I have returned to the Cottonwood Trail today. Much of the brush around the wetlands is stamped down as if a herd of large animals has slept here overnight.
A man and a woman with a long pigtail are sitting on the bench of the boardwalk with a telescope looking at birds. They have seen several woodpeckers.
I take the Ridge Trail, then the Highlands Trail and go over into the pine forest and meet a woman with a big speckled white and black dog named Bugsy. Bugsy has been chasing deer and is very excited.
I hear a slow rhythmic hollow tapping and can spot the dark silhouette of a large woodpecker high in a dead pine.
The angle of the sun prevents my seeing his colors or markings. I am possessed by the idea that the mythological Ivory Billed Woodpecker will appear to me one day. The long leafed pine forests were their abode and the pine forests have been decimated. At Harbison State Forest in Columbia, they are growing the long leafed pine (if we built it, will they come?). In Lousiannna, birders have recorded the unique tapping
sound of the lost bird.
Along the creek, the rapid fire tapping of the tiny Downy Woodpecker breaks the air. I can see him far up in a tree.
A fat Cooper's Hawk swoops silently across my path and across the creek to the other side.
A running man approaches, singing.
A toothless woman with a furry red dog tells me that when her pet was a puppy, people told her it was a fox not a dog. Now it is a foxy dog.
There are new leaves on the wild roses.
Close to the ground there is a pale blue butterfly with wings the size of a thumbnail. It followed me as if it was lost from another world.
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