Mission in a burned woods.

A rainy-day ramble reveals anew the natural world's power to heal and change.

A LIGHT MORNING rain tapped on my window, inviting me out for a walk. I accepted gladly. Slapping on an old felt hat, I strolled into the greening woods near my house.

About five acres of woods burned here in Reston, Virginia, almost a year ago. Thousands of houses are built in and near our woods, so the fire got a reaction that was the human equivalent of a kicked-over ant hill. Concerned homeowners, fire trucks, helicopters, police galore, and news media swarmed over the area.

The fire chief said that children playing with matches had ignited dry leaves. The evening news showed flames and smoke, and the local newspapers carried letters from citizens concerned about the loss of a beautiful forest. Opinions were exchanged for a week or so.

One person wrote that fires helped forests. Several opined that this was a stupid idea. Another correspondent added the effects of our conflagration to the loss of tropical forests, the hole in the ozone layer, and global climate change and concluded that we were all doomed. One letter I particularly remember said that the burned woods would never recover--that it was lost to us forever.

My rainy, woods-walk mission now was to see what had happened in a year. Was the forest gone forever?

I went roundabout to the burned area, walking down a heavily wooded stream valley where the water meanders first this way, then off another way, undercutting tree roots on each curve until eventually the soft persistence of water brings big, solid trees crashing down.

Often new pools are formed in the holes left by upturned roots. The tree trunks sometimes bridge the stream, sometimes dam it, adding new meanderings and eventually another tree-death sentence on the curves of the relentless current.

While the stream tears down, it also builds up. New trees are established on the exposed soil washed from the upheavals of old trees. Virginia blue-bells thrive in the fine, deep silt washed into mini-deltas.

Beavers have flooded about 10 acres here. Two floodings are abandoned now. The dams have gradually washed out, leaving a marsh full of trees killed when the standing water shut off the air supply to their roots. Woodpeckers have carved hundreds of hole-condos in the dead trees, and the area is full of those animals that adapt to tree cavities. In the oldest abandoned area the trees are slowly decaying and breaking up, sometimes snapping off from the top, piece by piece like brittle breadsticks, sometimes toppling over whole. Their reclining carcasses poke patterns of sun-bleached, gray roots and branches above the jewelweed and muck.

A large hawk watching for a meal sits in one dead tree. As I pass by, a street-gang of crows descends on the hawk, chasing it into a crowded cover of pines with much loud crow-profanity.

The beavers moved again last summer. In the new, freshly flooded beaver development, trees not cut for food, dams, or housing are still alive. Another year of flooding will kill this section of forest. Then the beavers will move on and new marsh life will move in.

Up one hill and down another brings me to the burn area. Tree trunks still show black char, and I can see where the fire climbed along branches of fallen trees. But when I tilt my hat back and look up, I see new, pastel green leaves popping out high in the tree tops. Here, as in the unburned forest, millions of leaves are unfurling like the little green umbrellas that bartenders put in warm-weather drinks. I stand in their shelter and hear the rain but feel only an occasional wet "splat" when a drop or two ducks through the semiporous shield of twigs, leaves, and branches.

Last summer's green growth is ankle-deep on the forest floor now--a brown mat of leaves and twigs. Princess pine ropes off sections of the ground in olive green. Hollies and laurels sprout delicate shoots from their bases. A trillium or two spiral up, spearing right through tough, tan oak leaves that were pasted flat by winter snow.

This forest is not lost. It's changed. But that's the nature of forests--and of all living things (and for that matter dead things). Change is the rule. It comes in more ways from more causes than we can count--quickly from fire and wind, gradually (usually) from water. But it always comes--with us or without us, ready or not.

I have seen, even heard change come. One quiet, windless night as I worked in my backyard, a crackling-crashing came from the woods, and the next day, walking back, I found a big old tree that had fallen from its own weight and decay accumulated over many years. A thousand seeds and seedlings were poised, ready to push into the sun-space created by the gravity-challenged tree.

As these green lives adapt to change, so must we. With or without a rain-tapped invitation, we should accept all outdoor invitations gladly. Go and look and listen to the hum of the great natural machine. There's much to see, and much comfort, somehow, in the knowledge that things will never be the same.

Lester DeCoster is president of The DeCoster Group, a Reston, Virginia, consulting firm specializing in environmental science, forestry, and public relations.