More Laughing Brook thoughts

I remember Laughing Brook during the 1970s. I especially remember the gift shop, where my family apparently bought the postcard below.

Mother West Wind and her taxidermy animal friends

Post card description

I don't remember meeting Mother West Wind. But I do remember that it was a shrine to Thornton W. Burgess filled with Harrison Cady-based animal images and caged animals labeled "Jimmy Skunk," "Peter Rabbit," etc. 

Aside from a single trail named "Burgess Trail" and some map copy, Thornton W. Burgess and his characters have been elided from Laughing Brook. 

I don't blame Mass Audubon for this. Fires, floods, and the decline of Burgess in the popular memory have made the property easier to manage as a regular wildlife sanctuary. 

And it doesn't take much imagination to reinsert his characters into the unusually large number of den-like cavities that abound on the property. 

Laughing Brook

Burgess Trail, Laughing Brook Wildlife Sanctuary, Hamden, MA. 

In December I stopped by Laughing Brook on the way to Springfield, where I planned to collect the final texts I needed to finish the Collected Writings of Thornton W. Burgess, 1895-1911. 

Rituals observed included: Deep listening to the brook as it laughed;

Immersion of boots in said brook;

Greetings to woodland characters. Hello, Chatterer!

Red Squirrel (blurry)

As I walked the "Burgess Trail" I began thinking. Isn't there a way in which this trail was "written" by Burgess? And I by walking it might be a (very minor) "co-author," as would be the various deer and coyote who also walked it, changing it a little bit every time. (With this in mind, Burgess wouldn't be "first author," really...)

Sign: Why are there so many dead trees?

Currently on the property as a whole, though, there is a hostile editor at work--the Spongy Moth (Lymantria dispar)--decimating tree life to the point that the property might be soon be unrecognizable to many of its contributing authors.