A Walk in the Woods

Welcome to Wolsfeld Woods SNA

Quote of the day: “But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.” – Robert Frost

As some of the last leaves were floating down on this calm sunny day, I decided to take a walk in one of my favorite places, Wolsfeld Woods Scientific and Natural Area. These woods are a rare remnant of the original Big Woods that once covered a large part of south central Minnesota. In the springtime, I love to look for the early spring ephemeral wild flowers that bloom there before the trees have even leafed out — trilliums, hepatica, bloodroot, jack-in-the-pulpit, and dutchman’s breeches. In the summertime I usually stay away because the mosquitoes are numerous and hungry – they’ll eat you alive. The fall, in Wolsfeld woods is my favorite time of year there, it is magnificent and wonderful. Tall maples tower above your head. Golden above you, golden below your feet. Walking there feels like entering a cathedral.

Soon autumn will turn to winter as seasons always do and the cycle will begin again. Savor the fall days; they pass quickly.

God's Cathedral

Leaves coat the forest floor. Golden above me, golden below me.

In Hardwood Groves

The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the earth like a leather glove.

Before the leaves can mount again
To fill the trees with another shade,
They must go down past things coming up.
They must go down into the dark decayed.

They must be pierced by flowers and put
Beneath the feet of dancing flowers.
However it is in some other world
I know that this is way in ours.

Robert Frost

Fresh maple leaf on layers of dried leaves

Colorful leaf with dry leaf

Dragonfly on Dry Leaf

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost