Spanning time.

April 13, 2010

Today is one of those days when I feel warm simply because the sun is shining down on me. I forget my cold fingertips, ignore the chilly wind breezing through the thin material of my sweatshirt. To think, there are a mere three weeks left for classes… Time flies I guess. Pondering what my spot may have looked like 50 years ago is a bit challenging for me. For some reason looking to the future is easier than trying to backtrack. Maybe that says something about me, but I don’t really know. I would guess that my little patch of white pine was at one time a cleared field, considering that white pine is a primary successional species, taking advantage of the abundant sun and growing quickly, but that process would have begun more than fifty years ago. There is a lone maple tree in my spot (or maybe oak, I can’t entirely remember and the leaves are still hidden in their cocoons), so maybe the soils are fertile, but I would venture to say, based on the present state of the white pine trees, the soil is not very good so it wasn’t prime farmland. Limbs sagging, bark chipped, woodpecker holes up and down their trunks, the pines are in a sad state. My guess is that the entire area was once wooded, a long long time ago, but when UVM established Redstone campus the trees were either cleared with some patchy regrowth allowed, or the spot where I sit today was allowed to remain. Fifty years from now, I can imagine an entirely different setting for my sit spot. Actually, I have two potential futures for these pines. My first is that lilac bushes will be scattered throughout, along with some more maples and other species that take advantage of the sunbeams coming through newly formed openings in the dying pine canopy. Hardwoods will begin to replace softwoods, and the area will be home to some new birds, as UVM makes an effort to restore wooded areas on campus. My alternative idea is that UVM will chop down all my trees within the next 25 years, and begin to landscape this section of Redstone, disallowing any new growth and trying to maintain a clean cut, artificial looking natural space. But that’s not something I hope to see fifty years from now. In an ideal world, my wish to see more trees and more native plants at UVM will be realized, and there will be small nature education areas scattered throughout the campus. But we shall see what time brings. . .