Walk in the woods

   It is lovely to walk in the woods behind my brother’s house in Ira.  As in most Vermont woods, you cannot go far in any direction before you find one of the lonesome stone walls that run, this way and that, through the trees.  The early settlers of these hills did not build walls in the forest, of course, no matter how much they believed, as Frost later wrote, that good fences make good neighbors.  The hills were cleared with heroic effort, mostly for sheep, only to be left to grow again when the sheep no longer paid. 

It is uplifting to walk in these woods – to see how nature, left to its own devices, can reclaim itself.  As we can, too.    

Something to remember on the hard days.