ONE YEAR, WITH the kind of gusto for tidying up that’s endemic across cottage country in early July, my husband, Steve, and I set out to clean up an abandoned woodpile. It had been festering in an overgrown tangle of trees by the shore. I lifted up one of the rotting logs and jumped—there, looking at me, sat an equally startled Eastern red-backed salamander. The small, dark, rust-coloured creature darted away. Steve and I looked at each other, and shifted more pieces of wood, catching glimpses of another, and another. We could hardly believe that inside this eyesore, just steps from the cottage, there was a secret world under our rotting logs. So we left it and its neighbouring firepit to fall apart in peace.
In life, it’s a natural desire to tidy up. It’s how we take care of a place. Opening up at the cottage means cleaning up mouse droppings and wiping winter grime off deck furniture. That desire to bring order to our surroundings extends to the forest; we see a tree that fell over the winter and want to chop it up, we see fallen leaves and want to rake them. That would make sense if the forest around your cottage was
