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If I had a rope and pulley, I'd enjoy the breeze more fully
I am experiencing inchoate feelings about New England, which if I am lucky will resolve in a poem and if not will likely persist until or through Thanksgiving. In any case, having received some ambivalent news in the afternoon, I went for a walk. I didn't make it into the Great Meadows proper because of the density of walkers, joggers, bikers, skateboarders, and one person on a kick scooter who had decided the weather was warm enough to forget about social distancing again, but I did get some trees.
Entering even the smallest stand of trees at this time of year makes me think of Angela Carter's "The Erl-King" (1979): "The woods enclose and then enclose again . . ."
I had no idea of the name of this stream which ran alongside the thin trail I was walking. I assumed it was some kind of tributary of Mill Brook. It disappeared through a stone-lined culvert under Fottler Avenue, which according to this walking tour distributed by the Friends of Arlington's Great Meadows strongly suggests it was Fottler Brook.
It flackered off behind a screen of bushes before I could get a picture of it, but I saw a squirrel as black as our cats, which made me so happy that I called to tell my mother about it: we had them in the back yard when I was growing up. I had been taking a picture of this gate, which I would not recommend ducking under, when I heard it leaping lightly but not soundlessly through the dead leaves.
Probably Fottler Brook, looking photogenically leaf-starred.
The Meadows themselves, as close as I got to them. They are a compactly diverse combination of swamp, marsh, and wet meadow, and I always forget the area was mined for peat in the mid-nineteenth century. To my knowledge it has turned up no bog bodies, which I really feel is letting the side down. Eleven years ago some acres of the dryer portions burned and my parents' yard filled with ash-fall like Pompeii.
Four teenagers were setting up some kind of video shoot on the path right where it widened into a yard and then met the bike trail; all were masked, some eccentrically costumed, and none of them thought to move out of my way. They were arguing as I passed about which one of them was best suited to play "the Boomer." While I was waiting to see if they would actually notice me, I took a picture of some nice lichen on a nearby tree with a better background than I had planned.
It turns out I didn't sleep through this morning's earthquake after all! I've just become so used to obnoxiously rumbly trucks idling on our street that I mistook our local plate tectonics for one.
Entering even the smallest stand of trees at this time of year makes me think of Angela Carter's "The Erl-King" (1979): "The woods enclose and then enclose again . . ."
I had no idea of the name of this stream which ran alongside the thin trail I was walking. I assumed it was some kind of tributary of Mill Brook. It disappeared through a stone-lined culvert under Fottler Avenue, which according to this walking tour distributed by the Friends of Arlington's Great Meadows strongly suggests it was Fottler Brook.
It flackered off behind a screen of bushes before I could get a picture of it, but I saw a squirrel as black as our cats, which made me so happy that I called to tell my mother about it: we had them in the back yard when I was growing up. I had been taking a picture of this gate, which I would not recommend ducking under, when I heard it leaping lightly but not soundlessly through the dead leaves.
Probably Fottler Brook, looking photogenically leaf-starred.
The Meadows themselves, as close as I got to them. They are a compactly diverse combination of swamp, marsh, and wet meadow, and I always forget the area was mined for peat in the mid-nineteenth century. To my knowledge it has turned up no bog bodies, which I really feel is letting the side down. Eleven years ago some acres of the dryer portions burned and my parents' yard filled with ash-fall like Pompeii.
Four teenagers were setting up some kind of video shoot on the path right where it widened into a yard and then met the bike trail; all were masked, some eccentrically costumed, and none of them thought to move out of my way. They were arguing as I passed about which one of them was best suited to play "the Boomer." While I was waiting to see if they would actually notice me, I took a picture of some nice lichen on a nearby tree with a better background than I had planned.
It turns out I didn't sleep through this morning's earthquake after all! I've just become so used to obnoxiously rumbly trucks idling on our street that I mistook our local plate tectonics for one.
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Oh, more like senses of place and belongingness or not, not murder corn. And the fact that I seem to think of autumn as an especially New England season, but that's probably just a factor of cranberries and/or propaganda.
*hugs*
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