Reflections from Trail Wood

When, in 1959, after a three year search, Edwin and Nellie Teale finally found, their place in the country, “a place to live in, and to die in too,” as Edwin wrote, they put down deep roots and settled in to live out the rest of their lives. From the beginning, they envisioned Trail Wood, a patchwork of woodlands, wetlands and fields, as a refuge for themselves and the creatures who lived there, a place where first they, and then others might study and connect with the wild that surrounded them.

          As I entered into my first full day of residency at Trail Wood, Vern, the caretaker wrote to me these words, “We are counting on you, and other artists, to feel inspired by this immersion at Trail Wood and hope your inspiration can re-sow the seeds of hope and awareness of our place in the natural world.” His message filled me with a sense of responsibility and the realization that my time there was not just for me, and not even just to expand awareness of the Teales and Trail Wood, itself, but for the benefit of the whole of the land that is our home and our relationship with it. It was with that sense of purpose and gratitude that my stay was filled with observation and with writing. My days began at dawn and developed into a repeated rhythm of walking and observing for several hours, and then writing for several hours, until at last, at night, too tired to do either, I drifted off to sleep listening to crickets and katydids in the meadows, and green and bullfrogs in the pond below the old house.

Every time I stepped outdoors there was something to note.  At times, my observations came as I sat still- beavers working ­­­in the ponds; broad-winged hawks, first heard and then seen from the summerhouse; the hummingbird who dropped into the lone Joe-Pye weed water’s edge; the mama turkey, leading her 7 youngsters behind me as I sat at the picnic table in the yard; the few remaining fireflies of the season; the red-shouldered hawk that flew into the catalpa tree as I sat and watched him watching me; the vast expanse of the night sky with Milky Way and all the stars I cannot see where I now live.

         Many times, the observations came as I was walking and exploring the paths that ran through the woodlands and fields of Trail Wood – more species of ferns co-existing together than I had ever seen before; cardinal flowers in secluded patches along streams’ edges; a wood frog sitting in the path of Ground Pine Crossing Trail; acres of mapleleaf viburnum and beaked hazelnuts growing as understory beneath black and white oaks, hickories and yellow birch; dainty blooming rattlesnake plantain and shinleaf, flowers so easily missed and stepped upon if not careful; newly fledged families of red-bellied, downy, hairy and pileated woodpeckers and yellow-bellied sapsuckers hopping around in trees along the Far North Woods trail; silent but active scarlet tanagers, Baltimore orioles and American redstarts as I walked through the late summer woods, along with the more vocal Eastern wood peewees,  phoebes and kingbirds.

And then, there were observations of what I expected, but did not see, and the questions their absence posed. Why were there so few pollinators, as compared with what I have seen in Pennsylvania and Maryland, particularly on the mountain mint and wild bergamot? Why were there so few spider webs strung across the trails? Why were there no northern mockingbirds or Carolina wrens around the house or inhabiting the brushy tangles along the lower pond? Questions, I am still wondering about…

As I walked the woods and fields, I realized that I recognized the majority of the plants I saw, and all of the birds, and so decided to create detailed lists of both, in hopes that having such information might be of use to the Connecticut Audubon Society, which oversees Trail Wood. Moving deliberately, inching along one slow step at a time, I scanned the forest floor, the understory and the canopy. The plants I knew, I listed immediately, but it was the ones I wasn’t sure of that took the hours of time and effort. In the end, I had relatively complete late-summer plant lists for three of the trails, including 21 tree species, 14 shrubs, 5 vines, 8 Ferns, 35 herbaceous perennials and 3 grasses and sedges. Not counted were the other sedges I didn’t have the time or patience for. The total bird species list stood at 62, not bad for late summer when the birds are less vocal.

As much as I enjoyed the freedom to be outdoors for as long as I wanted to be, I also enjoyed the time and initiative dedicated to writing. I have never had, and may never have again, such a time in which nothing was expected of me other than to immerse myself in the natural world, and to write. And as I wrote, it seemed a new voice, a new way of writing emerged, almost as if spontaneously…not exactly prose, as I knew it anyway, and not exactly poetry, but perhaps a blend of the two. The pieces I worked on while at Trail Wood seemed to come into being almost without effort, almost as if by magic, though I still work on revisions. Now that I am back, I continue putting words to paper, feeling almost as though it has become a calling, a vocation, of sorts. When I was at Trail Wood, I felt that I had come as a person who sometimes wrote, but was leaving as a writer. I am exceedingly thankful for this opportunity that was given me, and, as Vern wrote, pray that my works, can indeed, “resow the seeds of hope and awareness of our place in the natural world” for those who read them.