Winter Woods Geometry

  We have taken advantage of three sunny days (in a row!) to get out and enjoy nature minus the bugs and heat of the rest of the year, and minus the rain we have been inundated with since Christmas.

  We tend to work in the morning and then around lunchtime, throw some food in the cooler bag and ask each other, where do you want to have lunch?  Today we settled on Hampton Plantation, a state historic site, and a walk in the winter woods. 

 The camera eye loves the skeletal lines revealed in the winter landscape.  Woodland geometry becomes art with parallel lines of brown, bisected randomly with slim pine and holly branches, and a solitary piece of fence that surely once had a purpose.  Our hike takes us past the remains of the foundation of an old slave cabin, down along miles of overgrown rice fields, their dikes invisible in summer revealed now by the editing of winter.

 Cypress trees have seized an opportunity, taking root  where the golden rice once grew.  The one in the grouping of trees to the right, like no other, has developed with a saddle that split into two trunks.  

We’re in no hurry and meander, stopping frequently to raise our eyes up, up to the birds.  The Writer spots an eagle soaring overhead, I focus my glasses on LBJs (Little Brown Jobs), a flock of tiny feathered puffs, darting near us all along the trail.  They are warblers but the only ones I can identify are Yellow-Rumps (or Butter Butts, as we like to call them).  We sit down by the foundation of the slave cabin to watch a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker searching up, down, and around a tree for his buggy lunch.  

Soon it is time for our lunch — “eating out” without the guilt!  No added salt, sugar, or fat to worry about, no expensive food or tip to leave.  No reservations to call ahead for the best seats in the house, and Bob is welcome, too!