Walking through the woods near the Androscoggin River, NH
We walk on a mat of shining club moss, a bright green plant that covers the ground like a carpet, padding our footsteps. Tiny rills, small streams, and wide muddy slews cross the terrain at random, emerging from beneath vegetation to trickle or slide along a few yards before disappearing again. In the sandy deltas formed by the streams grow fiddlehead ferns, which are just beginning to unfurl their curled heads; they look like hair green bass clefs. Clusters of false hellebore burst from the putty-colored alluvial flats in fountains of wide, slick green blades. Every stump, every fallen log is covered with mosses, fungi, and lichens. We pass a hip-high stump completely covered, as if spray-painted, with a bright green growth so fine and thin that the comblike contours of the stump and the texture of its bark show through; when one of us breaks off a knob, it comes loose with hardly a sound, revealing soft blond wood. Logs litter the ground, forcing us to step constantly over or upon them. Only about half of these hold us; our feet plunge through the others, pulverizing the rotting wood into mulch. Trees grow atop fallen trees, sending their roots through them to the soil below (p 38, David Dobbs and Richard Ober, The Northern Forest, White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 1995).
January 1, 2022 *The Northern Forest* Androscoggin River NH