In the early 1950's the artist James Lewicki decided to build a house on the north shore of Long Island. I've written about him before. Anyway, his daughter Lisa and I have the house in Centerport in common...not to mention the woods. Yesterday Lisa said that there was a new trail in the woods surveyed ( sort of) by the Boy Scouts.
We set off behind the Suydam House all neatly painted and tended....
into the woods
where we discovered tree-strangling vines
ferns, dead leaves
vines as thick as a python strangling you
moss
a lovely bed of lily of the valley (was there a cottage here once?)
and signs of a bulldozer.
Then we came upon a gorge with mud and sticks and all the sorts of things you would expect
and branches fallen, and no way to get across.
The stream led from Greenlawn to the twin ponds but in all our combined years living there we'd never forded it.
How deep was the mud? How steep the banks? No boots of course but cameras and bags.
We decide to clamber over it anyway
and eventually come to the pond.
to be continued