MacKay Wildlife Preserve

With the warm, sunny fall weather, we took a walk through the MacKay Wildlife Preserve in Caledonia.

The Preserve is a former 26-acre farm that was allowed to go back to woods, and which was donated by the family to the town back in 1971 with the understanding it would remain a wildlife preserve.  Enterprising volunteers created trails some 15 years ago.

It was a pleasant walk, looking at the variety of trees, the moss-covered stones, the remains of the stone fences. The leaves cast shadows as they drifted down; the dry sound of those falling leaves filled the air (The picture of me above is courtesy of my wife.) 

In the past, we have seen deer there. No luck this time, though there were squirrels, chipmunks, birds, and a snake.

I thought of Emily Dickinson's poem.

Snake

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him, -did you not?
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun, -
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

I had made the mistake of not checking my camera before we went, and the battery was nearly drained. Otherwise, I would have taken more pictures. And we were walking along, probably scaring away most of the creatures; to get more pictures of animals I should really have sat down and quietly waited. 

I will do so some day down the road.

Pax et bonum