The first thing to note about our forest is age. Not the centuries of the pacific northwest, granted, but our large trees tend to maple, ash and hickory, not fast-growing aspen and willow. I once encountered a large maple that had fallen long ago and played nursery log to several other maples, now grown just as big. Age is spoken by the lush undergrowth of native and knee-high skunk cabbage flourishing in the shade.

The second thing to note about the forest is that you are not entirely welcome guest. This is suggested by the delicate succulent stems popping up everywhere you want to step, and underscored by the scattered poison ivy that occasionally reaches up on vines toward you. I’ve read some things suggesting that even the native Americans who had lived in this area were not entirely comfortable in the deep forest.

The theme of this season is busyness, seen in the proliferation of green solar panels making sugars from sunlight. Every individual is a selfish, separate world, yet interconnected. Even the birds going about their business are more native than you though they may spend most of the year somewhere else. They’re following their own agendas. Phoebes are busy feeding young. Later-arriving eastern wood pewees are still plighting their troth, singing away even late morning when the phoebes are mostly silent. Then there are the migrators that find temporary solace here, like the blackpoll warbler which still has to travel north to the boreal forest before he can start breeding.

In the green world of the forest, I find solace from my own busyness.