Disturbance

Researchers join educators and children on walks in a nearby urban forest. Toddlers negotiate jackets, snow pants and boots, and then move, as fast as layers of winter clothing would allow, across a sports field. On the other side of a chain-link fence is the forest. The group moves along its edge to a small clearing they’ve come to regard as the entrance. It’s marked with a fallen tree and, on rainy days, a large puddle at the edge of the path. The entrance is different today. Smaller shrubs and trees have been cut down, and a wave of orange markings – bright flags and smears on tree trunks leads into the forest. Some leaves got in-between trees and spray cans, and are now bright orange in the snow. A path is going to be built to connect the school with a new residential development on the other side of the forest.

Before the snow fell, on a fall day overwhelmed with browns and reds and golden yellow colours, another child, walking through this forest, puzzled whether someone paints the leaves in the night.

I am standing on the edge of the forest, with this memory and a leaf, its back covered in icy snow, its front dazzling caution-orange. It is abstracted now, an anthropomorphic mark of progress covering its decomposing surface. Still, paint, decay and all, this leaf is situated in a specific place. Situated in this place is the question of who paints the leaves, as are something or someone does the painting: cold temperatures, the slowing down of chlorophyll production, construction workers; as is the educator who resents the disturbance; as am I, a researcher, collecting questions and stories of ordinary everyday encounters.