Fragments From Floyd

The aerial photo of the place from the 1930's shows that all of that steep land behind us was in pasture then. On the few occasions we've climbed that precipitous property line, sure enough, we've found the old split chestnut rails that once kept cattle from wandering off into tall woods. At some point in the forties or fifties, forest took over the pasture. I wish I knew if it was by design or neglect that the life of the pasture gave way to young forest. This is the natural process known as "old field succession"-- the predictable, gradual and orderly changes that will see one set of residents replaced by another over time.

By the early nineties, the white pines that colonized the abandoned south-facing field in this process of change were large enough to sell to indiscriminate loggers. They came in 1994 and took everything they wanted, ruining three hardwoods for every massive white pine extracted, cutting roads deep into subsoil that remains bare of vegetation to this day. After the 'harvest' to maximize for regrowth in pines (thousands were hand planted after logging) the hillsides were sprayed with herbicide to keep the pesky hardwoods from shading out the valuable cash crop of pines. As the Regional Forester told this, I had visions of Agent Orange coming to Goose Creek. But there was no going back to undo what had been done; we could change the future of this forested hillside and would try to be better stewards than the last folks who gave little thought to things that seem to me so crucial in our relationship with this plot of Earth.

In the summer, the thirty five acres behind the house has been our berry patch. The open canopy lets in a flood of sunlight. A thick tangle of blackberry and raspberry canes have filled in between the waste of ice storms and the skeletal standing pine trunks left from logging. In July the vines cascade heavy with fruit, blue and red, down over the trail like the hanging gardens of Nebuchadnezzar. When we first hiked up to the top of the north ridge that first year, there was an impressive view of the valley, the house and barn, and the two creeks from up there. From the very top of that side of our land more than two hundred feet above our roof, from any place you stand you can turn a full circle and see nothing but sky and ridge and trees, except for the green wedge of our valley through the brush. Ridges beyond ours go on and on, and it's easy to imagine you're in the midst of an Appalachian wilderness. I pretend that the devastation on our hillside was caused by a fire-- a lightening strike-- a dozen years ago. It makes the ugliness seem less personal to think it exists in its present sad state because of an 'act of God' and not the avarice and carelessness of men.

The planted pines now are almost ten years old and a dozen feet tall. In places they grow together thick as a hedge. Soon a new forest will obscure the wider views even from the open paths that follow the contours out to the limits of the logging of '94. Time will come it will be impossible to walk up there at all, even on the logging roads where pines are taking over. Their whorls of five or six low branches will soon touch their neighbors like interlocking arms, turning back would-be walkers. Ten years from now, the blackberry and dewberry and raspberry vines will grow spindly and fruitless in the new shade. The place won't be much good then for twisted and yellowed Christmas tree culls like the one we cut today.

The abused and abject land behind the house is not a great place go for a casual stroll even now. It is not a place for beautiful pictures. But it seemed to me today, being there, that it is not somewhere I should avoid because of what it lacks. I should go there often-- now, while the joints and muscles still work, while there are memories to harvest in the form of berries to pick and Charlie Brown Christmas trees to bring inside for a few more years. But mostly, I will go up to find a quiet place facing south toward the low winter sun, to sit and be still among the standing bare pine trunks and fallen hardwoods and the briars and the old chestnut fence rails.

Amazing. This was a pasture where cattle grazed. Before that, virgin hemlock and oak and white pines tall as ship's masts grew in dark forests seldom visited. I wish I could have seen it then. I wish I could see it fifty years from now when it will be healthy woods once again. But I only have today-- a fixed point in the succession from past to future; and I'll try to do a better job of living in the land and the time I have here.