Notes From Zone 4

It was such a gorgeous day here yesterday. Big blue skies, and quite warm, in the mid-40s I think. The ground was still snow covered, and Frank drug us out for a walk in the woods. It’s amazing the number of animal tracks we saw out there — deer and moose for sure, and many small critters popping out of their winter holes for a warm day. We even saw bugs, which I found surprising. Mosquitoes in the snow? Strange. The beaver ponds out there are just beautiful.

With everyone off because of the holiday, it was grand central station here today. The snow mobile club (Hidden-Valley Snowmobile Club) is fixing the trails all through our woods. We felt sorry for them this afternoon when the skies just opened up and poured with little warning. There must have been ten guys out there with either a tractor or a four-wheeler, hauling a cart. It was very bizarre to hear the noises all day long, because it’s usually completely silent. We really like our local club. They are mostly people that we know. They tell us what they are doing. They respect our land. They’ve built several bridges over streams out on our trails. They keep the trails open for us so that we can enjoy our land even better.

Marlow Village proper is absolutely at peak right now. There’s a musky scent all over, plus people are starting to light the woodstoves. Frank took me for another walk in the woods after dinner tonight. I told him that if it looks like this less than ten minutes from the front door, there’s no way he can claim we’ve cut down too many trees. I’m not sure he bought that, though. It is so pretty out here, and the smell of fall is definitely in the air.

Frank and I took a walk out in the woods today, with our friend Paul, up from Greenfield, Massachusetts. Paul was in search of mushrooms, which turned out to be hopeless. We think it is probably too dry, too early, maybe. Frank and I wanted some water/bog plants for our pond, and we found quite a bit. The woods were gorgeous, and we have several abandoned beaver ponds that are drying up, so we even feel virtuous about rescuing the water plants. Coming up on the house from the back end like this reminds me how in the boonies we really are. From the front, we’re only about a mile from the center of town (of 700 people, but still.) Behind us are literally miles of woods. We used to get out in them more often than we have lately. I wonder if we’ll make time for it again. We really enjoyed it today.