August Vacation

Days are wending down now as I return to my native state from a journey to the north. Here the deciduous trees are dominant. There, it is conifers, trees more adapted, so says Berndt Heinrich, to snow and ice and cold. Fir and spruce, pine and tamarack. These giants of the northern forest give the horizon a different feel, add smells to the ambient air not found in Maynard, and acidify the forest soils, changing the character of the understory. In Washington County, timber holding companies are liquidating acres, finding new uses for smaller trees as the green building supply industry ramps up its influence. There are some who look at these changes and see the dollars made and say, all is well. Others get lost on familiar roads as the landscape changes its appearance from forest to scrub. Selective harvest, a euphemism for leaving behind a mess of tangle and brush, is akin to a haircut where they just pulled out some of your hair and left the rest in its longer state. No more pretty than a bad dream or a hangover. Up in that most distant county, the east's West, where roads appear on maps few and far between and ownership maps show tiny land holdings surrounded by the baron timber company lands, there are a thousand miles of unmarked roads, engineering feats of equal might as these interstate highways that carried me right to the western edge of the county. Piles of stone and fill twenty feet deep through the middle of formidable swamp and wetland, piled with sand and crushed stone, and left as heaps across the landscape. They are known by timber cruisers and locals, mapped by the companies only and the lived memory of residents. They can get you somewhere faster than some of the public projects, but you must know the way. They also give continued access and allow the ongoing harvest of these mighty sentries of decades, now, not centuries.

No attention to the radio or newspaper or television for seven days was liberating. I learned rhythms of daily life not poisoned by the misdeeds of others or spoiled by the folly of the powerful. I reverted to a patience, the tide comes in, the tide flows out. I listened to wood thrush sing in the day, and falcon hunt their way up the shore line, and councils of crows recounting their busy days, and chipmunk chatter and squirrel visits and badger waddles. The week of a coming new moon whose crystal clear evenings brought shooting stars and the soft hazy curve of the Milkyway. Crackles of campfire and the sounds of forest in my ears as I fell into the deepest sleep gave me a nice sense of being as I return to the pace of everyday modern life and begin my complaining anew. There is so much to learn, so much we have forgotten.