Nothing to see here, folks.
Today I left the trail and went walking through the woods, kicking up last fall’s leaves and tripping over sticks and stumps, looking for a deer path, a surprising shelf mushroom, a fallen hornet’s nest — or some other treasure.
Looking down all I found was duff - shed vegetative stuff like leaves, pine needles, sticks, bark, stems, branches, partial walnut shells and acorn parts — all in various stages of decomposition, all becoming the nutrient-rich bridge between the soil and the above ground vegetation that will soon become a thick green woodland.
"I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees."
Henry David Thoreau
Looking up all I saw was a lacy network of bare limbs and branches, raggedy baubles of leafy squirrel nests, the green black husk of a forgotten walnut tucked into the crotch of a tree, an abandoned bird nest, and the evidence of many woodpeckers. Once, not today, I found a pair of wire-framed eyeglasses dangling from the end of a low branch.
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