Part 3

      I follow the creek farther and farther into the woods like this, standing amidst the water whenever I can, trying to get my camera to pick up all the nuances my eyes can read in the colors and textures. I have no idea how far I've walked, it's been over an hour but I've stopped so many times that I can't have covered all that much distance. A little dell of ferns off to one side draws me away from the water at last, the sun making the newly-born greenery absolutely luminescent. But the woods around it are surprisingly dense. The little nook of ferns and decaying logs is surrounded almost entirely by walls of vines and impenetrable brush. I'm sure that will make it all the more charming and secluded in the summer, but right now it's just intimidating. So I exit the way I came in, and head back toward the creek. A check of my compass reveals that the creek has meandered a lot, because without my noticing I'm now headed in a totally different direction. I really had no idea how far these woods went back, and I'm getting the feeling it's a lot more than I'd thought. Back at the creek bed, I pause to take a drink from my bottle of water. Turning in a slow circle, I look casually around to see if there's anything more interesting than the creek... and I stop, staring at the other side of the water. Is that a fence? It looks like it goes in a straight line, though the vines covering it make it hard to tell.
      Just my luck, there's absolutely no way to get across the creek right here. Up ahead, I can see a few more big stones, and I head quickly toward them. It's a bit of a stretch to reach the first of them, but they're stable and after the first one it's a reasonable path across. I can still see the fence, though I think it's a little farther from the water than it was back down the creek. There's a lot of low scrub, shorter plants than most I've run into in here, and I trip and nearly fall on my face several times. But eventually I make it to the low wall of vines... and it looks an awful lot more substantial than the usual drooping barbed wire run through the woods. I tug some of the vines aside, cautiously pulling them away a bit at a time, in case it really is barbed wire under there. Not really in the mood for a tetanus shot today.
      It's not barbed wire, it's... I don't actually know if it's iron, but it looks like a wrought iron fence. Leaning in closer, I keep pulling away the vines, but my care now is to not risk damaging the fence rather than worry for my fingers. Only a few inches of it are visible, but it's gorgeous... and it doesn't look like any fence I've ever seen, there are huge swirls of vines and flowers, tiny spirals and minute buds. There's none of the simple parallel lines that make up most iron fences, it's one spiral whirling into the next and the next. The top doesn't seem to be quite flat, the flowers and vines make it vary – the real vines growing over it had actually evened it out, instead of giving it false lumps. It's only a little taller than me, but I'm sure there's a good few inches of it underneath the thick layers of aging leaves on the ground, so it's probably about six feet high. It feels taller, the design is so large and bold... There's a bit of rust in places, and a few rough edges where small pieces have broken off. I can't imagine the change in temperature and moisture from winter to summer has done it any favors, our winters aren't bad, but it's obvious this has been neglected out here for a long, long time. The vines are so dense... and I'm almost positive there are no houses near here. I mean I guess there might be, but, I've looked at this area on a map, and there's no road in this direction for at least a mile.
      But I guess there must have been a house, or something, here at some point, why would you build a fence this gorgeous in the middle of the woods?
      Last time I was at the local bookstore, I saw a whole series of books filled with old photos of all the little towns in the area. But I never did pick one up... I'm sure they're still there, or there's one at the library. It's a small enough town that there will always be a few people obsessive about its history, always someone who knows the story of any place. I suppose it was some millionaire or another, who moved out here to get some fresh country air in his lungs, in the lungs of a sickly young wife maybe, but the money was soon gone through some trouble, and who's going to bother putting a fence up for auction? Though I have to say, I'd have bought a piece of it if I could, it's so incredibly beautiful...
      I've cleared most of the vines and debris away from a section maybe five feet in diameter now. God would I love to clear it all... but my hands are getting ripped to shreds on the dried old vines, and the new growth is almost impossible to break. I'd need tools to do it properly, and gloves for sure. Sighing, I take a step back, letting my fingers trace lightly around a swirling iron vine. The light is all wrong for a good photo, but I take a few shots anyway, in case by some awful chance I can't find my way back here or something. The bottom falls out of my stomach for a second as the idea hits me – but no, I'll find it, all I need to do is follow the creek in and I'll be fine.
      I can find the fence... but can I find the reason it's here? I look around, but there's no more clue than the long stretches of vine-covered fence running in both directions. It curves pretty sharply away from the creek behind me, no wonder I didn't see it until this point. Still, it follows the creek for awhile from here. I look up toward the tops of the trees, and check my compass... I'm not sure there will ever be a good light time for photos in an area this deep in the woods, but maybe I'll have better luck closer to noon? It can't be far from that now... my watch informs me it's about eleven. Guess I'll keep an eye on the light as I go, but if it's that near noon and it's still not getting down here, that doesn't bode well for photos.
      I slip my camera back into my bag for now, and after another sip of water, I continue on into the woods, sometimes beside the fence, sometimes moving back to the water's edge, my eyes straying more into the trees to either side, looking for some other trace of human habitation...

      Half an hour later, there's nothing new, and while the moderate heat of the springtime sun is getting down here, the light is still pretty patchy. Unless I can get all the vines off a section of fence, the vines are going to overshadow the detail in the ironwork... so I can capture the outlines of it, but not the texture, which is only half the information I need for a drawing. I clear a smaller section away this time, trying to get both sides as best I can, so a bit of light can get through the fence, and the iron stand out against the more distant background of trees and things. It's seriously a pain, trying to slip my hand between the unyielding iron curls – even if there were a gate somewhere, I'd never in a million years see it, and I'm really not confident about my ability to climb over something taller than me. (And I'd be absolutely terrified of breaking off even the tiniest piece...) I clear maybe a foot square, and take a few pictures, and then find a nice cozy rock to sit on for awhile.
      I take the sandwich out of my bag, and keep it in its plastic bag as I eat it – I don't want to waste any of my drinking water on cleaning off my hands, and I'm not exactly confident about how clean the water in the creek is. I turn off my iPod for a little while, listening to the environment around me. Lots of birds, but I have no idea what kinds, I'm awful at bird calls. The creek isn't a particularly rambunctious one, so there's not much more than a muted gurgle from it. What makes me happiest, is that I can't hear a single car. That is fantastic. It feels so nice to be completely alone and unobserved now and again, left to whatever thoughts you'd like without interruption by the rest of the human race... I don't blame Mr. Mystery Millionaire for building a place out here, if that's what happened, there are definitely days I'd have no problem with a driveway that's two miles long.
      I stay on the rock for a little while, putting my hands behind me and leaning back, closing my eyes and breathing deeply, letting the quiet of the woods seep into me, letting the freshness of the air soak into my skin...
      Ugh, I hate crows! That's got to be the most obnoxious sound nature's thought of yet, they're so unreasonably loud and it's such a harsh, grating noise. Maybe I'm just biased, having been woken up so many summer vacation mornings at five a.m. by a crow or two that was partial to the tree right outside my bedroom window. Still.
      Looking around, I can just make out the large black shape of the evil bird in the top branches of... oh I'll have no idea what any of these trees are until they have leaves on them. Then I'll know a maple from an oak, and maybe a birch tree. Birch trees I might know by the bark, but that's about it, and that's only because I think they're really pretty. Too bad they're so overdone in art...
      The crow flies off, which is good, because it was up way too high for me to be able to throw something at it. But my nice meditative mood is broken, and I sigh and look around. How much farther do I want to keep walking? I'm dying to know where the fence leads, but without having any ideas of what I might be looking for... I might just walk in a big circle that extends for a mile around the house – if the house is even still there. If it was even ever there! I have this gut feeling that there's a house, or at least was one, but maybe it's just wishful thinking. I could do such pretty drawings around a forgotten old mansion.