We have a small mountain
range here, with deep ravines forming between the long rows of foothills. My
home perches upon one of them, built on rock, so no basement. Only a beautiful
crumbly pale red basalt everywhere.
Foothills alternating with the deep ravines, cut
away by erosion and rains and time. I love them all. Each of them has a
different terrain, with different small places and different wildlife, who do
such a sensational job of steering clear of us, you'd think their life depended
on it.
Each ravine has a stream flowing down its crevasse, fostering so much life . A
transport system from the tops of the range down down to the Connecticut River,
all this happening for so many millennia long before we came upon the scene .
So when I walk or drive or sit , always I am fond of imagining all of this land
and its ecosystems and long generations of toad and spider and squirrel and
bear and deer and skunk and possum and weasel and crow all being born and
growing up and giving birth and raising young . Imagining what the earth looked
like and smelled like and functioned like, all those years ago. All those many
generations of creatures inbred with the profound sense of territory and home.
As I walk the forest with my dog racing about, as I marvel at the high walls of
the ravine I stood within today.
As I wait for the morning sun to rise high enough in the late summer skies that
it will finally crest the ridge, and spill down magically into the forest ,
throwing its golden light upon trees and the canopy of forest , and the rich
red pine needle mulch underfoot . Created by the falling needles for hundreds
upon hundreds of years.
As the brisk wind arrives suddenly, rustling through all the trees, bowing the
limbs, setting all the fresh green leaves a shimmering
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