When a Walk in the Forest Makes My Heart Sing…

Yesterday, it started snowing near the end of my work shift, and I kept glancing out the window as it turned into a heavy thick snow, the kind I just adore. Whenever this happens, I long for werifesteria…

A pair of pale smooth-barked beech trees amid hemlock and poplar, South Drumlin Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Beech, hemlock and oak trees along the drumlin rise of South Drumlin Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

As soon as the shift was over, I snatched my gear and rushed off with my camera and tripod and a pack of blueberries to the beech-maple-hemlock forest nearby. The place is called South Drumlin Park, because the forest runs up and down a hogsback with wonderful trails throughout.

One of the many paths through the South Drumlin Park forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

I was the only person there. I walked and crunched through snow and frost-hardened leaf litter and I let myself get lost in the labyrinth of trails through the open winter forest. The pale beech trees, because they keep their now copper-coloured marcescent leaves, stood out amid the bare maples, oaks, poplars and birch trees.

Marcescent beech leaves add a glow of bronze to surrounding hemlocks, South Drumlin Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

I wandered there for hours, inhaling the peaceful freshness and the quiet hush of gentle snowing in the forest. 

Marcescent beech leaves are covered in snowfall that never seems to end, South Drumlin Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

There were just a few rowdy red squirrels and one persistent bluejay, but all else lay quiet in the deep of the forest. I had found my magic and mystery … It felt sublime and my heart sang…

Path that leads down to the river through poplar, cedar and hemlock forest, South Drumlin Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

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