Cole's Woods is the jewel in our crown

On summer days, Cole's Woods is best place for a walk

Bella and I have been wondering, during our almost-daily walks through Cole’s Woods, whether we might see a deer there.

“One year in there, in November when I was bulb-checking, before we flipped the lights on, I saw this enormous deer, with a huge antler rack,” said Bill Blood, president of the Friends of Cole’s Woods.

“It just floored me to have something that size in there.”

Blood and I talked on the phone earlier this week about what a special place Cole’s Woods is.

“Late last fall, I was doing work cleaning up a bridge right near the Northway, when an old-timer came walking down the hill. He had waders on, and he had a DEC hat on.

“He said he was checking his otter traps. He had a permit for trapping otter there.”

One evening last summer, when Ringo and I were walking alone, a fox appeared on the trail ahead of us, watched us for a second, then trotted away and veered off into the woods and vanished.

Another evening, Bella and I and Ringo heard a hoarse shrieking, repeated every 10 seconds or so as we walked back to our parking spot on Fire Road. That, too, we discovered, was a fox, making one of the scarier sounds in its repertoire.

Cole’s Woods is a patch of wildness in the middle of suburbia, with the Northway on one side and the mall parking lot on another, and it’s just big enough to make you feel you’ve escaped from the world ruled by traffic and cellphones.

Pretty purple wildflowers adorn the side of the trail in Cole’s Woods.

It is well-tended — the Friends keep the trails clear and pull up invasive plants like burning bush — but it isn’t groomed for human use the way, for example, Crandall Park is.

On hot days, Ringo wades into Halfway Brook, which winds through the woods, and sips from the stream.

He has been startled by a snake this spring on the path and also by a millipede. “Cole’s Woods” has joined “walk” on the list of words that cannot be spoken in our house without causing him to lift his head, stare, get to his feet, shake himself and whine.

“What are we going to do today?” Bella says.

“First we’ll drink our coffee and eat our toast,” I say. “Then we’ll go to the place where we go and do the thing we do.”

I make a walking motion with my fingers.

“A little stroll,” I say.

This is Jack in the pulpit, I believe.

Last summer (or maybe the summer before last), Diane Collins stopped at our house to give us a copy of her book, “Trailside Wildflowers in Cole’s Woods” — 52 pages of photos and captions. She had admired the native flowers in our yard, she said, which I have cultivated through a neglectful style of gardening, which they can survive but fancier flowers, like roses, can’t.

Cole’s Woods is full of flowers, hiding amid the ferns and skunk cabbage, and of birds, calling from the trees. I’ve identified several with the Merlin bird app on my phone, including the red-eyed vireo and tufted titmouse and ovenbird.

People roam the woods, too, often led by their dogs, and we delight in our meetings with them.

Recently, we ran into Debbie Peck, a teacher and naturalist who about 20 years ago led a summer class that explored the woods and included our younger kids, Tam and Zoe.

“Twenty years!” I said, and Debbie smiled.

“But we’re still young, right?” she said.

We can at least still feel young as we walk through Cole’s Woods, shaded and cool even on a hot day, our oasis in the midst of increasingly busy streets and shops.

Readings

I’ve started Jonathan Franzen’s book, “The Corrections,” published in 2001 to a lot of acclaim and a little bit of controversy caused by Franzen’s ambivalent response to having the book selected for Oprah’s Book Club. It’s a different sort of book for me, because, after a couple of bad experiences — Rachel Kushner’s book, “The Flamethrowers,” for example — I generally avoid contemporary literary novels. But I like “The Corrections” so far — I’m about 50 pages into its 568 — especially its humor. The portrait of the pathetic writer, academically accomplished and emotionally stunted, is funny, and Franzen’s style has a propulsive energy despite the profusion of words. So I’m going to give it a chance.