Summer Ramblings

Now is the time of the year in my woods when the vegetation is at its fullest and most lush. The color of the forest has darkened from the bright neon green of spring to a rich emerald tone, though hasn’t yet begun to fade towards the dull green of late August.

The woods feel more indolent than they did just a week or so ago, slower now that the frenzy of spring has passed. The evenings are still, filled with the song of wood thrush, and near dark, with the solitary call of a pewee. The pewee’s call almost echoes through the forest, the notes filling the empty spaces between the leaves and lingering long after the other birds have settled for the night.

Mid-summer has a quietness, a stillness, of its own. It’s not like the silence of winter, where a small noise travels far through the bare trees, though few noises arise to break that silence. This is more like the quiet of a room with the door closed behind me. Only someone inside the room can hear what happens in the room. Noises from the other side of the door are muffled, distant. In the summer forest, the leaves are like doors, screening away the noises from just a few trees away. And so the pewee and I are in the same room, in a way, in the same corner of the summer forest, where even such a small sound can fill the room.