During this “Winter-Without-Snow” I have taken advantage of the record-setting weather to wander fields and forest lanes which I would not usually go onto. Many of these places are not available to me Spring through Fall when the hay is growing and the ticks are more active. Right now, the hay has been cut and most insects are dormant due to their season .
Last week I went to what was for me an unexplored field surrounded by woods. I intended to walk the perimeter which was two miles around its full circuit. When I added in my excursions into the woods surrounding the field, my walk was a very pleasant three miles – and maybe a bit more. As I walked the edges of the field, I would walk down into the surrounding woods to look at some item that had caught my eye. Perhaps it was an old bottle reflecting the sun, or a particularly interesting shape of a tree, or a stand of bushes full of bright red winter-berries.
I was drawn further into the woods by a stream that flowed near the edge of the woods. The rains of the week before had mostly drained out of the hilly woods surrounding the field. The stream was flowing quietly. It carried a sparkling brightness in the filtered sunlight and was worth exploration. The woods were not dark like northern coniferous forests full of evergreens. This was a bright, southern mixed hardwood forest of bare branches and filtered sunlight. The branches, bare of leaves, allowed the sunlight to penetrate through what in summer is a darkening canopy and brighten the area below. It was bright and inviting so I directed my trek along the course of the stream.
It was easy to tell that the stream would sometimes run high and fast as the banks of the stream were steep and without much growth. Further up the hill into the forest I could see something that stretched across the stream. When I got to it, I found it was an abandoned foot-bridge. But it was not a bridge that could be used. It was missing boards. A few were in place, but other dangled above the narrow stream. Only one of the natural-timber cross-pieces was still in place, spanning the stream to the opposite bank. No animal other than a raccoon or a mouse would be able to cross it easily.
Once in times past, the bridge had spanned the stream. It went from one place to another. It had lain at some point further up the stream. Then a day of heavy rain and high water, perhaps in a hurricane, had lifted the bridge and pushed it to this current spot. On my side of the stream the bridge was open. On the opposite bank the timber span ended at the base of a large tree.
Even though the bridge could not now be crossed, it still caused me to wonder. What is on the other side? I could easily see the other side just across the small gully; the distance was less than 30 feet. But if I could have walked across the bridge, what would I actually see? I would see the same trees on that far bank that I could see from my current spot. But on that far side I would be able to reach out and touch those trees. I would experience that distant shore.
I have never seen a bridge that I did not want to cross in order to touch the other side.
And that has made all the difference. (1)
- Borrowing the closing from Robert Frost’s, The Road Not Taken.