After the Flood

Old School Naturalist- Notes from the Fields and Forests of Upstate NY by Marlene McTigue

After the Flood

For three days, it rained. Not the soft summer rain that settles into the forest and darkens the bark of the trees, but the kind that changes things. All around upstate New York, creeks climbed their banks and roads closed as water rushed over bridges. Here in the Albany area, we even appeared on the national news as one of the places hardest hit by the storm.

By the third day, my dog Odessa and I had had enough of being inside. So I pulled on my rain gear, laced up my boots, and off we went for our usual four-mile loop in the woods.

Odessa, a seven-year-old Border Collie, is my constant companion in the forest. She has probably traveled more miles of these old woods roads than most people ever will. Put water in her path, though, and seven years disappear. She splashes and charges through it like a puppy. She was about to have a very good day.

At the far end of Old Linskoog Road, where we entered the woods, the road had disappeared. Water had washed away the soil surrounding the rocks and turned the steep downhill stretch into a rushing mountain stream. Odessa charged happily through water that hadn’t been there just days before.

Farther into the forest, where the land lies flatter, the water had changed the roads differently. Years of four-wheelers and side-by-sides have worn two deep tracks into many of them, leaving a ribbon of grass and earth between.

Now those tracks were long channels of water on either side of a narrow green ribbon.

As we walked, the downpour softened to a shower, then a drizzle, and finally stopped. Almost immediately, the forest seemed to stir. Sunshine fell on mosses, which glowed green against the soaked earth. Slugs were everywhere, from tiny ones barely noticeable against the forest floor to great gliding creatures leaving glistening trails in their wake.

A millipede came charging straight toward us down the path with surprising determination, and I leapt out of its way, chuckling at the encounter.

Mushrooms seemed to have erupted overnight. Others were disappearing just as quickly, their once solid, rounded caps decomposing into forms that looked remarkably like flower petals.

And then there were the red efts.

I counted 39 that first day. We talk a lot about red efts here at Old-School Naturalist. In fact, you might consider them one of our mascots. Anyone who spends much time in the woods after a summer rain knows that wet weather will bring them out, flashes of brilliant orange against rain-darkened leaves. By the next morning, the sun was shining, and I headed back to see what the water had left behind.

The stream on Old Linskoog Road was still there, though it had lost some of its fury. Elsewhere, rivulets split and joined, finding routes down to the Alcove Reservoir.

Brown oak leaves, pine needles and twigs had gathered against stones and saplings, little dams recording where the water had been.

In places, the flood had stripped away enough earth to reveal broad expanses of smooth ledge beneath. I loved that. How many times had I walked that trail without imagining what was beneath my feet?

The flood had exposed the bones of the forest.

There is something humbling about having a familiar place reveal that you haven’t known it quite as well as you thought. I knew every turn in that trail. I knew where the ground stayed soft and where the rocks made for good footing. I knew which stretches held water after a rain. Yet all along, another landscape had been lying just beneath the one I knew.

Then, farther along the trail, I saw a flash of orange beneath the water. Another red eft. He was almost floating against the forest floor beneath about five inches of water. There he lay, apparently perfectly at ease, while I crouched down to observe him.

Then something happened that was enough to make an old-school naturalist’s heart fill with joy.The eft lifted himself up and turned his whole body toward me. For a moment, it almost seemed as though he were standing on his hind legs beneath the water, tiny front legs raised, looking straight up at me.

Maybe he saw my movement. Maybe he sensed vibrations in the water. There was surely an explanation for what I was seeing. But explanation and wonder are not opposites.

Looking down through those few inches of water, I had the extraordinary sensation of being noticed back.

What a delight.

So much of what we do at Old-School Naturalist is encourage people to notice what’s happening around them. To look down. To look up. To pay attention to the ordinary lives unfolding beside us every day. And there I was, looking at one of those lives, with the remarkable feeling that, for just a minute, it was noticing me too.

Eventually, I tore myself away and continued on.There were so many trees down in my path along the way. Before long, I knew, one of my neighbors would come rumbling through on a side-by-side with a chainsaw. There is a small community of us who walk these roads, ride them and quietly tend them. We rarely see one another, but we know when someone has been there. A fallen tree has been cut and moved. Skin-grabbing multiflora rose has been beaten back. We all tend these roads together, but apart. We know one another by the signs we leave behind, and it’s a pretty beautiful thing.

Above it all, the old oaks still towered, home to wood thrushes, scarlet tanagers and brown creepers, their songs ringing through a forest washed clean by the storm.

It would be easy to walk through a forest after a flood and notice only what was damaged. But that’s not what I saw.The water had taken a landscape I thought I knew and shown me another one beneath it. A road became a stream. Stone emerged from beneath the earth. Tiny dams traced the paths water had taken. Creatures ordinarily hidden were suddenly everywhere. And beneath five inches of water, I looked into the eyes of a tiny red eft who, for one remarkable moment, seemed to look right back.

The next time you head outside after a storm, walk slowly. Look at the stones beneath your feet, the leaves caught against a sapling, the tiny lives emerging from the forest floor. There is always more to a familiar place than what we have already seen.

And then come back.

We’ll still be here, exploring the fields and forests of upstate New York. Until then, go out and notice.You never know when the world might notice you back.