Lumber and Salamanders

Timber Ridge might have made me cry this morning, had I been feeling tender. Loggers have decimated several spots along one of my favorite running trails. Carcasses were lying in rows on hillsides, waiting to be hauled up to the road by the chains of metal monsters. A four-foot diameter trunk caught my eye, an old, old friend already carted off.

I know the mountain will repair itself, not in my lifetime, maybe my son's. Some day he or his son or daughter might run up 'air and spot a rotten trunk surrounded by towering poplars, and wonder if that's the trunk I mentioned today....on a blog forgotten among centillions of bits and bytes overloading recorded history.

Less than a hundred yards away, I spotted an Eastern newt, its red spots and orange body broadcasting its presence among the logging road's gravel and weeds. Its stillness worried me, so I tapped its tail. It wiggled an inch or so and settled. When we first began visiting this area in 1998, we found hundreds of these wondering the wet woods. Today's gray sprinkling brought them out again.

"How many did you see?" says Virginia.

At least a half dozen.