One November Morning

I came to the stand late this morning. I came, not really for deer. That’s just an excuse to come sit in these peaceful woods of the creek bottom, so alive and separate from the goings on of men. Right now, I hear Carolina wrens singing their songs. Flickers chatter from the trees as do red-bellied woodpeckers. The yellowing leaves of hickory and the oak leaves in various shades of brown and red are backlit by the morning sun, lighting the woods up in a warm and soul-satisfying glow.

I am facing South toward the creek, which is hidden behind the tangle of undergrowth. There is a sweet bay magnolia tree about 15-20 yards in front of me. The tallest trees around me are hickory, swamp chestnut oak, and willow oak. The bottomland floor is covered with leaves and here and there are fallen trunks. The old lost masters of this realm, who now feed the young and old.

A Northern flicker is working its way up an old and dead standing trunk, riddled with woodpecker holes. He lets loose over and over with a piercing call that sounds like an old rusty hinge. Soon he is joined by two more of his kind. Together they wind their way around the old pocked trunk in a thorough search for insects hiding in the crevices, prey, on which they can fuel their wild energy. The birds fly back and forth among other trees as they exhaust one after the other. Their yellow primaries are lit by the sun shining through them with every stroke of the wing.

Phoebes call from the understory trees and towhees and cardinals from the brushy tangles. Squirrels scurry over the lower trunks and downed trees, gathering their larder, shaking their brushy tails and scolding each other.

More oak and hickory leaves flutter loose from their mother trees with every occasional light breeze. They make soft ticking sounds as they brush bare shoots and the remaining leaves of other trees on their descent. Those from the water oak in which I sit fall into my lap and onto the brim of my hat. This periodic fluttering of leaves is one of my favorite things. A soft, gentle descent, soothing in sight and sound. A fitting transition for the change in work from that of gathering sunlight by which to feed an individual tree, to the slow nourishment of the bottomland soil on which their neighbors, young and old will gather sustenance. Something with so elegant a design as the leaf deserves to go out in such style. A time to every purpose.

Through the trees here and there I see a leaf caught by a thread of spider webbing. Dangling on the end of the silken braids shining in the sun, the leaves spin and twist in the wind like a child’s whirlygig. Further in toward the creek I can see a tall spruce pine through the disrobing branches. This and a few other spruce pines in the creek bottom are massive specimens, as tall or taller than some of the big hickories and oaks. With their large plates of bark and short, twisted needles they look out of place here, not because they don’t belong, but because so few creek bottoms with trees of this age are found in our part of the world.

Shelf mushrooms and other fungi grow along the trunks of both standing and fallen timber in various stages of decay, doing their own slow work. Green moss, shaded much of the year by tree canopies, covers the brace roots of large old trees, giving the woods a fantastical appearance, as if a gnome, at any time, could scamper over them into some hidden crevice. Resurrection fern, green and spread open, carpets the limbs of one old fallen giant like emerald fur.

Tree frogs make gentle, muted croaks every now and then, in a timid whisper. A young six-point buck quickly passes in an opening 75 yards or so in front of me, still making his morning rounds, searching for does that will have nothing to do with him. Their rejections don’t dampen his spirit or stop him from trying.

A new fluttering of leaves falls to the ground like a bright gold murmuration of birds. A Ruby-crowned kinglet perches on a branch close enough for me to see the white rings around it’s eyes. Titmice scold everything around them and are joined in this condemnation by Carolina chickadees. A wren perches on a swamp palmetto, singing proudly. Birds are coming in by the waves now, individually and in groups. I curse myself for not bringing my binoculars to the stand and strain to distinguish the surfeit of birdsongs in this woodland chorus, one from another.

The shadows of the trees move with the sun, leaving migrating windows of light in shafts and slivers. It is this filtering of light through the trees playing against the long shadows that lend the creek bottom its beauty and mystery. This is what draws us here to explore and imagine as children and to reflect and rest as adults. For some of us, deer are just an excuse to be out here without seeming like some sort of kook, just sitting in the woods.

Imagine. All this and so many more quiet wonders taking place here every day. And no one here to see it. A treasure, unknown. Just another November morning in the bottomland woods along Limestone Creek.