A week or so ago, our friends Ann and Jules invited me and my wife over to dinner, and after an excellent meal, Ann played a recording for us. It was the poet Robert Frost, reading his poem, “birches“:
When I see birches bend to left and rightAcross the lines of straighter darker trees,I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stayAs ice-storms do.
Having just returned from a hike in the Catskills, I had to interject here and point out that in the mountains of southern New York, it’s not the birches that are bent over after winter storms, but rather the fir and spruce saplings, which are often crushed to the ground under heavy loads of snow. Robert Frost lived in New Hampshire, I explained, and no doubt conditions up there are different.
Needless to say, on the very next hike in the Catskills, I was overwhelmed by bent-over birches….
The Long Brown Path 