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Robert Frost moments in the Adams Tract

2008 January 24

American Beech leaves glistening gold everywhere. Photo by Ken Moore.
American Beech leaves glistening gold everywhere. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore
Flora Columnist

A small group of us were rewarded with some beautiful and dramatic surprises during our woods walk on the Adams Tract this past Saturday afternoon. It was very cold, the rain began to fall, and it was two hours before the Tar Heel basketball game. It’s hard to believe that a small group of 11 adults and two lively youngsters would set off into the woods at the edge of Wilson Park at such a moment. But we did, and we were rewarded.

At the beginning of our adventure, I asked the two youngsters, Flora and Jasper, to serve as junior naturalists and lead us forward. Flora immediately initiated a game called “Find that Tree.” She beat us all to the base of the biggest of several sycamores and explained that she could find it because of the bark. We all admired the brilliant white upper trunks of the big trees brightening the dark gray day.

We left the big white trees behind down on the low ground as Flora ran ahead up hill into the piney woods to find leaves of different trees to show us. Young Jasper was proud to find a cone of one of the three different common pines, and that discovery was so important that it did not matter what pine it was.

As we walked from the top of the gently sloped pine forest to the steeper slopes of older deciduous trees, the sight of a distant lone sycamore down on Bolin Creek made us pause. A few steps beyond, we were stopped in our tracks by a thicket of young American Beech trees. They characteristically hold onto their leaves through the winter season. I don’t believe any of us were properly prepared for the Lilliputian forest of copper brown leaves glistening gold everywhere at eye level. A memorable moment, indeed.

We followed the trail down to the creek past big trunks of Tulip Poplars, White, Black, Northern Red and Southern Red Oaks, each with distinctive identifying bark, Flora and Jasper picking up different oak leaves along the way. By this time, the rain had turned to sleet. And as we stood along the creek’s edge, eagerly anticipating snow flakes, our various conversations were abruptly halted by a Red-shouldered Hawk swooping past us and settling not far away on a tree branch at eye level for easy viewing. The group was reverently silenced immediately until all had a good look before the hawk took flight again.

The continued silence was broken only by the crisp sounds of sleet striking tree limbs and the forest floor. Among the woods walkers was my gardening friend Sally, who described how wonderful it would be if we could remain silent long enough to hear the sleet change to snow. Walking out of the woods, the sleet did become quieter and quieter as it slowly turned to snow.

That was definitely a Robert Frost “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” moment:

“The only other sound’s
the sweep
Of easy wind and
downy flake.”

Email Ken Moore at flora@carrborocitizen.com. Find previous Ken Moore Citizen columns at The Annotated Flora (carrborocitizen.com/flora).

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