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.