I tugged and pulled and the vine’s roots tore across the path. That one done, I went on to the next. This after I had marked a trail through the woods with a can of orange spray paint and my neighbor had kindly come with his leaf blower and cleared the pathway. But now there were lots of stump and tree root “tripper-uppers” as well as those pesky spreading vine roots. So I got the paint can again and marked all the places where I might trip over something to give me a “heads up!” Then I sprayed the path with weed killer, so I wouldn’t have to keep repeating this back breaking effort.
Next another neighbor came with his chain saw and cut through two trees that had come down in my pathway and voila – I could now make it across the stream bed crossing over the boards I had placed there years ago and on up to the top of the little glacial esker. From there I could look down on the skunk cabbage and in May I’ll see the Marsh Marigolds blooming in the stream bed.
The other half of the trail leads to the wooden bridge I had put in a decade ago, but I have to scramble down a small bank and then scramble up the other side. I figured I could tie a rope onto two trees to hold onto while I did my scrambling, but I think I really need to cut some steps into the bank. This has my neighbors worried that I’ll fall, so for the moment, I’m taking the first path to reach the esker “summit.”
Next I traveled to our local Roche Bros. grocery store as I’d seen plastic, lightweight Adirondack chairs in multiple colors including khaki – perfect to blend into the surroundings.
I took both dogs with me to “initiate” our woodland trail and with my binoculars around my neck, we sat and quietly observed. Titmice and Cardinals called and Chickadees darted in and out. I spooked up a Barred Owl at rest, but no migrating warblers as yet.
The esker summit is a mess – two giant trees went down some time ago and the trunks and crowns are lying everywhere. Well I have a tree service coming by next week to give me a price for cutting the tree trunks into logs and making log piles and then cutting the crowns into neat brush piles. It would be much to expensive to have it hauled away and the animal kingdom will probably like the wood piles and brush piles.
I’m paying taxes on this acre of land so I might as well do something with it. Most of it is classified as wetlands even though there’s not a great deal of water flowing through the stream right now. We’re already in something of a drought. And I did have a pathway made years ago, but then my husband got ill, I didn’t have time to maintain it and nature reclaimed everything. So now I have my little hide-a-way birding spot. Here are a few pictures as it stands today. I’ll add more as the trees leaf out and the marsh marigolds bloom.
