Hike into a Snow Globe

Today (1/28/10) I clambered up the ridge behind our house to look at a stand of Red Pine our logger has proposed to cut. He is an eager enterprising fellow. He keeps wandering around our place looking for more work for himself. He doesn't get, or doesn't want to get, that we have a pretty well thought out plan for our forest's harvest and enhancement. This plan doesn't really include him cutting everything he can make money on right now!

The stand of pine is perched on a very thin soiled ledgy slope three or four hundred feet directly above Burnt Mill Brook and directly across the valley of that brook from where the logger is working now. As I walk, spits of snow flurries enliven an otherwise grey day. A chill penetrates even though the temperature is around 30F. I'm walking on hardened granular snow smudged grey with flakes of moss, lichens, twigs and dried up leaves stripped from rocks and trees by a recent unseasonable rainstorm. The blush of redness on the surface of the bark that gives the Red Pine it's name does not relieve the deeply shadowed green canopy of the pines.

I decided, as long as I was up on the ridge, I would wander over to a familiar open ledge with a view of the mountains and valleys to the Southwest. I might as well give myself a present. The trek up the side of the mountain has at least given me some energy and confidence.

From the ledge, the view is foreshortened as if someone had draped a veil over a dome with me standing a little up on one side. The distant mountain ranges are gently gauzed by clouds and snow. This creates, in the near valley under my perch, a condensed contained world with the team of loggers working busily below. The opposite hillside tosses up the big diesel throbs of the caterpillar and skidder, as they prowl the woods, freshly cutting rich brown skidding roads - the most distinct lines in the landscape. The cracking, crashing, splintering of branches mixed with the whining chainsaw and thud of falling trees keeps me fixed for several long moments on the ledge. From this height and under this veil the whole operation looks like an animated diorama. The swirling snowflakes only add to the drama. Missing is the soft musk of the freshly broken earth and the spicy sweetness of newly cut sawdust. I realized that the winter woods I had just walked through set the stage much as a hushed museum room sets the stage for an art presentation.

The stand of Red Pines will not be cut by this logger.