I went down into the slough the other day because it was cooling off outside, and I needed to walk in the trees for a while.
I had thought we’d gotten enough rain lately, but both Little Sister and Big Sister—our two creeks—are mostly mud right now. The crawdads don’t seem to mind. Their little mud huts are everywhere, and I was glad to see them.
Under a log I found a glossy brown salamander, along with a beetle larva. And everywhere I looked, the hurricane-downed trees were sprouting King Alfred’s Cake, or carbon ball fungus: strange, hard black lumps growing out of the wood. I’ve read they make excellent fire starters. I may have to put that to the test.
I haven’t been up the East Ridge trail much in the two years since the hurricane. So many trees came down that my old trails are blocked in too many places. But this time, just as I was heading out of the woods, I noticed a new deer trail climbing up the slope. It neatly bypassed the worst of the destruction.
Of course I followed it.
There was one challenging spot where I had to climb over a waist-high fallen tree. Not much of a problem for a deer, which can simply leap over it. A little more complicated for a woman with Parkinson’s, although I had a good walking stick and took my time.
Eventually the trail brought me to a place I recognized.
There’s a big old magnolia along our original trail that’s been rotting through at the bottom for some time. From below, you can actually see all the way through the trunk. I’d never been able to see it quite like this before. Our old trail doesn’t have this view.
But because the deer trail approaches from a different direction—well below the old trail—suddenly the tree itself became a window.
I stood there for a while and looked around, trying to pick out where our trail continued above me. I couldn’t quite locate it, though, so I didn’t push on. There will be a next time.
It’s been challenging learning to live with how much this place has changed.
And it’s not just the hurricane. In the past couple of years, our seep—the little stream that trickled out of the mountainside beside the house—has changed course and gone underground. I miss it terribly. I miss seeing salamanders and blue crawdads appear whenever it rained. The creeks in the slough keep shifting their paths. Our not-so-little footbridge is about to fall into the creek, and eventually we’ll have to figure out how to move it so we can still cross, because the cut where the creek runs there is very steep.
We’ve had more than a dozen beautiful old trees taken down because they were damaged or dangerous: four ash trees, five hickories, and three gorgeous hundred-foot-tall trees: two cherries and a poplar. Other trees have fallen because of wind or snow. I miss every one of them.
There have been so many changes that sometimes it feels as though I’m walking through a place I know intimately, and yet don’t quite recognize anymore.
Maybe this new deer trail is part of learning how to accept that.
I miss what was here before. I do. I think I always will. But the mountain is alive, and living things change. Water finds new paths. Trees fall. Other trees rot from the inside and become windows. Deer make trails where there weren’t trails before.
And sometimes, if I pay attention, I find that there is still a way up the ridge.
I just have to learn to take the new path.
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