A Walk in the Country
by Grant W. Wood
I was raised in rural New Brunswick and some of my fondest childhood memories are of the Sunday walks in the country with all of our family. Father had developed a keen eye for things lurking in the undergrowth, having spent years making his living working in the woods cutting logs, pulpwood and pit props. He would point out to us children such things as the Lady's Slipper, the Trailing Arbutus, the Jack-in-the Pulpit or small animals hiding in the brush. Those memories of the walks in the country have influenced the things I like to do as an adult.
I now enjoy motorcyle riding because of the sights, sounds, and smells one gets to experience during the leisurely rides over the twisting country roads. As a member of a local motorcycle group, I had the privilege to attend a biker's camping weekend in the country at a friend's home near Burnstown, Ontario. He lives miles off the main road in a rustic looking log cabin and has a large lawn we used as a campground.
Arising
early one morning, and not wanting to stumble about waking up the other campers, I decided
to take a leisurely walk down the country road towards a lake. For those of you who
miss these golden opportunities to enjoy the country setting and nature at it's best I
will attempt to describe some of the sights and sounds that I encountered. I
recently returned to the setting, a few weeks later in the season, and tried to capture
some of the sights on film.
Walking at a leisurely pace, with numerous
meanderings back and forth across the unpaved roadway, one notices
the stillness of the early morning and the occasional sound carried through the crisp air
to the attentive ear. The mournful lilting sound of the Loon, the buzzing of
insects, the chipping of the occasional Chickadee, and the sharp, short, cry of the
Bluejay can be heard over great distances.
The early morning light illuminates the rusty
red panels of an old barn roof. One stands and observes the
geometric arrangement of the steel roof panels and the rust patterns randomly scattered
over the panels. Allowing the eye to scan the front of the barn one's eyes fixate
on a few missing vertical barn boards and the wagon wheels, inside the barn, framed by the
openings.
The flowers, highlighted by their vivid colours against the predominately green vegetation, stand with heads up awaiting the approaching sunlight beginning to break through the early morning clouds and the swirling mist. A golden flower, the Yellow Hawkweed, similar to a dandelion, stands with it's head bowed in reverence, respecting the early morning tranquillity and awaiting the arising sun.
Closer inspection of the vegetation along the roadway
reveals a glinting crystal caused by a single spherical drop of water resting in the small
hollowed top of a puckered, ridged bud that has not yet opened. 
Borne upon a stem about a foot above the ground one would have
missed this wondrous sight if the glinting light had not enticed you to look closely.
Toadstools arise from the undergrowth, camoflaged so
well they are almost invisible, their position given away by the moisture collected near
the rim and highlighted by the reflected light.
The occasional droplet of water from the accumulated dew can be heard falling from leaf to leaf within the canopied forest. A leaf gently sideslips downward, one way, then the other until it lands on the forest floor, almost noiselessly. A large caterpillar nest, covering six to eight feet of a branch, is a source of wonderment. How many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of feet of silken thread is there in the nest? How many tent caterpillars did it take to make the nest, and how long did it take to construct? Their nest is their monument to life and their legacy is a leafless tree branch.
The perfect arrangement of three sumac branches is offset by the two that are mis-shapen and deformed. All the new branches are light green, compared to the darker green of the older foliage. Looking along the sumac branches one notices two blood red leaves on a stalk of green leaves. Why did only those two leaves change colour? What chemical within the plant could be so selective that it only chose those two leaves?
The tip of the Staghorn Sumac has a velvet red blossom, made up of hundreds of small circular blossoms. One's spirits are raised by the explosive magenta blossom of a Bull
Thistle, then disheartened by the eviscerated remains of a field mouse lying on the
roadway. 
It's white tail curled in a question mark as if asking why it must give it's life at this instant in time. Looking down, one sees the delicate flower of the Aster and the hundreds of
timothy-like grass heads, highlighted in the sun. The bottle brush heads of the
grass is interspersed with small green seeds and the brown of the ripe seeds.
There are deep
blue berries held forth on stalks, clustered in groups of five or six. One
joyously plays with the orange blossomed Spotted Touch-me-not and tries to make the seed
pods explode, propelling the seeds hither and yon. The miniature pea-like seed pods
split longitudinally from the outermost end and the halves curl one revolution. It
is too early in the fall and the seeds are not ripe enough preventing one from reliving
one's youthful experience.
A giant oak stands by the roadside and as you look up you see the apparent strength of the tree and the huge umbrella of the foliage. A white pine, erect, with it's multitude of dark branches covering the tapered trunk, looks almost evil and grasping compared to a branchless aspen with light bark and a long straight trunk. The acidic pine needles carpet the ground, challenging plant life and losing only to the hardiest survivors. A dead tree lies nearly horizontal with the skeletal remains of it's branches reaching skyward. Another lifeless tree is used by the spiders and is covered by a dozen or more webs, straining the air currents, attempting to catch a flying morsel of food.
The ubiquitous moss and
litchens attempt to completely carpet a boulder by the roadside. The purple
vetch, with it's chaotic array of vines, has small blossoms reminiscent of the Snapdragon
florets. A rose bush presents it's waxy red rose hips from between the thorny stems
and foliage. Green leaves in the undergrowth stand out because they are completely
outlined with a narrow yellow border. The grasses are matted down with animal
trails and a bee buzzes around haphazardly searching for a blossom.
A raspberry type plant displays a
perfect half hemisphere of fruit, reddish orange, fringed and
interspersed with short golden spikes. 
The milkweed holds up a
selection of round, tapered, spiky pods with slightly curled ends, waiting for fall to
burst into parachuted seeds. Another large rock, almost hidden in the sumacs,
supports a small garden of plants on it's top surface.
The gently swirling mist pearlizes all the spider webs and highlights them against the grass and trees. The dew laden webs reveal their intricate patterns and one especially notices the erratic or broken strands, standing out from the symmetry of the rest of the web. A single silken strand stretches two or three feet from one bush to another, the graceful downward arc of the catenary strung with translucent miniature droplets of moisture. The whisper of a breeze gently wafts by the strand causing it to sway to and fro. Nature cannot create a more a perfect decoration.
Near the water stands the dead black cones of
the Prairie Coneflower, on stalks high above the grass. The brook from the lake is
heard trickling over the beaver dam and the mosquitos whine and
attempt to find a protein rich source for their future offspring. 
Nearby grows a tall grass plant that reminds one of Japanese paintings of the Bamboo
plant. The old unused bridge is losing it's identity to
the creeping vegetation and the buttercup is waving it's outstretched petals, beckoning a
pollinator. The sunlight backlights a large leaf highlighting the intricate
branching pattern of the ribs and veins.
A spruce tree offers forward a bouquet of vine blossoms
while a chipmunk admonishes you with it's incessant chatter. You stand and watch
the patterns in the mist and realize that you can see the droplets move left, then right,
even up and down as the wind direction randomly changes. 
One
wonders why a tree has only one small branch with all of the leaves brown and dying, while
the rest of the tree is vibrant with life. Another tree has a branch with only a
few leaves at the tip changing color.
One has a couple of fleeting seconds to see a dragon fly, actually the Brown Darner (Boyeria vinosa), alight on a leaf at eye level only an arm's length away. The four gossamer wings are trimmed with short rods of yellow on their leading edge near the end of the wing. The veins within the wing show up as delicate borders for the transparent panels.
The return trip from the lake to the campsite brings to an end this journey of discovery and awe. Leaving the roadway and returning to the campsite one glances skywards and murmurs "Thank you for these few hours of bliss, solitude, and discovery with Your creations".
Please send correspondence to:
wyliecoyote@igs.net
file last updated October 8, 1998