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Mary Clashman

 

 

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A Winter Walk in Pennywort Cliffs

Now winter has come to Pennywort Cliffs and the quiet is broken only by the rustle of freshly fallen leaves beneath my feet.  The pungent odor of decaying leaves fills the cool air.

Animals who hibernate have drawn the earth around them and settled in for the long sleep.  Birds who move south for the winter have gone, and those who remain have shifted their responsibility from feeding their families to taking care of themselves during winter’s scarcity of food.  Even the insects have vanished beneath the tree bark or have left only their eggs in the forest to hatch next year’s generation.

The stark silhouettes of the great trees stand unprotected against gray skies.  Only oak and beech continue to cling to their bronze leaves pretending for a little while longer that they are really conifers.

The crow, who has been angry all summer, is still scolding someone down near the new tree plantation.

Walking toward the ceaseless spring, I head across a land of partridge-berry partially covered by ground pine, making the area look as though I am walking across a gigantic Christmas tree.  As I walk, the fall leaves shift beneath the soft ground pine fonds leaving a distinct garland of pine and partridge-berries in a trail behind me.

Descending the hill to the spring, I notice the opposite hillside is dark green with Christmas ferns defiantly clinging to their heavy green fonds through the brown fallen leaves around them.  Even through early snows, I have seen these same ferns fresh as they were after a summer rain.

The soft sand around the spring, which is always moist and warmed by the flowing water, provides a thin margin of green grass and moss in the midst of winter’s brown.  The spring has been a busy place as demonstrated by the many footprints around it.  Other sources of water have either dried or frozen leaving only the flowing spring to maintain the forest family.

I stand looking down the valley following the flow of the spring water as it moves toward Big Creek at the east boundary of the nature preserve.  White trunks of sycamore trees follow the damp valley as far as the eye can see.  Do sycamore limbs become whiter and brighter when the leaves are off or is it just the stark contrast against the gray winter sky?

I see a squirrel peering at me from her hole in a hollow maple limb.  She looks warmer than I am and I climb to leave Pennywort Cliffs.

Returning across the partridge-berry and ground pine, I take a slightly different route creating a second garland on the hillside Christmas tree.

As I leave the woods, I stop and look toward the top of a young tulip tree swaying slowly in the wind like a giant baton conducting the winter concert of the forest symphony.

-- Mary Clashman