‘Hanging like some dread spider in the sky above Bartlett Forest is New Hampshire’s ‘Mitten Tree,’ a long dead elm that has been the subject of local yarn bombing for nearly a decade now. Once a cozy-seeming installation, its brittle branches have begun to bend and crack under the weight of decaying wool. Scarves and mittens unravel until their entrails, caught up in the wind, go looping back into the vast moldering network or slap wetly at distracted visitors. It smells of a drowned dog and that alone has been enough to dissuade the once fanatic crochet vandals. It is an abandoned place and, as of publication, is likely to slough off the Wayside within a year.’
It’s late evening by the time Hector and I make it out to the ‘Mitten Tree’ but the hiking isn’t so unpleasant. The trail is wide enough that the moon, just waning from full, provides plenty of light to walk by. Hector busies himself in piles of dry leaves, hopping between them, thrashing about, seeming to search for the perfect specimen. I’ve done a lot of research on rabbit nutrition since acquiring him from ‘The Sunburn Experience.’ The forums would disapprove of his eating wild grasses and leaves, but it seems cruel to stop him. Isn’t this what a wild rabbit would do?
The ‘Mitten Tree’ does stink and it has certainly taken on something of a sinister shape in decline. Only a few of its titular garments have maintained any semblance to the human hand and those that have wave eerily in the wind, silhouetted by moonlight. I sit and let Hector roll about in the leaves a little while longer. I wonder whether I have it in me to knit him a rabbit-sized sweater- whether instructions for that sort of thing exist on the internet somewhere. Surely I’m not the first person to worry about the temperature of a hairless rabbit.
Hector and I both leap when, apropos of nothing, the ‘Mitten Tree’ suddenly illuminates. Somebody has laced it with string lights and connected them all to a small solar battery and a timer. The lights play off several ornaments in delicate glass. In technicolor, the ‘Mitten Tree’ almost looks almost merry, again.
Hector is enraptured by the sight. I have to hold him back, afraid he’ll chew through a wire somewhere and electrocute himself. I’m impressed too and a little baffled. Haven’t we been on the edge of the winter for months now? I can’t remember the last time I noticed the holidays. It must have been Halloween five times since the last Christmas.
How long has it been autumn?
-traveler
