Post by sasha on Nov 13, 2022 12:14:38 GMT -5
November 12, 2022 - +10 days
Though the sky is still gray and lowering, the rains have stopped. Becky wonders if I'm up for a short walk, which I most assuredly am. She suggests "The Flats", a section of back road across a broad marsh; but I miss the forest, and counter-suggest Rhododendron State Park, only a few miles further here in town.
There is but one other car there when we arrive, and it's not in the main parking area, but opposite a popular bicycling trail; deduce what you will. She parks, we depart, and set off along one of the groomed footpaths into the damp, silent wood. We were still within sight of the granite pillars flanking the entrance when she cries, "Oh, look!", and stops.
A tiny red eft (an immature newt) sits motionless atop a fallen, brown oak leaf.
When she was a little girl, she used to venture outside on wet days such as this and gather as many of the critters as she could; then she'd bring them indoors and build houses for them out of Lincoln Logs on our dining room table. As they warmed and became more active, coralling them became more problematic, at which point she'd gather them back up and return them to the woods. This time she just holds it for a moment to admire it up close before setting it back down. We press on, and have only gone a few yards more when she spots another. And another.
I've been concentrating on my footing and in practicing a gait without limping, but now I'm also scanning the leaf-littered trail ahead for more of these beautiful little creatures. Her eyes prove better than mine though (she jokes that her childhood hunting expeditions have attuned her to their presence), and it's not until she has spotted 5 or 6 more that I finally find one first.
She wonders if it's time we turn back, but I assure her this is a loop trail with a shortcut back to the parking lot, so we press onward. We enter a deep thicket of rhododendrons towering overhead - peering into this dense tangle of primitive deciduous evergreens, one can almost imagine dimetrodons slithering among them, spiny fins erected to warn off others; or dragonflies with 2-foot wingspans flitting to and fro in search of prey.
But we see only efts. The final tally: 3 for me, 11 for her. I graciously concede.
It soon becomes apparent that my mental map of the intersecting trails is incorrect - either misremembered or out of date - because the shortcut never appears, and we return to the parking lot through a gate different from the one we'd entered. By the time we're back home, I'm a bit stiff exiting the car, despite reckoning we'd only covered about 2/3 mile in total. I guess a year's inactivity can do that to you.
But oh, it was so worth the discomfort to immerse myself in this ancient stand - to savor the smell of quietly composting leaves; the soft patter of the morning's rain on the forest floor, the unexpected bits of color crawling about our feet, and my daughter's delight at their appearance - to return to the natural world which age & osteoarthritis had made inaccessible to me - and which modern surgery has again placed within my reach. Here I come Gaia - how I have missed you!