Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)
Beaked Hazelnut (Corylus cornuta)
Hawthorn (Crataegus)Almost overnight, my few hundred acres in the Lanark Highlands have turned green. Where there were once only desiccated leaves on the forest floor and glaring light coming through the bare trees, there are now a thousand shades of green on offer — there are delicate saplings, new leaves, fuzzy catkins and flowers everywhere one looks. My woodland has become a place of sunny groves, cool green shadows, deep quiet hollows, gracefully arching branches and blithe ecstatic birdsong.
Yesterday, I wandered in the rain and thought of Wendell Berry's Timbered Choir poems. Here then is my leafy cathedral — the trees around me and curving branches above define a woodland nave and chancel — the vistas of light and shadow rival any stained glass window ever crafted — surely no choir has ever lifted its collective voice as gloriously as the birds do from their loft among the trees.
I part the out thrusting branches
and come in beneath
the blessed and the blessing trees.
Though I am silent
there is singing around me.
Though I am dark
there is vision around me.
Though I am heavy
there is flight around me.
Wendell Berry, Woods
Yesterday, I wandered in the rain and thought of Wendell Berry's Timbered Choir poems. Here then is my leafy cathedral — the trees around me and curving branches above define a woodland nave and chancel — the vistas of light and shadow rival any stained glass window ever crafted — surely no choir has ever lifted its collective voice as gloriously as the birds do from their loft among the trees.
I part the out thrusting branches
and come in beneath
the blessed and the blessing trees.
Though I am silent
there is singing around me.
Though I am dark
there is vision around me.
Though I am heavy
there is flight around me.
Wendell Berry, Woods
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