Through Field And Meadow

The first photo is oriented about the way you usually see a map with the top being about north.  The mostly white expanse is the beaver pond with the original house to right of center.  That’s a set of deer tracks meandering past the house, in a southwesterly direction, and entering the roadway the photo was taken from.  Did you note the cattails that appear to be right at the end of the pipe?

In the second photo those same tracks appear in the bottom left corner, go down over the bank, and continue in a southwesterly direction going away.  The sluice pipe going under the roadway may orient you a bit more.  The deer left the pond near the western end of the dam.  As I took these photos I wondered if a deer cannot tell the difference between ice and land when covered with snow?  It seemed to have taken the path of least resistance, across the unobstructed ice, but would it have chosen the same route if the snow was not there?

On my return trip, just behind our horse pasture, I spotted these two trees in the third photo, a pine on the left, and a spruce on the right.  I marveled that they had grown to this size in only a few years.  I bought this land a little less than 35 years ago.  At that time this was a hay meadow.  I baled hay from it for several years.  When I no longer kept cattle I let it return to a more wild state, but I did brush hog it maybe about 15 years ago.  These trees have grown up since then.  They have seeded themselves, and evergreens are usually the first trees in mother nature’s grand scheme of reforestation.  Long after my demise they will give way to the deciduous species.

This is another long-needle-pine, growing very near the pair of trees in the former photo.  It too has grown unattended, showing how tenacious a tree can be when trying to establish a foothold in our earth.

Photo five shows yet another healthy pine with several more in the background.  All have self-seeded as my hay meadow gradually returns to a natural state, after a couple of hundred years of mankind’s manipulation.