May's Musings

There's a low swamp lying between drumlins at the border of Concord and Sudbury on Route 117. There at the margin between towns where some company has been removing sand and gravel for month upon month. The trees in this lower, cooler region are still in an orange flower stage, swamp maples? Oaks? I do not know, but their colors are vibrantly birthlike. Further down 117 the lantern-like blooms of the majestic horsechestnut tree stands like a sentry fifty feet over the roadway. Mockingbirds sang on the top of the old burned Norway maple at the corner of my lot this weekend as I continued to cull and work this stretch of wild land. A Baltimore oriole has moved in as well. I pull Norway maples, mostly, and the dreaded poison ivy. The pull of muscle against root, flesh against wood. There is something in the working of land and shrubs and trees that feels as if it moves all the right muscles. It loosens thought; it opens ears and other senses. The forest canopy is now converging on the solid green of summer. Maples are full, oaks, are filling (though still yellow), but the catalpa and the sycamore, as well as the hickory, take their time. Opening larger leaves, more complex clusters, at a much less frenzied pace than vines and invasives. I find myself valuing and evaluating the very movement of nature's parts in my working of the land. I find myself seeing something clocks never tell us. Feeling life from the inside.

And I look at Washington. Will our republic survive the grasp for power underway? Have the fanatics won? Will they stop at nothing? These moments have a tendency to tear the fiber of political parties. What fills the vacuum? Are you ready? May the sycamore leaves of our humanity bloom in just the right season.