Early June; it’s the cusp of summer. As soon as I come over the hill and squeeze through the thick mountain laurel, I pick up the chorus of voices. From above, The Eastern Pe-wee (Pee-a-wee), the Pine Warbler, whose fast chirps defy mnemonics. And the Gray Tree Frog, whose trill sounds like a sedated Red-bellied Woodpecker. While I pause on the boardwalk between ponds, the gulping of Green Frogs and the basso profundo (rum…Rum) of Bullfrogs join in from each side. These 25 acres of kettle holes with overstory of conifers and oaks are a protected pocket of vigorous life, all singing in surround sound. I can imagine this glacial pitted kame terrace sounding the same long before Europeans settled in Mansfield. This little place grows on you.
Walking here this afternoon, I imagine hearing other sounds too, out of our own past. Is that rakes, saws, and clippers from 50 years ago as Archibald Buchanan and Wesley Bradley keep these trails clear? Salute to our first two ‘stewards’. As announced in the Joshua’s Trust newsletter of February 1970: “proud ownership of 22 acres of astonishingly beautiful woodland in Mansfield Center, the Bradley Buchanan Woods,” the first conservation area to come under our stewardship. It would be followed quickly by Wolf Rock and the Ashford Oak.
If this flight of fancy continues, I might even smell the pipe smoke as Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, and others sit around in 1935 and dream up The Wilderness Society. Easy to get lost in these daydreams. Easy to get lost on these trails too…you’ll end up at Mansfield Hollow Dam.
Picture you and me surreptitiously auditing one of the first forestry courses taught at the Connecticut Agricultural College. There’s Austin Hawes, in 1906, talking over the wind as he gives the class “largely in a woodlot just back of the gymnasium” among “splendid specimens of tulip and oak.” (History of Forestry in Connecticut, Austin F. Hawes, 1957). One dedicated guy. Just prior to that, when Muir camped with TR in 1903 and convinced him to increase our National Parks, there may have been chestnuts or elms here in Bradley Buchanan along with the conifers, the very year before the chestnut blight began in New York. Now the grandfathers here are only seriously old red and white pines, which were probably pinecones during those times.
There is bright green new growth on the tip of every hemlock branch, and I smell that invigorating piney aroma that always makes me want to pinch off a needle bunch (fascicle) and chew on it. So I do. Taste is the fourth sense I’ve used so far, so I caress some rugged pine bark to make it five. My senses will keep me fully here as I also hike back through history, travel through time. Is time a sense? If not, what is it?
In 1895 the Connecticut Forestry Association was formed by “a group of friends and neighbors” (Hawes). Now the CT Forest and Park Assoc., it’s the oldest private, nonprofit conservation organization in our state. Concerned, active citizens 130 years ago. You know their blue-blazed trail system, which now extends to 825 miles. National Audubon, 1905. The Sierra Club,1892. The Boone and Crockett Club,1887. The Appalachian Mountain Club,1876. Some more volunteers of America.
Let’s keep going back, shall we? Things happen imperceptibly in a forest, slow…and even slower. Great change happened at Bradley Buchanan, most of it millennia ago.
As the ice shield receded, it left an ice-cube tray here of “big blocks, some of which were buried by the sediment of meltwater rivers. When the ice blocks melted, they created kettles, the largest of which is Echo Lake. The result was isolated basins separated by sharp gravel ridges.” (Professor Robert Thorson). Interestingly, this buried stratified aquifer is not associated surface-wise with any greater waterways, despite being surrounded by them in Mansfield Hollow.
Forests were voyaging north, one seed at a time, becoming a tree-scape that would last through fires, hurricanes, and afflictions until our era, until this summer when you too can take a walk here – because it was saved from mining and development. By the time you read this, the mountain laurel blooms will be gone. So too all the people I salute here while on my stroll. But the efforts they made as non-government conservationists live on, as do the efforts we still make – for tomorrow. Pee-a-wee. Have a happy Fourth of July, volunteers.
Thanks, Thor
Time is an effect perceived by memory. No memory, no time. So perhaps memory is the sense by which we experience time. This is how I’ve taught it to my students: Memory is the sense without which all the other senses make no sense. How else to know what it is we’re hearing or smelling or…? I remember, as my father was dying from Alzheimer’s, how he could not recognize the fork on his plate. No memory, and we fail to thrive. Which is not exactly talking turtles, but then, without memory we wouldn’t know a turtle from a passing cloud. grace&peace…
Thanks, George. Another lovely piece, blending geology, dendrology and ornithology. I’m currently reading Crows, so imaging them whittling sticks into hooked tools to extract bugs from the woods.
I just finished reading 6 of George Jacobi’s blog posts for Joshua’s Trust. Some I read for first time from my “To Read” pile, while others were re-reads. I print off and read each of his written works, and neatly put them into a growing file labeled “Jacobi, George.”
Not since Anne LaBastille’s ‘Woodswoman’ and Henry Beston’s ‘Outmost House’ has this black girl from Brooklyn been so enamored of the written word and how it whole-heartedly immerses me into the depths and breadth of the mysterious and natural worlds for which I have an unyielding and impassioned appetite.
For me, George does it best. I travel every footfall of his walks and hikes through the wooded hill and dale of Joshua’s Trust. I inhale every historical and geographical lesson, and I most especially ingest his references to people and places I’ve known. George’s words draw me into magnified views of earthly things with all the smells, textures, sounds and feelings that flood one’s perceptions when walking the wood alone. He quenches my thirst for this kind of stuff, and I eagerly await my next drink of each installment. His writing feeds and nourishes a part of me that is essential to feeling rooted and right in this life.
Considering my NYC roots, I don’t know if my ardent love of the natural world is an expression of my African and Native American roots, an escape from the “concrete jungle” of life, or just part of being a product of this earth, but the reason doesn’t matter. I dive in head and heart first, and am forever grateful that my friend George Jacobi shares his gift of the written word with me and the rest of the world as he advances with purpose through the woods. Let’s just call it George!
Another beautifully written post, George. I echo what these other commenters express so well, and I appreciate how seamlessly you integrate science, the physical senses, and philosophical musings into your meanders through the woods. It’s true, you do take the reader right along with you on these much-needed respites from the chaos and mayhem happening around us. Looking forward to your next one!