WINTERTIME IN THE PIEDMONT
BY CHARLIE ALLER
Winter in the meadows, thickets and forests of the Piedmont is a time of grey branches and nascent growth. The land is seldom covered in a thick blanket of snow these days. The winter world is all composed of of small signs of life, understated from afar but more and more raucous the closer you get: dormant buds, tiny creeping greenery, and expectant sprouts from rhizomes down below. It is a time to appreciate quieter aspects of life, as life comes forth covertly.
The Little Bluestem crew recently spent some time together exploring a nearby woodland. As we walked in the woods, we listened to the bustle of birds foraging. We kept eyes out for frigid fungi- Oyster and Velvet Foot cracking through the bark of a Tulip Poplar. We foraged for dried fruits on Haw, Frost Grapes, and Persimmon. A boot-toe scattering leaves revealed a Black Cohosh shoot, blanched purplish white as it waited for Spring sunlight. As the parent plants sleep, the seeds of the winter woodland are on the move- driven by winds to new places, carried by mud in a hoof or in the belly of a bird. Snakeroot and Goldenrod seeds fly dramatically. Vibrant Beautyberry clusters will be snacked-on when other foods run low.
Viewing the stripped-down skeletal aspects of the plant world is a singularly blessed pursuit. Attending in stillness, the inner movements of trees become visible, branchlets arranged so diligently in search of light. The branches silhouetted against a grey sky cut the world into windows, and from the ground we see a vignette of what those branches are so focused on. With luck one may notice a protuberance or uneven crown normally obscured by leaves. The stories our elders can tell us! They have borne witness to every passing day in this place since they sprouted; it has not been all sunshine and thunderstorms begetting rainbows. Sometimes in the winter ice comes, or a wet snow after a warm day, and branches with a future reaching toward the sky are split and cast-down under the weight of water. Whole treetops crash onto others. Sometimes a fungus or a protozoa tickles or prickles a tree just right and their body twists and turns, a knotted fist of wood sending growth flowing out, heedless of gravity.
The understory of shrubs is like a pack of rooting animals, snuffling around for what scraps of light there are- and unable to eat their fill with so few leaves between them. Spicebush berries, dried and fragrant with orange oils, hang alongside the forming buds of spring growth. The masses of delicate Spicebush branches form a roiling surface, following the land like fog, or a dense pack of hogs. Where Greenbrier grows, this density bites, and we have to pick our way carefully. Small trees bask in the sun they may not enjoy for many summers to come. Some of them will succumb to the shade over time, or be bitten off by a deer before they can grow taller. Underfoot, below this welter of shrubs, the leaves of the previous season waft their final exhalations, sweet and poignant. In times past the fallen leaves were joined into mats of duff by diligent fungi, preserved as a placenta over the soil, protecting and feeding the micro-organisms that would someday feed the plants again in turn. Since the proliferation of European humans and European earthworms, anything as delicate as a leaf that comes into contact with the soil is dragged below by a fleshy, serpentine undertaker. Nightcrawler, Red Wriggler, Jumping Worm: they take the protection and sustenance of the forest’s skin and devour it, leaving crumbs.
For us bipedal and technological mammals, the wet, cold, and grey act more like a periodic reminder than an unbroken tract of liminal death. Perhaps if our biology was more akin to other large predators in this part of the world, we would experience the death and rebirth of the world as a dream, hibernating through the dearth of light and food. Instead, we are there to witness every aspect firsthand in the three dimensional world of sensation, and our imagination can complete the cycle. We can see in a tuft of brown grass the tall waving grains of the summer, and in the barren branches of the oak, a mast of acorns. A cocooned pupa will be a moth, bear eggs, erupting into caterpillars covering a leaf, then underground again to become their parents. The white ropes of mycelium permeating a chunk of wood will bear a mushroom, spores questing for dying plants as the cycle of life and death spirals onward. Each stage overlaps the others. We can hold many seasons, many aspects of this world at once, and see through them deep into time. We must appreciate wintertime as that dreaming moment, the decomposing inflection between ripeness and sprouting; this long moment is vital to the nature of our ecological kin.
