2/20/11

As I walked along the trails of South Hill this past weekend, a new thought occurred to me.  I was wandering up there alone, simply observing my surroundings and thinking about how vastly different everything looks from season to season.  Everything appears so bare now – cold, deserted, dead.  Heading from the power line cut back into the forest by post #9, I gazed upon the area that I remember pulling endless amounts of Japanese stilt grass from.  I looked at the ground in disgust, thinking of how many hours I will probably be spending next fall in the same spot, pulling even more newly seeded stilt grass.  Suddenly the thought occurred to me that even though we use the phrase, “the dead of winter”, really nothing here is dead – it is simply in hibernation, hidden under a 6-inch blanket of snow.  That monstrous stilt grass seed is lying in wait, ready to spring from its shell at a moment’s notice.  The same could also be said about the beautiful ferns and the precious endangered glaucous sedge.  Nothing is dead; the forest is merely a sleeping giant. 

Amber Zadrozny

Environmental Studies ‘13