Drive-by naturalist

Traveling along Route 7 last week, I came upon a mature bald eagle flying high above the Housatonic River. When I see one of these birds, I am always impressed by its sheer size, and the brilliant contrast of its snow-white head and tail feathers with its dark body. I can still remember the first time I ever saw one of these birds, in the early 1980s, and each new encounter never fails to thrill me.I have had some memorable wildlife sightings while driving along this well-traveled road. Bears shambled across my path late one afternoon by Housatonic Meadows, and I sometimes see bobcats emerge near Robbins Swamp. A low-flying turkey once took out my sideview mirror but still managed to cross over to the far woods. I’ve seen migrating salamanders on wet nights in early spring, and mergansers congregating with the anglers a few bends in the river above Cornwall Bridge. The river corridor is clearly a byway for wildlife as well as the path of least resistance for our roads and rail.The “drive-by naturalist” sees much and misses more, especially on this road in the shadow of the hills as it follows the river. The miles are so familiar to me after so many years passing up and down the valley that they tend to rush by in a blur when I am focused on a conversation or the radio or just deep in thought. When I am watchful, though, my eye registers what is different about a particular view and is open to fresh discovery. There is a tree below Bull’s Bridge in Kent, for example, that has a network of roots growing out from the trunk several feet above the ground, like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. This unnatural form is the result of the tree having grown in deep mulch that has long since rotted away. Having once noticed it by the roadside, it is now one of my route markers, part of the mental map I make of the world through which I travel.Sometimes, my mind’s eye retains images once glimpsed in passing of things long gone today. I remember an elm tree that used to shade the road at a particular spot. Then one year its leaves turned yellow prematurely, then browned and withered, and the next year it succumbed to Dutch elm disease. Now it is gone, and yet I know where it once stood and feel its lack. Only the oldest of the old remember the chestnut forests that were already dying a century ago. When I see a chestnut sucker by the roadside now, I think of the ancient root stock from which it valiantly rises. Then I marvel at the forest that we have lost and the life force that still puts forth new and hopeful growth.Tim Abbott is program director of Housatonic Valley Association’s Litchfield Hills Greenprint. His blog is at greensleeves.typepad.com.