I am in the habit of following a trail through the little stretch of woods behind our house to the soccer field on Pine streets. It is little more than a quarter mile and there has always been a rudely marked trail cut by the keepers of the town's conservation land. But this last Fall a windstorm swept through the forest and uprooted dozens of tall oaks and pines, until the path that was there is now so obscured by tangled branches and fallen trees that it is almost impassable. My dog and I have found a way through though, he scurrying under the logs and I leaping up onto them and down the others side.
They are in the majority oak trees, probably about 50 to 75 years old. Each one, when it falls, leaves an uprooted root system and a pit filled with water so that there are dozens of tiny ponds now in these woods which my dog loves to drink from and splash in and, which I dread, will be harbors for clouds of mosquitoes once the weather warms enough. The soil is sand, stones and clay and is poorly drained. I think there is a limit to the height that trees can grow here, although some still stand, even bigger than those which have fallen.
