I drove through a clear-cut new development that squeezed along all the boundaries of my intended destination. Squatly massive homes glowered over skinny little trees in strange perfect dirt circles. New devotees’ offerings to Precision and Out-of-Doors. The neighborhood stretched for miles and most of the homes seemed to be sold, but not a single person appeared.
The unkempt gravel parking lot sat improbably across from one of these Precise Hulks. Grass around the edges and between the pebbles thickened and increased, fading up into a thick carpet interspersed with wildflowers at the entrance. A weird cave wedged into all the human ingenuity. I pulled up my socks and pulled down my pant legs and gingerly shuffled into the woods, to the trailhead on the other side of the grass patch.
3 star review: There are no facilities at this hiking trails. When we were there, between the five of us we took 22 ticks off us!! It is tick infested!
I wound through the trees into a meadow hazed in hot pink with Sheep Laurel as far as I could see in either direction. Electricity pulsed, crackled, whirred overhead. My vision began to tilt as I squatted to admire tiny Bluets amongst the pink at the edge of the trail. Tilt, pulse, blink. I shook my head, exhaled sharply, skimmed for the next trailhead. I saw just one, not the one that would take me most directly to the wetland and the Great Blue Heron rookery I came to see, but it would loop there. My skin was starting to prickle and zaps alternated with calls from Eastern Towhees on either side of me, staccato and in stereo.
The electricity faded as I moved into the woods on the other side, onto a skinnier trail interspersed with large rocks that required attention to my footing. But despite moving away from human construction — despite the silence, and seeing only trees in all directions — I felt claustrophobic. I felt like I was indoors. I watched my feet as my vision began to tighten again.
Then the Chipmunks began.
One loudly chirped a warning, or declared his territory, then another. And another. And another? Too loud to distinguish the occasional snatches of bird song.
Cheep cheep chick a dee fee cheep bee cheep cheerily cheep cheep CHEEP
They wouldn’t stop but I was walking a loop, and had already hit the point where continuing or turning back wouldn’t matter. For three quarters of a mile they chirped, what sounded like a new Chipmunk every few feet though I never saw one. My first aura migraine in weeks started to dance around the edges of my eyes. The trees blinked.
As I reached the decision point in the trail — take the connector off the loop to reach the wetlands I’d come to visit in the first place, or cut things short and take the remainder of the loop back to the lot — the path took me between two trees bursting with flowers and vibrating with three kinds of bees. A sight that is normally delightful to me became nightmarish, adding a bass undercurrent while the Chipmunks still chirped.
I threw myself down on a boulder at the intersection and put my head in my hands for a moment. I decided to abandon the wetlands and the rookery so I could stop bothering the woods and before the migraine could turn from visuals to pain.
All the noise stopped instantly as I stood and walked away from the connector trail and back towards the parking lot. By the time I reached my car my vision had cleared, and the impending migraine was nowhere to be found.
It hurts when a new place asks us to leave, and we can hear it. We want to think we’re one of the good people visiting to respect the space. We’re not here to get too close to nesting Herons, to flush Owls for a photograph, to let our McMansion-dwelling dogs off leash to harry small animals. But sometimes this is how land resists further encroachment — by turning away, at the very least, those capable of listening.
Here, have a video of a Chipmunk chirping. They’re funny when they’re not doing whatever all that was.
This essay was originally published on my now-retired Substack on June 24, 2023. It has been migrated and updated on May 25, 2024.