There’s another very old tree on a path by a waterfall in a cedar grove I love. It’s wind damaged and has become a snag – a standing dead tree that decomposes naturally and becomes a den and cavity tree – a home for wildlife. I think snag sounds like a rather negative term so I call these old grand dames and gents of the forest “wildlife habitats” or “critter hotels” or “pecker inns”. I’ve found snake skins and fur and nests and baby woodpeckers and thousands of insects in such trees. So the dead-wood snags are not dead at all. They always snag my interest! They’re living, thriving habitats that are well worth a look-see.
I’ve had recurring dreams about finding coins in ice. When I was a little girl, I did find a number of coins one day when I was skating at our local rink in Arnprior. I thought I’d struck a jackpot! There were no Zambonis when I was a kid, so likely the rink flooding guy had a hole in his pocket and I was the sharp-eyed, lucky girl with the picks on her skates who chipped away until she had a pocket full of coins. I’ve found coins under the ice of puddles and a number of coins in the sand as I beach walk. I’m always looking up, down and all around me. I stop frequently when I walk in wild places.
There are many more rewards strewn on our paths than coppers. The Royal Canadian Mint stopped producing and distributing pennies in Canada in 2013. The copper in the coins outweighed their value so they were discontinued and deemed worthless by most people. I still find the odd one on the street and add them to our cottage jar of pennies to play the game Rummoli. Many of the most priceless wonders around us are valued less than a penny and people are too busy to stop and notice sunsets or rainbows or buds on trees or blossoms opening in spring. Stopping to inhale the scents of spring flowers and drinking in their many colours or watching bees and other insects at work or becoming hypnotised by a murmuration of starlings over the River or feeling the mist from rushing waterfalls as you stand on a bridge or pulling over in your car to photograph a rainbow are all priceless ways to spend our time.
Annie Dillard talks about an experience she had observing hundreds of red-winged blackbirds take flight from a tree near her house. Not a bird was visible in the tree when she went to investigate the racket of song coming from it. She writes, “How could so many birds hide in the tree without my seeing them? The Osage orange, unruffled, looked just as it had looked from the house, when over three hundred red-winged blackbirds cried from its crown. I looked downstream to where they flew, but they were gone; I couldn’t spot a single one. I wandered downstream to force them to play their hand, but they’d crossed the creek and scattered. One show to a customer. These appearances catch at my throat; they are the free gifts, the bright coppers at the roots of trees.”
I’ll take the time to stoop and pick up even a very tarnished coin. I’ll always stop to pick up a lucky penny. A penny found is a penny earned. I spent lots of time as a child counting my pennies and working for change. Our corner store had big jars of penny candy so a few coppers in my pocket got me a brown paper bag full of sweet delights to savour! Green leaves and gum balls and sour cherries and jujubes and caramels for under 5 cents! Wow! I was rich! Every miracle of nature is an unwrapped gift, a magic show. All we have to do is approach the world with eyes wide open for a free ticket to the wonders.
As Annie Dillard says, “It’s all a matter of keeping my eyes open. Nature is like one of those line drawings of a tree that are puzzles for children: Can you find hidden in the leaves a duck, a house, a boy, a bucket, a zebra, and a boot?” When I go out for a walk, I keep my child eyes wonder wide and always have time for the magic penny and the miracles to appear.
