Field Notes—

Minimalist March

By Curtiss Clark

In these remaining weeks before the trees leaf out and set the woodland stage with shadows and scrim, it is still possible to walk in the woods and soak up the sunshine. Connecticut’s hardwood forests have yet to drape their winter-whipped skeletons in green, so the scene is just towering torsos and knobby limbs in all directions. Sadly, this year, we can also see all the trees that fell last October without witness and, some philosophers say, without a sound.

Philosophy aside, it is interesting how silence sharpens the ear, darkness focuses the eye, and deprivation of any sense makes it keener. The empty woods of March sit warming in the sun, inviting every one of our senses to lean into that space just beyond perception, where something big is just about to happen. And by leaning in this way, we find, of course, that the woods are never empty — not in March, nor in January and February. Yes, a tree may fall in the woods when we are not there, but its silent crashing is just one event in a full schedule of daily eventualities confronting woodland plants and animals bent on survival.

This March, masses of insects rise in the warm air from damp depressions in the ground, as do the ruddy clawlike spathes of skunk cabbage. A chorus of peepers begins rehearsals at dusk at a neighbor’s pond. And birds are obsessed with sex. We notice these things more in March because they are playing out on a relatively empty stage. Soon these singular performances will be subsumed by the rush of life that fills the landscape in April, May, and June, when so much happens — and so much escapes our notice.

(More than 80 other essays in Curtiss Clark’s Field Notes series can be found at www.field-notebook.com.)