Listening to the Woods

In Illinois in midwinter, the trees are bare and brown. The sky is generally gray, and on most days there isn’t enough sun to satisfy my cat. Without leaves in the way, I can see a mile over to the next hill where there are more brown trees. Brown doesn’t interest me much. I prefer green.

The woods are quiet as I walk down the hill into the Forest Park Preserve, follow the creek around the bend where the water has carved a channel into the land, and find a place to sit. Today there is sun, and I lean back against a tree and wait.

At first everything around me seems to be frozen or dead, as if all life has moved underground with winter, back to its roots as it rests from the activities of summer. When I look closer, though, I see the forest’s patchwork of life. I touch one plant and try to feel the tiny vibrations as it prepares for new growth in the warmth of spring.

The trees and bushes are half a dozen shades of brown, and the dry leaves that paper the ground are a spectrum of muted colors — brown, of course, but also blue, red, yellow and purple. The lichen on boulders are yellow, gray, black, orange and sage.

There are also signs of death. Several trees have limbs that have lost their bark. The trunk of one tree is bent at a right angle fifty feet up. It won’t grow any new leaves.

A slight breeze drifts along the hollow of the creek bed and rustles the leaves. Squirrels emerge to dig for acorns. White-breasted nuthatches twitter in the trees, and high overhead a red-tailed hawk circles as it watches the ground for movement.

From somewhere on my left, a crow caws. A response comes from the other direction, and a laid-back conversation begins as each crow thinks about something witty to say before responding.

When I was here before, several deer wandered through, and I spotted a barred owl.

There is a spirit to these woods, and I am grateful to be here.