November 11

Last Friday, accompanying my wife to Grand Rapids where she attended a conference, Remi and I hiked nearby at the 100-acre, Calvin College Ecosystem Preserve. The early morning weather was partly sunny with a temperature of 43 degrees and a stiff breeze from the north. We left the car and headed east across a footbridge into a forest of mature oak and maple trees. Gazing up, I was pleased to view mostly blue sky through a leafless canopy. Turning south, the trail took me to an observation platform above a 1-acre pond covered with an invasive pondweed called Watermeal. From there, I watched a pair of Mallards swimming and feeding on this green surface. Most likely, these ducks are not residents but have stopped here to rest before continuing their migration to a southern state. Migrating Mallards are quite hardy and have been known to cover 800 miles in a single day. Greeted by the morning sun as I turned east, the trail took me into part of the forest dominated by American Beech trees where I spotted a smaller one that still retained its leaves and a large one that had late Oyster mushrooms still clinging to its trunk. Further ahead, I paused as Remi had a stare-down with a perching Fox Squirrel. Arriving at a 5-acre lake, I noticed colorful Red Oak leaves floating close to shore. Near the end of our half-mile loop while scanning the understory, I came upon one of nature’s anomalies- a small Sugar Maple tree displaying green leaves of summer. For some unexplained reason, unlike the millions of other leaves in the forest, they had not yet responded to the cues of autumn by changing colors, dropping and decaying. Finally, we got back to the car and returned to the conference center to pick up my wife before heading to Alma.

Peaceful forest realm

Leafless oak and elm

Twigs and branches reach

Barren maple and beech

Brown litters the ground

Makes a crunching sound

High in a naked tree

Call of a chickadee

Blast of a thirty aught six

Hunter getting his kicks

D. DeGraaf