NATURE NOTES FROM ACADIA

LIFE IN THE RUINS

As I passed a turn in the road near the northern part of Somes Sound my attention was drawn to what must have been over a score of spider webs which festooned the dead remnants of a flooded and scattered stand of shrubs and low trees. The heavy morning fog outlined these webs so distinctly that they glistened like so many silver wires - quite a contrast to the gaunt, black, skinny fingers of the dead vegetation which supported them. It were as though nature had brought new beauty and new life to this swamp land, new raiments to replace the old.

In nature's scheme of things death is quite as important as life. The changing seasons blow life into new flowers, but they also blow life out of the old. Yet there seems to be a decided tendency on the part of our mother earth to cover up whatever is dead and dying, to shun that which is barren and empty. A wild animal dies in the fields, but how rarely we find its body. Scavengers reduce it to nothingness in a relatively short time. The face of the fields breathes life, not death.

One of our New England nature writers once made the statement that the "deadest" trees in the woods are the "livest" and fullest of fruit - for the naturalist. A tree may die, but invariably a new form of life moves in. Lichens and mosses grow upon its bark and insects and other forms of life find habitation in its trunk. Woodpeckers may hammer their nesting sites there, and in time, when these birds fail to return, bluebirds, flying squirrels, or wood mice may take up residence there. Not until it has been absorbed by the earth from whence it came can we call a dead tree dead.

The barren rocks in time become coated with lichens, mosses, ferns, and flowering plants. Wherever there is a vacancy the surrounding environment tends to engulf it. Death is important, but it becomes concealed by a cyclic omnipotent life. Nature's graves are soon obscured by flowers.

- Ranger-Naturalist