A Walk in the woods

It took me a while to get used to Spring in New England. In the beginning it seemed that everything looked brown this time of year.



Then I began to fall in love with the look of all the new budding trees appearing brown, but rich with the promise of Spring.



Likewise I began to be passionate about the history of the place.



I am reading a journal. The name of the book is A Walk Through The Year by Edwin Way Teale. It was published in 1978.



"Seven paths lead away from the white cottage with black shutters under the hickory trees...seven paths winding away radiating toward different points of the compass.





They cross the fields that surround the house."



"They carry the sunterer to Lost Spring, where deer come to drink and to a cascade foaming over the rocks, where Hampton Brook crosses Old Woods Road."



The book leads through the same paths and trails from season to season. He writes:

"Henry Thoreau thought "it would be pleasant to write the history of one hillside for one year"



and John Keats, while vacationing in the Surrey countryside wrote to a friend: "I like this place very much. There is a hill and a dale and a little river."



Anyone who walks through the woods and explores nature is in good company. The book escorts you through walks in each season of the year. The photographs are in black and white, but richly tell the story of a New England scene.



I am aware, like the author of the book, as I walk through nature here that so many have walked these trails before me. It makes me wonder about the lives of these people. What once seemed brown and uninteresting, has been changed into a vivid tapestry of history. Where color is lacking, words dance into the depth of descriptions with romantic verse.

"Now, with my walk through the woods long ended and with darkness settled down, I sit by the fireplace at the end of this April day, rubbing dressing into the leather of my tramping boots. It is a scene from the past, the simple occupation on this night of advancing spring. It occurs to me that it might be taking place on any of the 170 years of nights that have slipped by since the house was built five years after the eighteenth century ended."

The inspiration for my digital embellishment came from many walks on many paths here. The song for this post is Music Box.