The ground is mud. There are a few sandstone rocks scattered here and there, and some river-rounded chunks of amber quartzite, but for the most part, mud. Hard to walk on, dismal to sit or lie on.
The canopy stands about a hundred feet overhead. In the summer it is a solid green ceiling, with only isolated shafts of sunlight slanting to the ground. The biggest trees shoot up without thinning, putting out their first major branches some forty feet overhead. There are no conifers. No needles on the ground, no pinecones. The annual drift of leaves disintegrates entirely, and that’s the mud: centuries of leaf mulch.
The trees are either very big or very small, the small ones spindly, light-starved, doomed. It is hard to understand the forest’s succession story. Only after Frank joined FOG did he learn that the succession was in fact messed up, its balance thrown off by the white-tailed deer, whose natural predators had all been eradicated. No more wolf or puma; and so all new trees were eaten by deer.
All the trees were third growth; the watershed had been clear-cut before the Civil War. During the war Fort DeRussy, at the high point of the park, had had a clear shot in all directions, and had once fired at Confederate scouts.
The park was developed in 1890 by Frederick Law Olmsted, and planned by his sons’ firm. Now it was reverting to the great hardwood forest that had blanketed the eastern half of the continent for millions of years.
The forest floor was corrugated with small channels running down to Rock Creek, some as deep as thirty feet, but always mud troughs, with no stony creekbeds down their middles. Water didn’t stay in them after a rain.
The forest appeared to be empty. The animals, both native and feral, stayed concealed.
There was trash all over. Plastic bottles were most common, then glass bottles, then boxes, shoes, plastic bag scraps…one plastic grocery bag hung from a branch like a prayer flag. There were many signs of the flood. The roads and picnic areas by the creek were now buried in mud or torn away. The gorge walls were scarred by landslides. Many trees had been uprooted, and some of these had been caught under the Boulder Bridge, forming a dam that retained a narrow lake upstream. The raw sandstone walls siding this lake were studded with boulders.
The higher roads and trails had survived. The Western Ridge Trail was intact. The nine numbered cross-trails now all ended abruptly at the new gorge. Before the flood there had been thirty little picnic areas in the park; now the higher ones were damaged, the lower ones gone. All had been paltry things, as far as Frank could determine in the aftermath—small clearings with picnic tables, fireplaces, a trash can. Site 21 was the worst in the park, two old tables in perpetual gloom, stuck at the bottom of a damp hollow that opened onto Ross Drive. With that road closed, it had gained some new privacy. Indeed in the mud under one table Frank found a used condom and a pair of women’s pink underwear, Disney brand, picture of Ariel on waistband, tag saying Sunday.
East of site 21 the drop to the creek was steep. Big trees overhung the water. Boulders as big as cars stood in the stream. East of the ravine a steep wall of green loomed. If Beach Drive was not rebuilt, water would remain the loudest sound here, followed by insects. Some birds were audible. The squirrels had gray backs, and stomachs covered with fine coppery fur.
There were lots of deer, white-tailed in name and fact, big-eared, quick through the trees. It was a trick to move quietly through the forest after them, because small branches were everywhere underfoot, ready to snap in the mud. People were easier to track than deer. The windrows were the only good place to hide; the big tree trunks were broad enough to hide behind, but then you had to look around them to see, exposing yourself to view.
What would the forest look like in the autumn? What would it look like in winter? How many of the feral zoo animals could survive a winter out?