Anyway, I didn't need to watch myself to be reminded of one the best quotes in it. There's a reporter on the scene toward the end of the film who asks Peter O'Toole (the actor playing Lawrence) why he loves the desert.
"Because it's clean," he replies.
At this time of year—the tween weeks between foliage and snow-that-sticks-to-the-ground—the forest is clean in the same way you can view a desert. Now I can see the way tree trunks curve, notice the twigginess of honeysuckle or the changing coloration of a dying tree.
This photograph is from one of my favorite trees on our path. It's a box elder. For those unfamiliar with this tree, let me describe its place in the ecosystem around here.
Box elders are actually part of the maple family of trees with leaves shaped much the same. They love wet places so river banks are ideal. Once rooted—and they do that with abandon—they are impossible to get out of the ground.
Around here, no box elder grows to more than 18 inches or so in diameter without getting topped by the wind or uprooting itself if the ground gets too wet for too long. But here's what fascinates me so much. These trees do not die. A trunk lying on the ground, looking destroyed for all intents and purposes, will sprout a host of new branches until it looks like a shrub.
Trees that lose their tops to twisting winds sprout new branches on the remaining trunk. Often the tops don't come off completely but rest on the ground, creating arches for grapevines and Indian cucumber.
This particular tree lost its top long before we moved here. Its base has a large knee that's covered by a luxurious carpet of moss. There are small branches sprouting from the trunk but close to the remaining top, woodpeckers have carved a condo community of holes. Its bark is being slowly sloughed off, revealing this magnificent coloration underneath.
We wouldn't notice this during the leafy seasons but now that the woods are clean, we can appreciate the bones that lie beneath.
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