While clearing one of the forest trails, I saw two trilliums in bloom, the first of the year. It won’t be long before the forest floor is wall to wall trillium blossoms. It’s a luxury being able to leave the house and be in the forest in a few steps. In twenty years, this forest may be gone and this trail a parking lot of a mall. It seems impossible now, but every mall and strip mall within a hundred miles of here was at one time a thick forest where trilliums bloomed each April.
The next time you drive to a mall, park and step onto the asphalt, stop and imagine what used to be there: giant cedars, vine maples, alders, lush mosses, a doe with her fawn, fresh air. Could it possibly be that again?
Maybe when this lot is paved over, there will be plaque mentioning how in the past, a man raised chickens here, chickens who got to see trilliums blooming in the forest.
If you’ve never seen trilliums blooming in a forest, don’t wait. Venture into the woods. Find some trilliums and enjoy how peacefully they bob their graceful white or purple heads above their green skirts. Someday the forests may be gone and you will have missed your chance.
Where Chickens Like to Live
Maybe you could inspire truffles or some other expensive fungi to grow so that the property would become very valuable as forest land and not be developed.
Good idea. I’ve seen so many wonderful places paved over the last thirty years, and the pace continues unabated. I’m located halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, BC. Both urban areas keep expanding month by month. When you used to go to Vancouver, there was very little sprawl until you got close to the city. Now it starts as soon as you cross the border. The same is true south toward Seattle. The outskirts of Seattle used to be fifty miles from here. Now you hit them in about twenty.