Down By The Greenwood Sidey

I slipped out a late Saturday afternoon about this time in 2008 with my camera, and in a melancholy mood, drove down to the Hocking Hills. I parked near the Mathias Log Cabin on Clear Creek Road and went into the woods towards the Thompson Cabin. The sky was overcast with a raw, cold breeze blowing. Spring had not arrived quite yet, there were hardly any buds showing on the trees. It was spooky quiet in there, just the wind. The beech trees still had leaves hanging on quivering at the slightest breeze..

I found some odd pock-marked patterns on some of the sandstone boulders, wall-art of the Fae, I'm thinking. Yep, if the Little People are around, this is where they would hang out. There were little burrows, doorways, into a base of the tree and a junction of a tree and rock. "Holy Crap," I thought, "I've fallen into hobbitville here." The moss was an intense, dark green. That old English folk song, "Down By the Greenwood Sidey" was running through my mind (it doesn't end well).

I drove down to Cantwell Cliffs and took the trail and sandstone steps down to the cliff edge. It was close to sundown by then, the sky was still overcast. I walked along the cliff edge up to where a small stream spills on over the sharp edge of the rock. Deja vu, the last time I was in there was 30 some years ago, collecting bryophyte (moss and liverwort) specimens for a botany class at Ohio State. And they were still there, everywhere covering the Black Hand sandstone. I passed a formation like a neolithic dolmen, and walked back up the rock stairway. They had quite a snowstorm a few weeks ago and a good-sized oak was broken off, the raw, orange heartwood vivid against the dark greens and grays. I went back to the house and met the rest of them for dinner.

The next day, I went to church with my wife and was pleased to see one of my nephews acting as an usher and the younger one reading the epistle. So there is a new generation coming along. The processional was the old hymn, "Now the Green Blade Riseth":

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

Spring is coming.

Here is the gallery: