Years ago, it wasn’t there. Years ago, when the lake was much larger and had not yet begun to fill in with silt, what is now a patch of land, heavy with trees of many shapes and sizes, was once clear lake water, reflecting blue sky. But when upstream silt flowed downriver and filled in parts of the lake, when that silt rose up above the water and slowly turned into fertile soil, when the weeds sprouted, when the bushes began to grow, when the trees took over and blotted out the sun for all the underbrush and smaller plants, what once was water became a forest, thick with nature’s proliferation of scraggly scrubs and sturdy structures reaching for the sky.
And so thick were those trees on that unkempt tract, that no human ventured there: no fishermen, no hunters, no casual hikers, out for a morning walk through the peaceful woods. No tennis shoes, no hiking boots left their tracks. But we may assume that closer inspection, were it possible, would reveal the passing by of dainty deer, foraging foxes, and smaller creatures, some that nested in the trees and some that slithered from the water’s edge.
It is quite difficult, though not impossible, to reach that little spot, though it is safe to say that no one has likely tried. It’s as though nature has determined this place to be a safe haven for her precious creatures.
Human eyes might not even notice while passing by. It’s much further away from the trail than the long lens which took this photograph would suggest. Most often, it does not look remarkable, certainly not photogenic. But on this particular day, with a rented lens that could bring it close, with a cooperative sun that looked deep into the usually dark tree line, and with the still air of a quiet morning that caused the lake to become a mirror … on that day I looked, and I saw something that did look remarkable. I saw rough nature with a purpose. I saw the results of nature’s eternal reclamation. And I saw a stark, naked, natural beauty.
That beautiful bit of rough nature represents a hundred years or more of the natural world at work, undisturbed by human intervention. It is surrounded by what’s left of the man-made lake, by man-made trails, some natural, some paved. Further out, it is surrounded by homes and businesses and factories and roads to connect them.
Nonetheless, there it is … that little piece of undisturbed forest, unnoticed by most, beautiful in its own way, and still a work in progress.