Cathedral Woods
a conclave of doves
rises from the trail
Showing posts with label Cathedral Woods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cathedral Woods. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Monday, June 25, 2018
Sunday, September 18, 2016
Posted with BlogsySunday, October 13, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
May 28: Spruce forest
Walking on my favorite trail through Cathedral Woods, the path soft, well-padded with spruce needles and thick, bright moss, rotting stumps of fallen spruces and cones rolling underfoot. From beyond the dense wall of spruces, long ethereal song of the Winter Wren. This is a magic place. No wonder the children build fairy houses here.
Kinglet's high-pitched song
spills down like rolling cones
from the spruce tops.
Kinglet's high-pitched song
spills down like rolling cones
from the spruce tops.
Monday, May 31, 2010
May 31: Memorial Day
On our last day here on Monhegan we decided to hike out to Black Head through Cathedral Woods. The Cathedral Woods Trail is the one trail on the island where people are allowed to put up "fairy houses"--and then only using non-living items such as fallen twigs, bark, pine cones, and shells. I don't often hike that trail, so this is not aspect of Monhegan culture that I have much experience with beyond knowing that at one time they were outlawed altogether out here because some thoughtless people were pulling up living plants and destroying moss and lichen beds to create their fairy houses.
Most of the fairy houses we saw today were simple creations--some twigs stuck in the forest duff covered with roofs of bark and decorated with pebbles and pine cones. One fairy house had what looked like a pool. Some had rough furnishings. But the one that really touched us was the one most appropriate to today's holiday, a memorial of sorts: inside one sheltered arrangement of twigs lay a carefully placed, dead ovenbird. Outside someone had erected a little cross made of two twigs tied together with a strip of bark. Whatever happened to this little bird deep in the spruce woods, its passing was treated with reverence.
If an ovenbird
falls in the forest, fairies
honor its passing.
Most of the fairy houses we saw today were simple creations--some twigs stuck in the forest duff covered with roofs of bark and decorated with pebbles and pine cones. One fairy house had what looked like a pool. Some had rough furnishings. But the one that really touched us was the one most appropriate to today's holiday, a memorial of sorts: inside one sheltered arrangement of twigs lay a carefully placed, dead ovenbird. Outside someone had erected a little cross made of two twigs tied together with a strip of bark. Whatever happened to this little bird deep in the spruce woods, its passing was treated with reverence.
If an ovenbird
falls in the forest, fairies
honor its passing.
Photo by Brian Willson
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
