The Bleakscape

An uncharacteristic pine tree, of a sort that's usually planted on lawns around here. A dying yew tree. An old holly bush gone wild. All of these on the edge of a scrubby clearing.

Was it once someone's home? It stands at the end of a long-ago road, now little more than a deerpath. And there's a heap of cut stones at the edge of the glade; whether they once composed a foundation, or whether they were simply gathered and tossed from a field, I cannot tell. None of it was enough to convince me until I found the little shard of an earthenware plate--bottom photo. I really need to get a better camera, but even in this poor photo, you can make out the unusual thickness of the plate, the anachronistic raised design around the edge. (I think the technical word for that is "frou-frou.") This little piece of plate tells me someone lived here once.

I'm essentially a Norway rat: a once-wild creature who discovered, with the destruction of its habitat, that there's also life in the long shadow of humankind. The rats are resourceful. At one time, they hibernated like dormice and ate seeds and berries; now they live at the edges of society, making a living off human waste.

Once I went to the woods for the three Ss: Silence. Solitude. Stillness. I trekked the wild places in search of freedom, beauty, and the occasional adventure. I was a woodland archaeologist, sometimes searching the wild places for traces of forgotten humanity: old town sites, abandoned roads, perhaps the fragment of an old green bottle. Today, instead, I sift through the wreckage of human blight in search of anything wild. Mostly it's a bleakscape, a worn-down, tired-out country, just trying to recover. Everything here is an overgrown stripmine, awaiting the next stage in its degradation by the Marcellus shale drillers--old cronies of our newly elected Republican governor.

But it's a joy to hear birds in the forest again. Their low, sweet song sounds through the still-bare branches as if they're glad to be home. It's a good time to be a forest bird. Not too cold. The snow is melting, leaving puddles to drink. There are delicious poison ivy berries still on the vine.