Gabrielle Heertje-Nettek and Manfred Nettek have recently protected 160 acres of the valley with a Capitol Land Trust conservation easement. I visit the valley in early January, the air full of something between fog and rain, the temperature a balmy 48 . It seems like ideal conditions after the ice, melting snow and pounding rain that greeted the new year. A farm road takes me past the house and barns, which are not part of the easement, and up into forested hills. Moss-cloaked maples and alders hoary with lichens mingle with fir, hemlock, and cedar.
Water saturates the soil and swells the mosses.
It weights the fronds of sword fern so that they form elegant drapes on the hillsides. The air is filled with the sound of water gathering in rills, tumbling in creeks, dripping from branches. I follow a creek upstream to two ponds in the forest, created years ago by a previous owner and recently restored. Upstream from the ponds the creek is carried in a steep ravine. Winter Wrens flit along the stream and disappear into a tangled orgy of vine maple.