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| A sugar maple on the Botany Trail at Flanders Nature Center in Woodbury, Connecticut |
Removing invasives from the Botany Trail at Flanders in Woodbury, Connecticut, on Thursday, July 25, was exciting. We removed a thicket of burning bush and discovered the trunk of this magnificent sugar maple right beside the trail. The experience for me is that I am under the canopy, enjoying the shade, but the leaves are so distant that the canopy seems abstract. When we pulled away winged euronymous, there was this magnificent plated heart and evidence of sapsucker activity. Then, we noticed the roots wrapped around the stones, an experience that altered my sense of time and what it means to grow toward the light.
Sugar Maple on the Botany Trail at Flanders Nature Center
July 24, 2025
These rocks tell the stories of Earth’s first days
Waves of minerals, heated, alive,
Then held in place for all time, bouldered breath,
Silent story-tellers cold to our touch,
Monuments to time moved by men’s hands
Drawing lines through wild places, harnessing
Earth’s gifts by keeping animals away
From dark wild wolves, bears, and the unknown.
What flocks, what crops, what harvests
Made life for nameless, missing farmers
Whose bones now feed this soil as second growth
Makes Earth the storykeeper, the light-drinker.
Over the stones, a sugar maple sends it roots,
Reaching lightward, mighty keeper of ancient truths.
--Sandy Lee Carlson
Sandy Carlson Social