A Traveler's Guide to The Nature Preserve

A warm, fall day in the beginning of the semester.

This is when most people go to the preserve, while its beauty still carries the vibrancy and lushness of summer. There are two entrances: one by the College in the Woods dormitories and another near Susquehanna’s on-campus apartments. Having lived for two years in the apartments, I usually enter through the latter. It leads into the Marsh Trail, located on the preserve’s periphery. On your left the rooftops of campus peek through a dark green canopy, on your right the woods seem to run on forever. They don’t, actually, but that you would never guess just by looking up at the feral hills.

During this time of year the earth is still green. You will see deer grazing, unashamed and in plain sight. Birds hide in the branches- with luck you might spot a hawk. I did just once, in a clearing of reeds, spreading out fiery wings while atop a stump.

There is a definite sense of vitality which emanates from the woods. Here, you may feel the pulse of the various forms of life surrounding you. Elsewhere on our campus nature is subdued. Grass is paved over and smothered in concrete; foliage is arranged into neat and orderly configurations. In the preserve, at least, life is given free range of expression.

Generally, I make a right along the way and head to the lake. Other students usually do as well; the Pond Trail is the most travelled path in the preserve. A corridor of low hanging trees leads to a lake, across which runs a bridge. A beaver dam rests on the far edge of the water, maintaining it. The water is clear and shallow. Reeds grow everywhere, turning the waterscape into a quilted patchwork of blue and green. Look carefully: small fish dart around their stems. Newts and frogs peep out from the water. Families of waterfowl hide in the reeds. I’ve heard tales of an old snapping turtle; he bites off the toes of the unwary.

Yet despite all this there is little solitude, at least not in this season. The lake is a watering hole for noisy packs of students. Joggers and bike riders occasionally come through too, riding over the bridge with their eyes ahead of them, headphones in their ears.

If you go beyond, though, things become different. Only a few ever go past the bridge. It gets steeper here. There are no rooftops in the distance. The path is less discernible. You must now watch yourself or get lost. Yet things are quieter.

Go off the trail and sit with your back against a tree trunk. Put your phone away, practice forgetting. Close your eyes, feel the crisp air, follow the melodies of birdsong. Or keep your eyes open, let them rest lazily on the maze of grey and white trunks. Here, you will forget that you ever came from anywhere else, that there was ever a time that you were not attached to this tree, a time when you worried about deadlines and due dates. Time as something divided into hours and minutes will cease to exist. The day and the month will no longer matter. Sit there long enough and you can make all the pretensions of human measurement slip away into nothingness. The only demarcations are Nature’s: the cycles of the seasons, of night and day, growth and decay, life and death- all repeating endlessly, forever. Here, there are no alarms and no clocks save for the cawing of a crow or the setting of the sun.

A night in November

This is the best time for a walk here. Along the marsh trail the campus still gives off enough light to allow the feeling of safety- yet not so much that it ruins the mystery. Nights with clear skies are preferable so that one may map their path by the stars. They shine much brighter here than on campus. The heavens increase their glow, and the rest of the world becomes darker, the further you move into the wood.

A year ago, my good friend from back home visited me in Binghamton. We got into a friendly scuffle and he, in good fun, threw my shoes into a tree. I told him firmly that until he retrieved my sneakers I would not let him back into my apartment. He replied with equal firmness that he would not, that he wanted to see me climb like Mowgli, and so instead of sleeping that night we decided to go for a hike. It was the end of November. The air was cold and we wore nothing but our jeans and our t-shirts. Little flakes of snow fell from the sky onto our shoulders. But, dedicated to masochism, we faithfully pushed on.

I took him to the lake and we looked out over the bridge. There were no stars tonight; the sky was cloudy. In the distance you could see street-lights where a road cut through the trees; their light danced on the water. I thought it was peaceful. My friend, however, was shivering from standing still and so we pressed still onward, ever ready to prove our manhoods. I warned him that the ground beyond the bridge was muddy, and that flip-flops did not make good hiking shoes. He didn’t listen. By the time we turned back (after about ten feet) his toes were covered in wet earth. Still he hadn’t proved himself enough. We must go further on, he insisted, but in another direction. So we did, following a half-frozen stream and singing folk-songs. We walked until my friend’s shivering wouldn’t stop and his nose began to run. He relented. We finally turned around.

The next morning icicles hung down from my windows and the whole earth was covered in a sheet of snow. I shimmied up a tree like Mowgli and pulled my shoes down from its branches.

The greatest memories of all take place here after the moon rises. I’ve meditated in perfect solitude on that bridge, chanting mantras in my hoodie and blue jeans. I’ve walked along the paths with friends intoxicated by their company and by beer and hard liquor. I found my TA (who will not be identified in any form) here one night too. We were both drunk, and he took me on a hike past the lake and up through the hills to the near total darkness of the wood’s center. When we emerged from the tree-cover I could see the whole campus and miles of the surrounding city, the lights from the windows lighting up the blackness like fireflies.

Winter

If few come here at night, even fewer come in winter. This is a shame but, in truth, part of the season’s charm. The trees have lost all their leaves, exposing their long arms and bare bodies. They are not ugly. Their stretching, twirling and twisting limbs are a trademark of Nature’s artistic style. The snow is always the unblemished white of pure sugar. The air is crisp, refreshing. You can trace the various paths of animals by their footprints in the cold, white blanket. The air is pervaded by silence: the crickets sleep and the songbirds have taken their leave. Water exists at various states of solidity; the lake under the bridge may be totally frozen or there may be openings in the ice where the ripples of polar waters are visible.

Do not come here with the weak of constitution or the faint of heart. Come with those prepared to be pioneers, frontier-folk, who welcome the cold solitude. Those who only know the preserve when it is warm and green do not truly know it.

At night, in winter, the snow reflects back the light of the stars and the moon and the whole forest is illuminated. Because the light is soft and natural it does not chase away the darkness but melds with it. You will not be scared; no matter how far you go you will feel safe. The land always evokes the same emotions as Christmas Eve: the calm joy of inner warmth and of all-embracing love.

My uncle Robert, a wonderful man, died on a winter day while I was an undergraduate at Binghamton. My sister was the one who called me. I remember it was late, after sundown, and when I heard the news I fell to my knees and cried. My girlfriend was with me but could not comfort me. I needed the woods. I needed its coolness, its solitude, its calm. I left my apartment and headed down the marsh trail, finding my way by the light of the stars.

There was a comfort, I think, in winter. Winter is the time of death. In the suburbs or in the city we can forget this. Out here, in the wood, it is obvious. The land dies: plant, insect, reptile, amphibian and mammal all perish together under graves of snow. Some creatures did not evolve to live through the season, perhaps sensing its futility. Some starve or die from the cold. And yet others sleep in underground burrows or caverns, shielding themselves from the stagnation and decay. The Earth, as a whole, is sleeping. Yet it is just a cycle.

In the spring the land will awaken. There will be new life, and new space for that life to grow and live off the sacrifices of the previous generation. Its rest will have brought the land a renewed vitality, its many deaths will have given birth to fresh creations.

As long as we exist in Nature’s eternal rhythms we must return to sleep. Sleep is where we find reprieve from the trials of waking. Sleep is where we rejuvenate ourselves, where we prepare for new hours of living. It is where we find peace.

That, I think, is the mood of the preserve in winter: tranquility. It is a mood of deep and healing peace.