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Adkins Arboretum in Ridgely, MD
When was the last time I walked in the woods? By myself? Last week in the Adkins Arboretum forest. Fortunately two women nearby were walking the trails so I could hear their voices in the distance. I felt vunerable and turned to the recorder punching random numbers to hear about the three stories of the forest, how quails leave their mothers as soon as they are born and need the nearby meadows for safety. I wondered if I had ever taken my girls on a field trip through a forest. Noises to your left and right unknown through the forage. It was scary because I was intruding on their space and I would and could never be queen of the forest. Perhaps that is why we loved Tarzan as much as we did swinging from the trees. He was king of the forest.
Adkins Arboretum has butterflies that come to greet you. I know because I had a pink dress on and they love pink. When the girls were little we went to Philadelphia to a butterfly show at the Philadelphia Science Museum. It was a netted enclosure and my little one wore pink. My oldest and I were ready to leave and she just lifted her skirt and danced the butterfly dance. Their space in our space in their space not ours.
The blue bottles you see are an installation to show what can go downstream to the Tuckahoe and then into the Choptank River.