OWL-DRAGON

Friday Morning Run

My little postage stamp of a woods is nothing like a real wilderness, but for me it is a refuge that I look forward to for ninety minutes each Friday. This morning it was there were lowering clouds and rumbles of thunder and I expected to get drenched any minute but the rain held off to just after I finished.

The light from the constantly changing sky animated the woods and brought it to life in way that a clear blue sky wouldn’t have. The woods are that bright, alive green of late spring and the large, older trees really do seem like pillars in a temple.

Along the trail I stop to tie my shoe and as I look up there is a deer just in front of me. She was coming down the trail in the opposite direction – as soon as she saw me she turned and disappeared noiselessly in that magically way of deer.

This is a comforting wood; it is cool and damp and very quiet – there is bird chatter but not the cacophony of early spring.

The only new disturbance is a man made clearing near the arboretum deer fence. There are new plantings encased in plastic tubes – protection I suppose from the deer. They will be quite beautiful someday, but now it is a little jarring, a strange alien intrusion in “my” wood.

I round the field where I saw the fox kits two weeks ago, but they are gone and the den appears, at least for now, abandoned.

One last stretch of wood and then the field that leads back to the highway.

As always I am reluctant to leave this sanctuary but it has given a very lovely morning.