With a husband driving off, not into the sunset, but into the torrential outer bands of Irene, I was free to stay put for the glory of the storm. I love weather, sorry that indeed it causes so much hardship for so many, but still, there is a glorious side to it when it is as this one, more sound than fury. I sat in the garage sorting more endless piles of possessions into recycle or take along, while the wind made its path visible through the bending and twisting of the trees.
Trees that are accustomed to wind do develop stronger roots and our woods of pine and oak go through this sort of gymnastics regularly. Yet we do have a half dozen, long since dead, Pitch pines, victims of a boring beetle that girdles the tree and then it is done for. We had intended to take them down but never got around to it, and now we have one less to remove ourselves. With a huge crash the top third snapped off, impaling itself in my Rhododendron bushes. It snapped right at the point where the Red Bellied Woodpecker had its nest. I am glad the kids had long since flown. Otherwise, just a lifetime of kindling was deposited all over the yard, and with all garden implements on their way to Texas I had the joy of picking them all up by hand.
But even though I have a yeoman’s share of work each day, I still, more than ever, need to get out for the daily walk. To survey the damage, and to enjoy these last fleeting days where such grand places are just 5 minutes from my house. Today I went to the Game Farm where the path through the White pines was littered with piles of de-scaled pinecones.
It looked like a feast was had by a convention of Red Squirrels. No need for aerial acrobatics when your food is delivered to the forest floor.
In other places, limbs dangled, “Sword of Damocles” style, held by the very vines that had made them deadwood to begin with. It is always amazing that although these trees are a good mile from the beach they already where showing the effects of salt burn. All the Cherry trees had curling brown edged leaves and the Tupelos too looked more tan than they should and I will be hoping that this doesn’t spoil the brilliant red they will turn a matter of weeks.
The view of the salt marsh is unchanged by storms for their whole existence is designed to shrug off the effects of salt. Hurricanes and salt laden air, no sweat for them, and in early September they are on their way to glory. A sea of green-gold grass, bordered by the tall Phragmite, whose large plume, seed heads are cordovan colored now. Add two Great Blue Herons winging over it all and you see why I am so reluctant to leave this place.
The very first night after the storm, some of my walking ladies joined me for a quick hike to the dunes of Sandy Neck to see how life was altered there. The dunes get sculpted and re-sculpted with each storm. Sometimes the ocean facing dunes look as though they have been sliced with a knife, other times sand has been lifted and deposited to make new hills where open trails had been.
Irene had come from the south and this beach faces north so the dunes along the beach looked fine, but deeper in some of them had been swept back to reveal the harder sand beneath, sculpted to look like miniature Mesa Verde’s. Beach plums that had ripened and were on their way to being Beach prunes where scattered in a winding path were the wind had blown them. We had gone hoping for swarms of swallows but instead found the main treat to be a young coyote that loped through the valley where we pick our wild cranberries. For once we were seeing not just tracks but the track-maker, considered a 5-star attraction in my book.
So, post Irene, the world remains beautiful. I will soon become nomadic, spending the next few months staying, sometimes at a friends cottage, other times visiting daughters far and wide, an adventure around every bend. May the blog continue, perhaps, in time, under a different name,“ Yankee Naturalist Heads West” or something but not quite yet. No, not yet.
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