July 3 & 4, 2019

Rode bicycle from Hartford to Chaplin and back. I try to wrap myself entirely in the sound of the bees and birds, but Route 6 is ever-buzzing. I want only bogs and vistas. Route 6 is off stage, mouthing its lines.

It is hot. Swampy. I want an ice cold beer and permission to dawdle. I want to silence all human inventions, to hear the croaking of frogs and creaking of trees.

I am in a land that belongs to nobody, and for hours, I have seen no one.

One swamp is part of the Natchaug State Forest; 160 of its 13,677 acres are in Windham, though it takes digging to learn this. Just about every source says Natchaug State Forest is in six towns, and then they name Eastford, Ashford, and Chaplin, only, as if Pomfret, Hampton, Brooklyn, and Windham are not worth mentioning. As if six and seven are the same.

The word natchaug comes from the Nipmuc: “land between rivers,” which if you think about it, could apply almost anywhere.

Here, the rivers are the Bigelow and Still. They unite to create the Natchaug River.

Invisible to the nearby array of car dealerships and big box stores is the hunting of deer. Bow, not gun. Before dinner, three deer leap through the woods of a parcel whose “ownership” is unknown in the moment. They ignore the old borders of stone walls, as do I.

When it has been dark for mere minutes and I have almost entirely fallen asleep inside my tent, a buck snorts. He stomps the ground. His eyes glow larger, yet dimmer than the hundreds of fireflies sharing this place that may own itself.

He repeats. I tell myself to go into the fetal position and cover my head if he charges. Again, I sleep.

Ten minutes or two hours later, I awake to a scream. A bleating. This time, I see no eyes flickering under moonlight or flashlight. I am left to my imagination. A fawn in distress? A wayward sheep? Again, I sleep.

In swampyankeeland, I am somehow not roused by four wheelers or bonfires in the woods, despite signs that both are abundant.

And swamps. It is morning, and after gratitude for not being trampled by angry deer in the night, I turn my thoughts to what the difference may be between a swamp and a bog, a marsh and a peatland. The Joshua’s Trust Windham Atlantic White Cedar Bog is in the vicinity, restraining the spread of toxic consumerism. The swamp of divided ownership and no name, stewarded by a colony blue herons, cuts off ecological wreckage from the other side. With few fences or signs, boundaries become apparent for what they are: abstractions. Even natural boundaries are faulty. Rivers change their course. The lines are always moving.

I could stay long occupied in thoughts of boundaries and what has been done to dishonor the land. The crushed can of Bud Light in the Windham forest’s sand pit. All the rivers and streams we have stuffed into miles of concrete. We might be astounded by the ruins in our own backyard, but it is everywhere, in one form or another, offered up as proof for why we don’t deserve nice things.