What is left

What is Left

What strikes me most is the noise of birdsong. I say noise carefully, but it is so loud I can’t call it anything else. Behind me they are flitting through trees, bright sunlight drawing them out after a week of fog that coated everything in glittering ice.

There is a cattle pen, empty and waiting for expectant mothers. But behind that, is hope; at least to me. Behind the pens, pasture, and a line of planted spruce is a scrap of native bush. Maybe I’m an optimist because some people might say, “that’s all that’s left?!” I say, “that HAS been left.” It is an island of hope that with a desire to preserve, pieces of native ecosystem remain. They are the hope for re-genesis. If I turn in a circle I can see, from this small spot, at least three more patches, larger than most others around this area.

This patch of bush that you might never remark on while driving by, is fenced away from the destructive forces that have claimed other native areas. In the spring it fills with water that is maybe past ankle deep in a wet year. You should hear the noise of birdsong then. Even when pasture is short in the dry years we have, only a pair of horses might be allowed to graze there, but only in the summer, when the birds that nest there have fledged their young and the water has retreated beyond sight. Then those hard hooves won’t cut into the sod made tender by spring water or crush nests of birds that have come back to this spot for another year. A moose passes through. I could tell you about the fawn I nearly tripped over last summer; it was hidden so well in the still-tall grasses and fallen trees left to decay into usefulness. It shocks me every time. It is so alive.

This is a treasure. They exist here and there. When I see wetlands drained, I try to think about the places left. It gives me hope that the habit of draining wetlands and pushing over trees will stop and then, reverse. This scrap of bush is where we might begin to repopulate from, with poplar and dogwood, roses and willow.

-Erin Murphy-Thompson