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