ownership. Having a sense of place. Submitting.


This is what is happening, a shift in my sense of place to these New England woods. Understanding that these patches of New England woods and fields tucked between suburban homes are my home. Letting the marshes and prairie and woods of my rural Wisconsin childhood settle into the bottom of my soul to make room for the present. Feeling connected. Belonging. 


I call these walks I lead Earth Connecting: Walking Wayland, a program to systematically walk Wayland’s trails, one by one exploring existing public Wayland pathways, taking time to quietly meditate, until our feet have connected with the Earth beneath each one. Earth Connecting is a joint effort of Transition Wayland and the Nature Chaplaincy programs of Ma'yan Tikvah. These walks are sustaining me and renewing me and transforming me, and in the process I am getting to know my neighbors, the trees as well as the humans.


We retraced our steps along the last portion of the trail and made our way back to our starting point via the aqueduct. Our reward at the end of the trail: a hawk that none of us non-birders could identify, but that was not the Red-tail we normally see, perched on the wires, not moving, letting us ooh and aah in admiration for as long as we were willing to stand there in the snow. 

Path Across the Marsh

A path led across the marsh to the meadow and woods beyond
Photo by Mary North Allen

A path led past the machine shed below the house, across the creek, and through the marsh to the prairie hillside beyond where we sledded and skied in the winter. Half way up the hillside began the woods, expansive and seemingly endless to a child, a place of explorations, discoveries, connection, and adventure. 


The creek was murky and dank where the path met water. One had to jump across, but the banks were solid and we never - or maybe rarely - fell in. Willows sprouted up along the creek; the grandfather of them all shaded the creek banks and helped create a miniature fairy land filled with mosses.


Past the row of willows one entered the marsh proper: sunny, open, and airy. The marsh, spring-fed, was always wet, but there were safe spots - raised hummocks of soil held firm by thick masses of grass roots - that were dry, as long as you didn't slide off, and spaced closely enough that we could - with luck - cross to the other side without getting our shoes too wet. 

Walking a very different path, decades later, on Cape Cod.
Photo by Gabi Mezger

Burgundy milkweed bloomed among the marsh grasses and yellow goldenrod. But the marsh wasn't a place to stop. It was a place to travel through, to get to the other side, the dry hillside and the woods beyond. And yet, its presence made the hillside and woods something more than they would have been without the marsh and the creek as a colorful, mysterious, wet, and comforting buffer.

Hummocks in a marshy area
at Snake Brook Conservation Area in Wayland

Bottle Gentians

Bottle gentian growing
in Massachusetts
Photo by
Rachel Gould and Karen Lutsky 

Crossing the valley in late summer, carefully stepping on the hummocks so as not to get my feet wet in the marsh, just at the edge of the marsh, suddenly a burst of blue, a clump of bottle gentians - so special, so unusual, such a color, such a gift. How could there be such a blue not of the sky? How could there be such an intricate exceptional shape? Blue - deep, true blue, a closed bottle. And overhead, the sun is shining. The red-wing blackbirds are chirruping. The sun is hot on my back. The insects are buzzing. Just ahead is the shade of a large willow, and then the prairie hillside, and beyond, the woods. But here, before me, the blue bottle gentian. Thank you, G!d.