Potentials

Minds tend to extrapolate the present into the future. It’s hard to remember the forest clothed in summer, and easy to imagine winter will stretch on like the snow cover stretches into the forest as far as the eyes can see. It laps up against tree trunks and rolls over fallen branches. The surface of snow unites the forest with the pond, making the world seem like one big shallow sea.

Why shouldn’t it, since snow is water in another guise? Yet the difference between liquid and solid water is not merely academic, and oxygen-breathing mice can build tunnel systems in the crystalline structure of snow that shelters them from both the freezing air and predatory eyes. This is a feat they can’t replicate in liquid water or ice. But the solid state is impermanent.

As if to prove the world is never as it seems, this week a storm system brought heavy rains down on the snow that had survived a recent warm snap. The rain swept the land clean of snow so that what had been a virtual sea idly covering the land became active water with places to go. Rivers swelled. Water roared down gorges and flew into the air as great veils of mist.



In the forests and bogs by my job, low areas teemed with muddy water. Creamy sheets of ice lay at or below the surface. The snow melt exposed green moss and rusty dried ferns. The world was saturated by rain and saturated in rich colors. Over it all hung the salty exhalations of decay from disturbed wetland soils.

Just as the snow had the dormant potential to be liquid, undeveloped land can have the potential to hold lots of water. Water can move pretty easily on roads and flat lawns, but bogs have depressions to fill and vegetation, both alive and deceased, to get in the way. It’s hard for the mind to see flooding that’s not happening. Unlike the bloom of summer, the water retention potential of natural areas is best noticed when it’s already gone.

The winter forest can seem very empty compared to its spring and summer counterparts. I have to look harder to appreciate it. The forest does not ring with song, but find a winter flock and the trees seem full of chirping and foraging chickadees. Male goldfinches have donned duller plumages, but cardinals are paint drops scattered in the snowy landscape.

In the relative quiet, it’s not unusual to hear the tapping of a foraging woodpecker or the repeated kuk of a pileated woodpecker which, thanks to creative use of the sound in jungle movies, puts one in mind of a much more steamy setting rather than a forest of naked trees under-layered by snow softening in a winter sun. I’ve been seeing these birds around lately. I often think that a blue jay is crossing the pond at work, then notice that the black and white wing pattern is more striking and the head is bright red. My favorite encounters are out in the woods when in a rush of wings, a bird which is roughly the length from my elbow to my fingertips folds up against a large tree trunk nearby.

Sometimes what appears to be a mated pair will land on trees near each other, two stately birds whose only difference is the male has a red mustache. Pairs seem to keep to the same territory year-round, defending it more rigorously during the breeding season. Young birds may disperse during migration, such as the two female hatch-year birds which the banders I know caught last year. Both people came away bloody.

Like all flying birds (as opposed to flightless birds), pileateds weigh much less than they “should” based on mammal standards but are very strong in the ways they need to be. The big chunks of forest at work and at our house provide good habitat for pileateds, which through their excavating work provide services for other forest dwellers. Old nest holes are a good resource for smaller cavity nesting birds from wrens to chickadees. Many non-birds also take shelter or residence in these holes. The rectangular cavities pileateds excavate to get to beetles and ants can provide food for other insect-eaters.

There are plenty of other woodpeckers around these two pieces of forest, but the pileated is the largest and most sensitive to forest maturity. Trees in this area have gained a huge amount of ground since the early years of European clear cutting, and pileated woodpeckers have rebounded from widespread hunting and habitat loss. But not all wooded areas are equal. Density of pileateds appears to decrease with forest fragmentation. That is, the more forests are broken up by other habitat like fields, farms or lawns, the fewer pileateds can live there. Several other species have decreased numbers in the fragmented habitat we create everywhere, although some wildlife species prefer this kind of habitat. These are the ones you see everywhere, like deer and robins.

Not just any forest will do, though. Pileateds need big trees to nest and roost in, and they need trees full of tasty insects. There’s a saying that a healthy forest is full of disease, and that’s certainly true from a woodpecker’s point of view. Age of the forest is less important as long as there are some old dead trees still standing. Snags, as standing dead trees are known in forestry, are certainly not lacking in our forest. Some trunks shed clumps of bark but others are identical to the living trees surrounding them until I look up to where they break off suddenly. Often then I’ll notice many holes from insects benefiting from the death, and sometimes holes made by their pursuers. These signs of life ring out, even in the silence.

Signs of life

Gray squirrel in a moment of indecision.


Evidence of insects and a foraging woodpecker.



A snag (standing dead tree) much loved by woodpeckers.


Life from death.

The winter world is introspective. All around us beings slumber, and our energies move inside after three long seasons of gardening. The last couple spinach crops are frozen under a layer of snow. Fortunately there's a lot to do as we move back into our radically remodeled house.

I take breaks to walk outside, where everything was so still yesterday. Snow rested along top of motionless branches. Muffled sounds came from distant beings doing distant things. Geese honked as they made their evening movements, traffic rushed along, and two pops of gunshot rang out. This is the country, after all.

My footsteps exposed green ferns through the snow. Like my spinach (still edible as of a few days ago), life bides its time in the cold. I wondered if enough light bled for the spruce and pine needles up above to photosynthesize, or if they idled on stored energy like our solar-panel driven electric system under the solid gray sky.

The winter flocks were elsewhere, and not even a chickadee called in the silence. Squirrels and rabbits were present in signs, tracks crossing my path on unknown errands and their lingering scents which my nose is unable read. If the absent birds left scent trails I had no way to know, my weak nose sniffling in the cold, sterile air. No matter how many winters I go through, I always seem unaccustomed to it when it comes back around.