Week 1 Nature Descriptive Attempt

Around our house is a swath of trees. I have looked out upon those trees for all of my life, and walked out amongst them and the many items in the woods often, as I always will.

As I enter the woods, the chicken coop is there. The chickens are always entertaining to watch. There are many jewel weed plants around the pen, and sometimes I will get some jewel weed seeds for them, which they enjoy greatly.

Once into the woods, there is a path through the trees, and up to the compost pile. That is where my mother puts everything compostable, and that is also where she gets soil for her garden. I don't go there too often. Nothing interesting except for dozens of flies buzzing about.

Crossing through the woods, there is a pit in the ground, usually full of mud. Occasionally, in the really wet time of the year, there will be some water in it, but often, it is a hole filled with mud, that understandably is rather interesting to step into.

Following the path the other way along, I pass through ferns and pine needles on the soil, to a large rock. It has a flat top, and has always been rather nice to sit on. Right next to it is a fallen down pine tree, which acts as a cave with the branches shielding it. The top, where the branches were doubled back over each other, was solid enough to prevent most rain through. As time passed, the branches rather thinned out, leaving it more as a rain director than a blocker.

Up towards the back of our property is a tree. In falling down, it had landed on another log which was already on the ground. The result of that was that the log extended out into the air, a good ways off the ground at one end. At the other end were the roots, still half stuck in the ground with the rest of the roots sticking high up into the air. My sister and I would try walking across the log, attempting to balance all the way down it without falling off.

A well worn path leads twisting between trees, over many roots exposed to the surface, and down to a stream. The stream is very small, especially compared to what most people would consider as one. It is part of the Penobscot river and at its beginnings in first emerging from the ground, having traveled a long ways underground, it filled a large pool. Then it overflowed, and headed down through our woods, widening slightly as it went, starting off at only about six inches wide. It went back underground occasionally, then back up, then widened into a veritable stream of several yards across. Except in the melt season, the stream is very thin, or gone altogether, but some places in the wet season can be probably a foot deep and several yards across. It leads to the stone wall that marks the boundary of our property, and carries underneath it into our neighbor's yard.

Right in front of the rock wall, is a large tree. A small branch or tree, about six inches wide, is resting upon one of its branches several feet off the ground. That branch extends across the water, reaching the bank on the other side. My sister and I would often walk across this thick beam. She would always say that each year as we got older, it would break, but it is still holding firm even now.

As are the rest of the woods.