Nancy Wisser

The first time I went there I walked in by myself. I didn’t even live in Nazareth yet. We were visiting to get a sense of the town. I don’t know which entrance I used or how far I walked. But I remember seeing a hummingbird and being surprised. It seemed too early in the season and there weren’t any hummingbird flowers. It was April, maybe late April, and nothing around me appeared to be in bloom but there it was. Since then I’ve learned that hummingbirds sip tree sap from holes made by sapsuckers, a kind of woodpecker I’ve now seen there many times but back then the sighting seemed inexplicable. Enough so I remember it now, 25 years on.

The next time I recall was not long after we moved to Nazareth. Once again I was in the woods on my own. What can I say, I like the woods. I was standing on one of the old stone bridges there when I hear a strange screaming rapidly coming closer and closer. I looked around desperately but couldn’t see what it was until a Cooper’s hawk flew up and landed on a little sandy spit in the stream within feet of me.

I was so startled that I moved which frightened the Cooper’s hawk and it flew off leaving the bunny behind. I don’t know what happened to that poor bunny. I don’t remember anything but the sense that I had just experienced something extraordinary. My senses were thrumming. It felt like some kind of message.

Despite those early experiences I wasn’t enthralled with the place at first It was by any criteria I knew a degraded woodland, full of invasive plants and signs of human use that had nothing to do with enjoying nature. The bridges and spring house had words and pictures painted and chalked on them. Someone had chalked a swastika on one bridge: sadly that was not the only place in Nazareth you could see that symbol.

For years I went there mainly in early spring for wildflowers and migrating birds, still the best time to go. It was Jason W, a friend of our son and by this time sort of an auxiliary part of our household, who made me notice it more when we went there at his request and he became enraptured walking among the trees and reminiscing about visits he had made there with an elementary school class. He also introduced me to the path that goes up to Black Rock Road which up until then I had somehow ignored. Back then it was clear of fallen trees. That was before the Asian jumping worms. But wait: I’m getting ahead of myself.