On a March afternoon at Cornell University, I encounter Rona Pondick’s surreal sculpture Untitled Tree, where scattered aluminum “fruit” reveal unsettling human teeth beneath bare branches.
An encounter with Rona Pondick’sUntitled Tree (1997)
One March afternoon on the lawn near the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell, you might notice a small, leafless tree rising from a circle of red gravel. At first it seems merely dormant, another tree waiting for the long Ithaca winter to loosen its grip. But as you approach, the scene grows quietly unsettling. Around the trunk lie dozens of smooth gray forms—small, rounded objects like stones or fruit that have fallen from the branches.
Then you see the teeth.
The objects scattered beneath the tree are cast aluminum forms bearing unmistakably human molars. They appear to have dropped from the tree like strange metallic apples, a harvest that belongs less to botany than to anatomy. This disquieting grove is Untitled Tree (1997) by the American sculptor Rona Pondick.
The Artist of Hybrids
Pondick, born in Brooklyn in 1952 and trained at Queens College and the Yale School of Art, has spent decades exploring the language of the body in sculpture—often literally. Her work frequently uses casts of body parts, particularly teeth or her own head, creating forms that merge human anatomy with animals, plants, or everyday objects.
The result is a sculptural vocabulary that feels simultaneously ancient and uncanny. Critics often describe her work as “hybrid”—a blending of the human body with other forms, echoing mythic creatures such as sphinxes or centaurs while remaining distinctly contemporary.
Teeth have been a recurring motif in Pondick’s art since the 1980s, when she began casting them and embedding them in unexpected contexts. These fragments of the body carry a peculiar emotional charge: they evoke childhood, appetite, vulnerability, and mortality all at once.
A Sculpture That Feels Like a Dream
Created in 1997, Untitled Tree belongs to a group of works where Pondick began experimenting with trees as sculptural forms. She has explained that she sometimes uses actual branches or trunks as starting points for casting in metal, translating natural textures into aluminum or steel.
The Cornell sculpture is monumental yet restrained:
a cast-aluminum tree,
surrounded by dozens of small aluminum objects,
each about the size of a stone but bearing human teeth.
Seen from a distance, the scene reads like a quiet landscape intervention. Up close, however, it feels like a fragment from a surreal dream—a tree that has shed something disturbingly human.
The Poetry of the Fallen Teeth
Standing before it on that March afternoon, one might think of the sculpture as a botanical riddle.
Trees drop fruit. They drop leaves. In autumn they drop seeds.
But this tree has dropped teeth.
The idea is both playful and faintly macabre. The small aluminum forms resemble seeds, yet their teeth suggest the human mouth—the place of speech, hunger, laughter, and loss. The sculpture seems to whisper that the natural world and the human body are not separate realms but entwined systems of growth and decay.
In the red gravel circle beneath the tree, the objects appear almost archaeological, as though a curious species once grew here and shed fragments of itself into the soil.
Cornell’s Quiet Surrealist Grove
Placed on the lawn near the Johnson Museum’s striking I. M. Pei building, the sculpture forms a gentle conversation between art, architecture, and landscape. In winter the bare branches echo the skeletal trees around it. In summer the aluminum trunk gleams among living foliage.
And the scattered teeth remain—silent, patient, and oddly humorous.
They remind us that nature, like art, can be unsettling and beautiful at the same time.
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Copyright 2026 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
An ancient esker redirects Fall Creek at Malloryville Preserve, revealing how Ice Age meltwater shaped the land and still quietly governs water and wandering feet.
The esker rises like a glacier’s spine, a long-backed remnant left behind where an ice mountain learned how to leave quietly. It is not loud geology—no cliffs shouting their age, no cataracts announcing force—but a patient, sinuous fact. A frozen river’s footprint, pressed into the land and then abandoned, it lies there still, grading itself gently on both sides, as if unwilling to offend gravity or time.
At first glance, it could pass for a human thing: a railroad berm, a raised roadbed, an engineer’s solution. Yet this ice-scribe ridge was shaped without blueprints, drafted by meltwater racing beneath a retreating glacier, carrying gravel like a hoard of stories. The stones settled where the ice allowed them, stacked by pressure and patience, forming a ridge long enough—nine-tenths of a mile—to tell a stream where it must turn.
Fall Creek meanders through the esker fields of the Malloryville Preserve. Here is the view from an abandoned railroad bridge. The preserve is near Freeville in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State.
Fall Creek arrives with purpose, confident in its descent, until it meets the esker and must reconsider. Here the water performs bows, an abrupt acknowledgment of authority. The creek becomes a liquid negotiator, redirected by the ridge’s quiet insistence. This is the esker’s work: not domination, but persuasion. Land teaching water a new sentence.
This video provides a better feeling for the esker. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Standing at the foot of the esker, the slope to the right reveals itself slowly. It does not announce, I am important. Instead, it waits to be noticed. A swamp settles nearby, the water-mirror lowland, collecting what seeps and lingers. Together, ridge and wetland form a conversation: height and hollow, drain and gather, spine and lung.
Before there was signage, before placards translated glacial grammar into public language, the land already knew itself. Knowledge preceded explanation. My son and I pitched a tent atop a kame at our front door — another ice-left hill, a deposit of ancient momentum. That night, the ground beneath us was older than memory and younger than myth. Camping there was not recreation so much as apprenticeship.
A kame is a meltwater’s knuckle, rounded and abrupt, shaped by collapse rather than flow. To sleep upon it is to rest on uncertainty made solid. The tent fabric whispered in the breeze, a thin membrane between human breath and glacial aftermath. Fireflies stitched brief constellations above the grass, while the earth held fast, remembering ice that no longer needed remembering.
Walking along Fall Creek later, watching it turn west where the kame insists upon geometry, one begins to sense the land’s authorship. This is not random scenery. It is edited terrain. Each ridge, each bend, each saturated hollow is a sentence left behind by ice that once covered everything and then, mercifully, withdrew.
The esker itself is a time-ladder, inviting slow ascent. Step by step, gravel shifts underfoot—rounded stones, carried far from their origins, now loyal to this place. Each stone is a traveler without a passport, naturalized by pressure and pause. Together they hold their line, resisting erosion not by hardness alone, but by collective agreement.
From above, the ridge reveals its length, its deliberate curve. It does not hurry. It does not apologize. It simply is, a memory ridge, reminding the present that absence can be as powerful as presence. The glacier is gone, yet its handwriting remains legible.
Overflow from a Kettle Pond threads through a meadow before feeding Fall Creek. The O.D.von Engeln Preserve at Malloryville.
In the nearby swamp, water pools in dark reflection. Frogs tune their throats. Sedges write vertical poetry. This is the after-ice sanctuary, where meltwater’s descendants linger and life reclaims the margins. The esker drains; the swamp receives. Between them flows a balance older than names.
To walk here is to practice a different kind of attention. The land does not reward speed. It rewards listening. The ridge asks you to follow its curve, to feel how it shapes movement, how it choreographs water, wildlife, and wandering humans alike. It is a path-without-intention, yet it guides all who encounter it.
Long after the tent is folded, after the creek continues its bent course, after the placards fade and are replaced, the esker will remain. It will continue directing water, lifting footsteps, and teaching geometry to anyone willing to notice.
Eskers and kames are the glacier’s farewell letter, written in gravel, signed by time, and left open for reading.
Explore the O.D. von Engeln Preserve at Malloryville, a hidden Finger Lakes wetland where glacial eskers, kettles, and springs reveal the deep story of ice and water.
In the heart of upstate New York, the Finger Lakes region stretches out like a handprint left by the last great ice sheets—long, narrow lakes aligned north to south, their steep-sided valleys feeding into a lattice of creeks, waterfalls, and wetlands. It is a landscape defined by water and time: glaciers grinding south, then melting back north some 12,000 years ago, carving deep troughs, piling up ridges of gravel and sand, and leaving behind a terrain that is anything but simple.
The O.D. von Engeln Preserve at Malloryville, near the small village of Freeville, is one of the quiet places where that story is written most clearly on the land. It doesn’t shout like Taughannock Falls or Ithaca’s famous gorges. Instead, it whispers—through the curves of its hills, the softness of its ground, the unexpected appearance of a spring at the base of a gravel ridge. Here, in a relatively compact area, you can see how ice and water worked together to shape the Finger Lakes region we know today.
Overflow from a Kettle Pond threads through a meadow before feeding Fall Creek. The O.D.von Engeln Preserve at Malloryville.
By the time the preserve officially opened in 1997, the name O.D. von Engeln was already familiar to anyone curious about local geology. His classic book on the Finger Lakes helped generations of readers understand that the scenery around them was not random, but the result of powerful, understandable processes. Reading von Engeln, the rolling hills and quiet valleys near Freeville become more than background—they become evidence: of buried ice, rushing meltwater, and the slow settling of sediments into the forms we walk on now.
Malloryville is an outdoor classroom for that lesson. The preserve is built around a cluster of glacial landforms—eskers, kames, and kettles—that create a three-dimensional mosaic of ridges and hollows. Eskers, those long, winding gravel ridges left by rivers that once flowed inside the glacier, snake through the forest like frozen currents of stone. Kames—steep, irregular hills of sand and gravel—rise suddenly from the surrounding lowlands. Kettles, the depressions left behind when buried ice blocks melted away, now cradle wetlands and pools.
Beneath and between these features, groundwater is constantly on the move. It seeps through layers of sand and gravel, emerges as cold springs at the foot of slopes, and spreads out into swamps, fens, and marshes. In the Finger Lakes, water is always telling a story; at Malloryville, it’s simply easier to hear. Follow the trail and you move through a succession of wet worlds: a seep-fed fen with delicate mosses and sedges, a shrub swamp where skunk cabbage thrusts up in early spring, a cattail marsh that hums with birds and insects in summer.
For my family, the story of Malloryville began even before the preserve had a name. We lived nearby along Fall Creek, itself a thread in the larger fabric of the Cayuga Lake watershed. My son and I camped for the first time on top of an esker just beyond our front door, our tent perched on what I would later learn was the remnant of a stream that once tunneled through the base of a glacier. At the time, it was simply a magical narrow ridge in the woods. Only later, with von Engeln’s guidance and the preserve’s interpretive signs, did that ridge become a sentence in a much older, longer narrative.
That is one of the great gifts of the Finger Lakes: the chance to move from simple admiration—“this is beautiful”—to understanding—“this is how it came to be.” The steep slopes along Cayuga, Seneca, or Skaneateles; the drumlin fields near the north ends of the lakes; the hanging valleys and waterfalls; and the quiet wetlands of places like Malloryville are all chapters in the same glacial chronicle. Once you learn to read one place, you begin to read them all.
Walking into the O.D. von Engeln Preserve, you enter that story at a small, intimate scale. The parking area and trailhead give way quickly to a world where the ground feels different—sometimes firm and gravelly, sometimes soft and yielding underfoot. Wooden walkways and narrow paths thread through shady forest and open wetland. Each bend offers a subtle shift: a new plant community, a change in water clarity or flow, a small sign explaining what lies beneath your feet.
Fall Creek meanders through the esker fields of the Malloryville Preserve. Here is the view from an abandoned railroad bridge. The preserve is near Freeville in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State.
This is not grand scenery in the postcard sense; it is something quieter and deeper. Malloryville invites you to slow down and notice. To ask why a particular ridge is so narrow, why water emerges here but not there, why one hollow is filled with shrubs and another with moss and sedge. In learning those answers, you gain not only an appreciation for this modest preserve but also a richer understanding of the entire Finger Lakes region.
The Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum) is named for the mottled brown leaves resembling marking on trout.
In the end, the O.D. von Engeln Preserve at Malloryville is a lens—a way of seeing. Through it, the familiar landscapes of central New York—valleys, hills, streams, and lakes—come into sharper focus as the lasting work of ice and water. Stand on an esker, look across a kettle wetland, listen to the quiet trickle of a spring, and you are standing inside the very processes that shaped the Finger Lakes.
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Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
From a modest bench above Taughannock Gorge, Cayuga Lake shifts from distant glimmer to presence—a quiet invitation to pause, breathe, and follow the water down.
From the south rim of Taughannock Gorge, Cayuga Lake appears like a distant strip of sapphire, framed today by a soft veil of hemlock and oak. The overlook here is modest—a fence, a bit of open sky—but someone wisely added a comfortable bench, an invitation to pause between gorge and lake, rock and water.
I stood in front of that bench, resting the camera body on the fence, fingers braced against the wood to steady the shot. This is not the grand, sweeping vista of a postcard. Instead, it is a quieter, more human vantage point, the way a person actually encounters the lake after walking the rim: emerging from the trees, breath easing, eyes adjusting to the light on water.
From here, the trail descends toward Cayuga’s shore, each turn bringing you lower and closer, trading the lofty perspective for the intimate sounds of waves and stone. In Distant Sapphire I and II, the lake was a glimpse—caught between branches, distant beyond the gorge. Now, in this “Bench View,” the water feels nearer, almost within reach, as though the landscape itself is drawing you gently down.
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Cayuga Lake Bench View
I’ve gathered the three photographs—Glimpse of Cayuga Lake, Gorge View with Oak Leaves, and this Cayuga Lake Bench View—into a small gallery, a progression of approach. Each frame is a step closer: from suggestion, to invitation, to the quiet promise of the bench, waiting for whoever needs to sit and look a little longer.
A gallery of the three Cayuga Lake photographs for comparison.
Glimpse of Cayuga LakeGorge View with Oak LeavesCayuga Lake Bench View
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Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Cayuga Lake from the south rim of Taughannock Gorge, seen through a veil of hemlock with a carpet of fallen oak leaves, foreground. This is a companion to the previous post, both were handheld. For this the foreground was included to increase interest. For added stability, I rested the camera body on the fence bracketed with my fingers.
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Gorge View with Oak Leaves
A gallery of the two photographs for comparison.
Glimpse of Cayuga LakeGorge View with Oak Leaves
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Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
A contemplative walk along Monkey Run where Fall Creek writes the valley’s history—sycamores, bridges, and Devonian stone speaking across seasons in Cornell’s living classroom.
On a morning in late March, when the hills about Ithaca still hold the night’s frost in their shaded folds, I took the path called Monkey Run and went to see how Fall Creek spends its winter earnings. The air had the bright sting of thaw, a kind of vernal austerity that keeps a man honest in his steps. Along the high bank the sun spilled its coin onto the water, where it broke and flickered like a school of silver minnows. A rim of snow clung to the shale ledges, and the leaves of last year’s oaks—curled, fox-red, and faithful—whispered as if to keep the woods awake until spring fully claimed them.
Sunlit bend of Fall Creek viewed from a high bank at Monkey Run in early spring.
Monkey Run is one of the outlying parcels tended by Cornell Botanic Gardens—once called the Plantations, and now, more fittingly, named for the living charge it keeps. These gardens do not end at beds and borders; they encompass the wilder rooms of the county, more than a thousand hectares of glens, pastures, and ravines where the university’s first and oldest teacher—nature herself—still holds class. Fall Creek is one of her principal lecturers. Rising beyond the high country of Cayuga Heights and slipping under stone and snow, it shoulders its way across the campus, idles a while in Beebe Lake, and turns turbines of memory at Triphammer Falls before shouldering on toward the lake that receives nearly everything here—Cayuga—long, deep, and glacial in its thinking.
Tall white-barked sycamores leafless against a blue March sky at Monkey Run.
If you would learn a valley’s mind, walk a meander. The creek here composes with easy cursive, laying down a bar of gravel, nibbling at a bank of clay, then sweeping back to consider its work from the opposite shore. The geologist says the rock is Devonian, pages laid flat and damp with time, and the ice of ten thousand winters ago scoured them into the open. A creek is a patient mason, working without rest and never in anger. I admired these sycamores—their clean bones shining through the leafless canopy like the ribs of an old cathedral. Winter reveals their whiteness; summer grants them shade. A stand of white pines keeps a dark counsel in the background; on the muddy edge, green tongues of skunk cabbage push up, pledges made by the swamp to keep faith with the sun.
Rust-stained steel pier above calm water on Fall Creek along Monkey Run trail
I came down to the water near an old steel pier, a bridge remnant, hanging on each end without purpose. It wears graffiti the way a boulder wears lichen; human wishes, briefly rooted, coloring what they can. The river accepts it all, the pilings and the scribbles, the cast limb and the bottle’s glint, and continues its one unarguable gesture downstream. That is the old instruction of Fall Creek: use, refuse, endure. Before the university drew students from every quarter, the creek turned wheels and powered the small ambitions of a frontier town. Even the name Triphammer speaks of iron struck to purpose. Now the water powers something quieter: the studies of herons, the almanacs of kingfishers, the quick arithmetic of minnows over limestone.
Looking back while climbing the steep bluff
Steps cut from logs ascend the bluff, each tread pegged with iron, each rise a short confession of breath. I climbed to the ridge, paused halfway, and through the gray lace of March branches saw the creek shining at a bend far below. A man cannot help but measure his own life against such a course. The path goes up and down in obedient red blazes, but the water keeps its own counsel. Where the bank slumps the river shoulders through; where the bottom rises it lays down a mirror. In my youth I wanted the straight run, the short work. Now the curve pleases me. To go with the current and not be carried away—that is a lesson suitable to the grey in my beard.
Clear, shallow run of Fall Creek with shale bottom and pine stand in distanceBluff overlooking Fall Creek in summer
When I returned five months later, on August 23, the same path had forgotten the word austerity. The cathedral of sycamore was fully leafed, the white pillars now vanished behind a nave of shade. The pines perfumed the air without trying. A new footbridge—clean timber arching like a bent bow—spanned one of the wet flats. Its braces, black-bolted and handsome, looked as if they would hold the weight of an ox team or a file of schoolchildren. Such crossings are a kind of promise from the present to the future: we found a way through here; may you, too. Below, the floor was upholstered with moss, oak leaves, and a scatter of pinecones—the slow currency of the woods accumulating interest.
Arched wooden footbridge in summer forest on Cornell’s Monkey Run trail.
Summer makes a confidant of every plant. Ferns unrolled their scripture at the bridge abutment; jewelweed held its tiny lanterns along the seeps; a kingfisher rattled downstream, blue lightning with a bill. The creek, glassy over its shale pavement, showed every wrinkle of its stride. I waded a little, feeling with the sole what the eye could not—where the current took an extra thought around a stone, where it forgot itself in a warm eddy. Trout lingered in the dimmer reaches, quick as commas; a great blue heron lifted off with that surprising tidiness of wing, ungainly only in our imagination.
In all seasons the trail carries two histories: one written in rock and water, the other in the footfall of people. Cornell’s founders, Ezra and Andrew White, believed the university should place the hand near the thing studied; here that principle is plain. Botany students take their lectures in leaf and bark; geologists read the creek banks as if the pages might soon turn by themselves; children learn the oldest calculus—how long a stick will float before it catches in the weeds. The caretakers from the Botanic Gardens mark, mend, and interpret, but they do not overtalk. The woods speak enough.
Moss, grass and pinecones on an overlook of Fall Creek
As the afternoon eased toward evening, I climbed once more to the bluff. The light had gone honey-colored and the leaves of the maples, those careful accountants of September, were just beginning to weigh their green against gold. I looked down on the bend where I’d stood in March—cold, bright, expectant—and felt the year’s circle gently close. As John Burroughs wrote, “The power to see straight is the rarest of gifts… to be able to detach yourself and see the thing as it actually is, uncolored or unmodified by your own… prepossessions… that is to be an observer and to read the book of nature aright.” Monkey Run obliges that humility. The creek moves as it always has—glacially taught, mill-forged, campus-wise, and freedom-loving—and the trail, with its modest stairs and honest bridges, invites us to walk beside it, to match our breath to its turnings, and to leave, if we can, a lighter trace than we found.
References
Ways of Nature (1905), “Reading the Book of Nature,” pp. 275–276 (The Writings of John Burroughs, Riverside ed., vol. XIV, Houghton Mifflin)
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Standing before these two trees on a unseasonably warm autumn day, I am struck by the intricate patterns of their fallen leaves. Against the vibrant green of the grass, the golden leaves form halos around the trunks, as if nature herself were sketching mandalas. There’s something profoundly mathematical about these arrangements—a quiet order amidst what might initially seem like chaos.
The first tree, its barren branches reaching skyward, stands on a carpet of yellow that radiates outward in near-perfect symmetry. The leaves have fallen in such a way that their density decreases as the distance from the trunk increases. It reminds me of the inverse square law—a principle in physics that governs how light, gravity, and sound diminish with distance. Here, instead of energy dispersing, it’s the leaves thinning out, their graceful scatter dictated by the wind’s whims and gravity’s pull. There’s an undeniable harmony in this seemingly random process, a convergence of natural forces creating an elegant gradient.
Stewart Park, Ithaca, New York
The second tree presents a different story, yet one equally mesmerizing. Its leaves, still clinging in part to the branches, form a looser ring at the base. The distribution is uneven, hinting at prevailing winds or the sheltering influence of nearby buildings. But even in this asymmetry, I see fractals—the self-similar patterns that repeat at different scales throughout nature. Look closely, and you’ll notice clusters of leaves mimicking the broader structure of the canopy above. It’s as if the tree’s essence is echoed in the ground below, a reminder of how deeply interconnected every part of a system can be.
Robinia pseudoacacia, commonly known as the black locust
These patterns invite reflection on the mathematical principles governing our world. Fibonacci sequences, golden ratios, and fractals—abstract concepts are not confined to textbooks. They are etched into the fabric of existence, visible in the spiral of a sunflower’s seeds, the curve of a nautilus shell, and the fall of leaves beneath a tree. Even the chaos of autumn is underpinned by order, a dance choreographed by countless variables: the angle of the branches, the strength of the wind, the moisture in the air.
I find myself wondering about the unseen forces at play. How many leaves fell straight down, obeying only gravity? How many were carried aloft by a breeze before settling farther afield? Could we model these patterns with algorithms, tracing the arc of each leaf’s descent? Would the data reveal a perfect equation, or would it remind us that some mysteries resist full comprehension?
As I stand here, I feel a deep gratitude for these natural equations. They ground me in the present moment while also connecting me to the infinite. The pattern of leaf fall is a reminder of life’s balance: chaos and order, randomness and structure, fleeting moments and timeless principles. The trees, now shedding their golden crowns, invite me to pause, observe, and marvel at the beautiful mathematics of autumn.
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On a serene autumn afternoon by Beebe Lake, a solitary red maple stood out against the backdrop, showcasing its vibrant colors and resilience, symbolizing autumn’s fleeting beauty.
It was one of those serene autumn afternoons that linger in memory, the kind where the sky seems impossibly clear, the air crisp and gently scented with fallen leaves. I stood at the edge of Beebe Lake, my gaze first drawn to the textured concrete dam holding back the water, its weathered facade contrasting sharply with the soft reflections shimmering across the lake’s calm surface. Beyond, the wooded hillside rose gently, a tapestry woven with the warm hues of autumn—golds, greens, oranges, and reds mingling like brush strokes on a canvas.
An October Glory, turning before all others
Yet amidst this collective beauty, one tree captured my attention, singular in its brilliance—a solitary red maple standing proudly on the lakeshore. Its leaves had turned a vivid crimson, blazing brightly as though defying the muted earth tones surrounding it. Even from a distance, framed and partially obscured by larger trees, its vibrant reflection cast a fiery echo on the water, rippling softly in the afternoon breeze.
The maple, Acer Rubrum, seemed perfectly at home here, thriving robustly at the water’s edge. I remembered reading how adaptable red maples are, able to flourish in conditions ranging from dry uplands to swampy shores. This spot, near the edge of the tranquil Beebe Lake, seemed to showcase its resilient character perfectly.
Up close, the maple’s glow was even more striking. Its leaves cascaded in fiery clusters, hues deepening from bright scarlet at the tips to a darker maroon closer to the branches. This dramatic gradient seemed symbolic of autumn itself—beautiful, fleeting, and subtly tinged with the melancholy reminder of winter’s approach.
The Red Maple (Acer Rubrum) to tolerant of diverse conditions, making it a perfect choice for this spot on the short of Beebe Lake.
A memory surfaced of early spring in the Finger Lakes region, a time when maples, including this red maple, generously share their sap. Though not traditionally tapped like its sweeter cousin, the sugar maple, this species’ sap can indeed be boiled down into syrup, a surprising sweetness hidden within its sturdy trunk. Standing in its shadow, imagining those early spring days, it seemed astonishing that the same tree could offer both the delicate sweetness of syrup and the fierce beauty now on display.
Curiously, the transformation of the tree appeared methodical yet whimsical—it changed colors from the top down, its upper branches already bare, exposing slender twigs pointing skyward. Like an artist carefully removing layers to reveal something deeper beneath, the maple unveiled its upper bare bones first, as though reminding observers of the quiet strength supporting its autumn splendor.
This Red Maple (Acer Rubrum) turns from the top down and has already bare for most top branches.
As I lingered, taking in this turning tree, joggers passed by along the path, their rhythmic footsteps a gentle percussion beneath the rustling leaves. Briefly, they glanced toward the vivid maple, perhaps drawn, like me, by its striking contrast to the surrounding foliage. It felt like we shared a secret admiration for this singular tree, recognizing in it a quiet assertion of individuality amidst conformity.
Eventually, I viewed the maple once more from afar, framed now by broader sweeps of branches and leaves, partially obscured but no less vivid. Through layers of leaves and dappled sunlight, it glowed like a distant flame, a beacon that seemed to encapsulate the entire mood of the season—warm yet cool, bright yet transient.
The Red Maple (Acer Rubrum) is the first to flower in spring and the first to turn in autumn.
Walking away, the image of that maple lingered, its reflection shimmering gently in the afternoon sun, a moment suspended between summer’s lush vitality and winter’s bare stillness. Beebe Lake had offered scenic beauty, a quiet meditation, a reflection mirrored not only on its tranquil surface but in the heart of an observer captivated by a single tree’s fleeting glory.
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A walk through Sims-Jennings Preserve unveils ancient cliffs, vibrant bird calls, and the quiet wisdom of maples and waterfalls along Cayuga Lake’s forested edge.
I arrive early, the sun still climbing its slow arc, brushing the eastern sky in pastels as I step into the Sims-Jennings Preserve at Cayuga Cliffs. The trailhead, tucked neatly along NYS Route 34B, is a doorway into an ancient chapter of the Finger Lakes—one rich with the scent of moss, the hush of leaf-dappled silence, and the layered echoes of stone and birdsong.
The first thing that strikes me is the expanse of mowed meadow, rimmed with goldenrod and patches of milkweed. From here, the land rolled gently westward until it ends abruptly in cliffs that plummeted toward Cayuga Lake. A map at the entrance speaks of the Sherburne and Renwick Formations, shale and siltstone laid down when the land was covered in warm Devonian seas. The cliffs themselves stand like watchmen over time, protecting 4,000 feet of lakeshore from erosion, whispering tales older than mammals.
A side trail leads to this mowed meadow and Cayuga Lake overlook
On the meadow edge is this Carya ovata, or shagbark hickory, unmistakable from its elongated leaflets and distinctive bark that peeled in long, curled strips. The leaves shimmered in the breeze, their green etched with pale speckles of recent rain, as if nature herself had hand-painted them.
Shagbark Hickory on the edge of meadow.Leaves of the Shagbark HickoryShagbark Hickory bark / trunk
I follow the yellow-blazed trail into a thicket where tall sugar maples—Acer saccharum—arched overhead. Their leaves caught the morning light, each palm-sized blade glowing like a shard of stained glass.
Throughout the preserve I find large holes like these in a pine tree snag, the work of a Pileated Woodpecker.
A sudden fluting note from the trees stops me in my tracks. “Ee-oh-lay,” the Wood Thrush sang, its call cascading through the forest like water over stone. Moments later, the rapid, accelerating trill of an Ovenbird joins in—a sound like “teacher-teacher-teacher” echoing from the understory. The forest is alive.
Watch on YouTube for the best experience.
I descend into the shade. A narrow stream runs over the flat gray ledges of the Ludlowville Formation, forming delicate waterfalls no taller than a man but intricate as lace. One fall, framed by a colonnade of black cherry and beech trees, poured over stone like a ribbon of silk. The water’s voice changed with each ledge—first a murmur, then a chuckle, then quiet confidence as it wound through the woods.
Here, a Scarlet Tanager flashes like flame through the canopy, its red feathers shocking against the sea of green. Above, the Eastern Wood-Pewee calles its own name from a high perch—“pee-a-wee”—a humble herald of summer. Lower down, a Tufted Titmouse flits from branch to branch, a gray blur with a whistle like curiosity incarnate.
Further along, a looping vine coils around a pair of trees like an ancient signature. Possibly a native bittersweet, its woody stem thick as a child’s arm. It reminds me of how all life here is entangled—flora, fauna, stone, and stream woven into one vast web.
I pause at the overlook, where the trail skirts the cliffs. From this height, the view opened to Cayuga Lake, vast and gleaming in the morning light. Across the water, the hills of the western shore softened into a watercolor horizon.
Crowbar Point on the west lake shore is visible, partially hidden by trees. Sims-Jennings Preserve at Cayuga Cliffs, Finger Lakes Land Trust on a May morning 2025, Lansing, Tompkins County, Finger Lakes Region
On the walk back, a robin sings its measured phrases from a nearby hawthorn, and I think how common birds often hold the deepest solace. The robin’s voice rises above the silence, not grand, not rare, but reassuring in its familiarity—like a good friend’s greeting.
A shale ledge, Renwick Formation (?)
I leave the preserve changed gently, like the soft indent of a footstep in moss. The Sims-Jennings Preserve at Cayuga Cliffs is a place that reminds you to listen. To the birds, to the trees, to your own breath. And in listening, you remember what it means to be wholly present in the world.
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Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 