The Lane Loop brought me to a steep-sided bluff topped by a lone pitch pine overlooking the Hudson and the cliffs on its opposite bank in a composition Thomas Cole would have loved. One of the riverside paths we took runs above Sunfish Cove, and its ice-glazed surface gleamed in the light of the setting sun. On my return I paused to examine a lightning-struck hickory, whose long wound seemed relatively fresh. Wood fibers exposed where the trunk had split open were torn at one point, where the massive trunk was flexed and bent over slightly, probably by the violent gusts of the thunderstorm. I passed a couple of other large trees that also seemed to have met violent ends: their trunks had been snapped off fifteen feet above the ground, either by hurricane winds or the weight of an early snow.
I had seen relatively few birds on my walks at Locust Grove, except for a pileated woodpecker, whose raucous cackle and red crest in flight, like a thrown hatchet, greeted us near the visitor center upon our arrival and again upon our return as if to say goodbye. Near the end of our last walk, though, we spotted a lone red-tailed hawk perched in a snag above the field that stretched, from where we stood, downhill almost to the river, and uphill to the Morse mansion. I thought of Morse’s artistic vision is seeing the possibilities of this splendid site for a house with river prospect, gardens and farmed fields, pond, woodlot, and stately forest, and of the care he (and those who came after him here) took to balance and harmonize all of those uses. The hawk’s vigilance, hunting the abundant voles and other small mammals the field supports from his high perch, seemed a fitting symbol for the vigilance we humans must show now to protect and preserve such places as these that remain.
