The forest for the trees

The little patch of woods near my house extends about four and a half blocks into the neighborhood and is three blocks wide at its thickest point. On a map, it doesn't seem like much, just a thumb of the larger Big Creek Gorge stuck into my shtetl like the World's Largest Urban Park was looking for a lift to some other metropolis.

But when I'm walking inside it during the months that the leaves are on the trees, I can see nothing but green as I look around, and for forty or more feet above me, just a canopy of foliage.

The past few weeks, they've been cutting down the Norway maples and it turns out a LOT of the trees providing that canopy are Norways. On balance, I'm in favor of removing invasive species, and they've only included about a half-block of the park in this project, so most of my walk is unchanged. It's jarring, though, to come up from the creek and find myself in a logged-out forest, all the leaves on the ground like a dozen blow-downs all in the same place.