Location Taken: Arcadia, Michigan
Time Taken: December 2006
My grandparents have a large forest on their land. It’s mostly jack pines, a remnant from an old pine plantation that used to be in the area. Most of it’s gone wild again, but there are still a few sections where all the trees grow on a grid pattern.
Jack pines are used for low-quality lumber needs, like utility poles and firewood, and grow tall and straight. This does mean that the lower branches get cut off from sunlight as the forest grows taller, though. The tree cuts off resources to these non-productive parts, and they eventually fall to the ground as deadwood.
Which means that there’s usually at least some limbs down each time we walk on the trails in the woods. So, in order to keep the trails clear, we take the branches and toss them in piles. They grow quite large over the years, and rabbits nest in them quite happily.
This one’s a bit less neat of a pile than most of them. Partly because it’s at the edge of the pine woods, by a stand of deciduous trees, so there’s more of a mix of components, and they don’t stack as well. And of course, it’s at the edge of the woods, where the winds can get in and blow leaves and light branches around.
And then there’s my Grandmother’s influence. She likes leaving odd things around the woods. Like this old terracotta stove thing that no longer cooked right. It’s got a specific name, but I can’t recall it at all. It lived on some stone stairs for a while, and was occasionally used for outdoor cooking. Since my grandparents aren’t the type to just toss something when it breaks, Grandma flipped it over, decided the opening looked like a mouth, painted some eyes and ears on it, and stuck it in the woods.
Which, when you really think about it, is only right and proper.
