Field Journal Blog #0
East Lawn Cemetery Woods
Jon Levinsohn
It was humid and the temperature was hovering just under 10 Celsius, but it was sunny with a few clouds littering the sky; the dew on the plants was easily visible. It was around 8 in the morning. I could hear the Green River– the rushing of water over rocks– and birds. The birds were loud, and their calls came without any break. I could not identify the calling species and I quickly stopped noticing them. I thought I might hear cars from nearby route two, but I cannot be sure. About 40 minutes later, the birds stopped, and I could hear a roar of what I think was an airplane.
The land itself is composed of a steep section that borders the cemetery, which levels out as it approaches the river. The dirt was packed fairly tight, but rocks and small lose clusters of dirt compound the difficult angle making descending to the flat region tricky. Along with the rocks, which were typically no larger than a several centimeters in diameter, there were matted dead leaves, especially along the steep section, and dead branches. I saw a large fallen tree, at least 20 feet tall, that looked like it was a Birch tree, though it’s white bark had faded into brown. There were a few animal holes leading into the hillside, though none seemed large enough to fit much more than a large chipmunk–no more than 5 cm in diameter.
The vegetation is dense making it difficult to closely inspect the regions further from the cemetery. Though several of the trees elsewhere in Williamstown have started to change their colors, the trees in this area seem to still firmly fall under the category of completely green. There is only one evergreen tree in the area that I noticed, it was short, and very wide, and it resided in the flatter section closer to the river. I cannot identify many plant species, but I was able to notice that there were some maples, about 3 or 4. All were mature, large, and lined the outer boundary between the cemetery and the woods—none had trunks located more than a few feet into the woods. These maples had helicopter-like seeds still attached, but had not seemed to have dropped any yet. Large black spots of about 2-3 cm in diameter are ubiquitous on the almost all of the maple leaves. I looked at some maples along my walk back to my dorm and do not see any spots on their leaves. There are some oak branches, with brown, crispy leaves under a maple tree, but I do not see any oaks. Next to these oak branches is a paper cup and some evergreen leaves. I think there might be yard trimmings, as they seem wholly out of place and are not far from well-manicured grass of the cemetery. Furthermore, I wonder about if the maples might have an been planted as they seem to fit in better with the trees around the cemetery than the other trees in the sections of woods.
Along the ground there are small bright orange bulbs in clusters of about a dozen, which were about 1 cm in diameter. There were flowers that were white and large, yellow and small, white and small, and purple and mid-sized. I noticed several Sumacs complete with the red clusters of fuzzy looking tiny spheres, along the steep section. The large trees, small ferns and grape vine, with leaves punctured with holes, that had lost most of their grapes that dominates the steep section, seem to give way to more shrubbery and smaller trees no more than 15 or so feet tall. Some of these plants have berries–some bright red berries and some purple ones. I think that some of these smaller trees might be ash, but I cannot be sure. I cannot identify these plants. The area is small, but seems relatively diverse in its plant life. The only animal life I actually see is a large contingency of pesky mosquitoes, though I do see a spider’s web hanging between two maple braches.