tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20849978.post-1137218076999850722006-01-13T18:53:00.000-09:002006-11-10T18:42:14.082-09:00On outlying land owned by UCF, there are some trails that wind back into scrub forest. In case you don't know, the scrub has sandy soil out of which grow palmettos and a couple varieties of pine. Occasionally you'll come across an oak hammock, which may cover a few acres; here are the dignified, stately old Spanish moss-draped trees with thick trunks and branches that arch up to make a low roof overhead. The soil is darker, less sandy, without much undergrowth, and is carpeted with a few layers of dead oak leaves the color of a bread crust.<br /><br />One of these trails that I mentioned leads you, after a while, to an oak hammock; it's a good lonely, quiet place--many a Psalm I've read there--but it's mildly spooky at the same time. If you search around for a minute, you might find a round clearing in the palmettos nearly adjacent to the hammock: it's about forty feet across. According to my sophomore-year Physical Geography professor--(who was, by the way, a really remarkable, soft-spoken old man; he showed us where to find, among other things, an edible type of pale greenish-white moss that grows on the ground; it's called Reindeer moss and strictly speaking doesn't have much flavor)--anyway, according to my professor, witches would gather there late at night and have rituals and seances and things like that. Nothing really grows in the clearing, it's just empty white sand. To stand in the center of that clearing on a cold evening when the trees are getting darker behind you, and the woods are utterly still...well, that's about as much as I'd like to get into that.<br /><br />Anyway, if you stick to the trail and get the hell away from there, you arrive later at a clearing of a different sort: the pines become simultaneously much taller, thinner, and farther apart...you can leave the trail and pick your way through the palmettos and get out into the open. The silence is even deeper than at the witches' nook, but clearer and more wholesome, if that makes sense. Especially in the early morning, with the shafts of light slanting through the pines and the occasional doe ambling by, or a snake rustling the palmetto fronds...<br /><br /><br />In the scrub pines<br />The mockingbird's song spreads<br />Among the treetopsE. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15250953987158771507noreply@blogger.com