On Creating Trails and Approaching Winter

Frost escapes from my lips as I breathe out, my hands in my pockets and my hat on snug, as my feet crunch over leaves on the ground. The sun is setting, and a flock of geese fly overhead in their triangular formation, looking for a place to rest during migration. Each night the geese fly by, their honks signaling it’s time to come in, settle down and rest until the next morning. That’s exactly what my dad has in mind by the time I find him deep in the woods, where he’s packing up the tools he’s been using to blaze a trail in our backyard.

This was November three years ago, when my dad first began creating the trail to the river. Three years later, and I now walk this trail regularly, observing how it changes with the seasons, how the woods and river follow a cycle each year. In late-autumn, I admire all the seedheads as the wind blows millions of seeds into the air. The winter birds whistle, announcing their arrival for the season. Their song brightens the darker, colder days, bringing life to a land that is starting to slumber. Perhaps their song is a lullaby for the plants. If I’m still by the river just before sunset, I’m treated to a show as the neighborhood geese take off in flight, launching off the river like planes off the runway, honking in unison, off to find a different spot to sleep for the night.

The plants and many animals are beginning to hunker down now for winter. The leaves have fallen off the trees, creating a crunchy layer of compost on the forest floor. Over the winter, these leaves will decompose and add fresh nutrients to the soil, which will nourish the plants and allow them to sprout in the spring. As is the spirit of Scorpio season: death and decay holds beauty and power, as it allows for new life to be reborn again in the spring.

On the coldest days, there is the slightest hint of snow in the air. I adore the smell of incoming snow, and there’s something so magical and peaceful about the first snow flurries of the season, which usually arrive in late November. Mixed in is the smokey smell from my neighbors’ chimney, their fireplace now being used regularly to heat their house.

Walking through the woods this time of year always brings me back to when my dad first blazed this trail. It was November when he started to work on it. It was also 2020, in the midst of pandemic lockdowns. My dad looked out the window at the backyard while sipping his coffee, contemplating what to do with his free time. “I think I’m going to finally make a path to the river,” he said. It was something he had always wanted to do, and now he had the time to finally do it.

To begin, my dad first cut unofficial trails along both property lines, marking them with metal stakes so he knew what parameters he could work within. These trails were not as clear as the final trail would be, as my dad wouldn’t dig out roots/stumps or carry away the cut brush as he did on the final trail, but these trails still worked well for exploring the woods and visiting the river while my dad worked (one of the property line trails did end up becoming part of the official trail later, as it went over the highest/driest ground and was already mostly clear by the time my dad was ready to blaze the final trail). During this stage, my dad was in the woods daily, with his chainsaw, pruners, a tape measure, the metal stakes, and a string and protractor to keep himself moving in a straight line.

During his first week working in the woods, my mom and I followed the rough trail to see his progress for the first time. Immediately I was overcome with a sense of adventure. Stepping over roots and around trees, I found myself in a whole new world. So many different kinds of birds flitted from branch to branch, and our neighbors’ yards and houses quickly disappeared from view. It was like the neighborhood slipped away, and we were now on a journey through the wilderness. Trees stretched on and on, so many different directions to go in, new things to discover, and corners to explore. The possibilities of all that could be discovered were endless.

Each day, my dad cut through to a new section of the woods, opening up even more possibilities. And each day, after I finished my remote work, I would go out and help him in what ways I could, which was usually just holding the string taut. We moved from dense woods to blackberry brambles to wetlands with a vernal pond to the river’s edge. One day, on the border of our property, I followed a deer trail to the base of a large tree. Nailed into the tree was the rotting remains of a ladder. It looked like the perfect climbing tree, and I could imagine our neighbor’s now-adult children playing here when they were kids, acting out adventures hidden in these woods. To stumble upon this history felt like a gift.

On another day, my dad and I followed another deer path cutting from one end of the property to the other to stake it out. Twisting and turning, the path led to a fallen tree. The tree was so large, it was impossible to go around, so we decided to go through, climbing over and ducking under several branches, like real explorers searching for buried treasure. My dad sometimes came back up from the woods with rips in his jacket and cuts on his face from the blackberry bushes (which we didn’t know were blackberries at the time — we thought they were just pricker bushes!)

By the time December rolled around, we began getting snow. The landscape transformed, turning into a literal winter wonderland, with the fluffiest snow on the ground. I would follow my dad’s stakes along the property line all the way to the river, marveling at the way the snowflakes fell softly and slowly through the trees, gently into the rushing river. The hush that fell over the woods was incredible, the occasional sighting of a bright red cardinal breathtaking.

Even though I couldn’t provide much help, as my dad was able to do most of it on his own, what little work I did do awakened something in me — a love for homesteading, for land stewardship, for connecting with nature, and for building a home that is connected to the land and all the life around it. My natural desire to care for the land grew as the trail took shape. With each trip to the woods, I discovered new plants, animals, birds, and habitats, which prompted me to research them and ways to care for them. The bond I have with this trail was immediate, probably because I grew up here, sensing this secret world behind our house my whole life. Stewarding this land was in my blood.

Each November since then, I feel inspired, reminded of those early days exploring the woods. I’m always eternally grateful to have called these woods and this land Home. I’m forever grateful to have grown up here, grateful for both my parents and their hard work in raising me here, for my dad for blazing this trail and my mom for her equal excitement and support. My love for nature — and this blog’s existence! — is all thanks to this Home, these woods, this river, these mountains, this land. And for all that, I’m so grateful.

I hope your November is filled with gratitude, family, friends, loved ones, adventure, inspiration and exploration. Go out there and explore, take notice of how the world falls asleep and prepares itself for winter — you’ll never know what you might find in your own backyard.

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Below are some photos of the woods and path in November over the years, with some crossover into December. They start with untouched wilderness, from before my dad began clearing some of the brush, and carry through the years to where the path is now. Just looking back on them now, I’m amazed by how much the path has evolved over the years. Some of the tall bushes that exist now along the path weren’t present in photos from the first year, for example. The landscape changes so much, yet it happens so slowly, you don’t even realize it until you look back on photos from past years.

For more details on how my dad blazed our backyard trail, check out my blog post from 2021: “Trailblazer: Finding Peace in our own Backyards.“