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Community Corner

Darien's Enchanted Forest

Chris Filmer transforms Selleck's Woods.

A sprite—a prankish fairy with magical powers haunting woods and hills—inhabits Darien’s improbable enchanted forest.

His name is Chris Filmer. He is often mistaken, when he walks his dog Tatiana in his lair, Selleck’s Woods, for an ordinary mortal.

Do not be fooled.

This gentle, soft-spoken native of South Africa transforms neglected, garbage-strewn wastelands into pristine wilderness, creating refuges for birds and animals and people.

He sets bird-boxes to attract wood ducks. The boxes have interior ladders with tiny rungs to make it easier for baby wood ducks to climb up and out as they make their entry into the world outside.

He designs and builds graceful arching bridges at stream-crossings where rough-hewn logs would serve the same purpose.

He makes sure you will spot a cardinal and a screeching owl and 35 other kinds of birds when you visit Selleck’s Woods. With uncommon skill, he hand-carves and paints replicas of all the birds sighted there and perches them high in the trees where at first glance you are certain to mistake them for the real thing. (He puts them there to educate the young so they will grow up loving their experiences in the woods.)

He lays out a series of sliced tree trunks along a trail, knowing their irresistible power to attract young boys to test their skills of speed and balance.

And he rescues gnomes. (More about which later.)

Should you chance to encounter this dedicated sprite of the forest, you should express your thanks to him.

That’s what "Eddie Q" did the day he caught and released a 12-inch bass from the unnamed seven-acre lake at the western edge of the woods. Elated by the experience, he wrote in a logbook at the north entrance to Selleck’s Woods: "What a great morning. Thanks."

With equal enthusiasm, a young visitor recorded in irregular penmanship that he had spotted a snapping turtle.

Sighted on a trail this past week, Chris was in mere mortal mode. He had no visible pruning implements, binoculars, shovels or saws; he was simply out walking three-year-old Tatiana, a forest lover herself, for the pure pleasure of it.

After ten years of non-stop work in the woods, and directing teams of volunteers, one might say Chris had earned the moment.

He invited a visitor to sit down with him on a bench he had made from a fallen cedar tree. It was a spot favored by a woman who often took her dog there for quiet contemplation. After the dog died, Chris built the bench as a memorial to the dog and a comfort to its owner.

He spoke of growing up in South Africa where he drew and painted and built tree houses from an early age. He learned to love the outdoors, hiking into the mountains outside Capetown and spending time with his brother, a game warden at a private park in the wild inhabited by lions.

A Darien transplant, while serving on the Representative Town Meeting in 1987, Chris learned of plans by the Task Force on Moderate Income Housing for the Elderly to build affordable housing on town-owned property known as Selleck’s Woods.

Bounded closely on the north by I-95 and its busy truck and service area, and on the west by Metro-North tracks, the 28 acres of land purchased by the town of Darien in 1963 thus first attracted his notice. He went for a look.

What he saw inspired him, Chris related: garbage, litter, fallen trees, choking vines, impenetrable forest, tracks evidencing heavy use by motorbikes and late-night revelers, a lake polluted with oil slicks from the highway rest area.

He was inspired to get to work.

"What is life but dreaming and doing?" he asked.

Retired from a career of business consulting, Chris eventually was asked to head Friends of Selleck’s Woods.

The town abandoned plans for a housing development.

With help from the Darien Nature Center, a survey was undertaken which revealed the property, together with adjoining 22 Dunlap Woods (donated to the Darien Land Trust in 1972), supports seven different ecosystems, from densely wooded areas to swampland, ponds and streams. Naturalists have identified 39 kinds of butterflies, 120 species of plant and four different types of fern growing on a rock ledge.

Chris and 200 FSW member families, enjoying the support of the town’s Parks and Recreation Department, joined hands to create and improve two miles of trails (wide enough to encourage conversation between side-by-side hikers), line them with tree trunks and woodchips and eradicate invasive species such as half an acre of prickly green briar and the wormwood growing up near the train tracks. He enjoyed the special camaraderie of his chum Francis Gace, also a native South African, who helped him build several bridges before he moved out of the area.

Over time, 13 truckloads of garbage were removed from near the lake, created by accident in the 1950s when the state excavated wetlands there, using the spoil as fill for the highway rest area. The hole filled up with water from the Tokeneke Brook and now supports a healthy habitat of bass and other fish as well as otter, ducks and migrating birds. (Has anyone thought of giving a name to the lake, such as "Chris Lake"?)

Specimen and lesser trees are identified by species with plaques. Rustic chairs made of logs bearing the Friends of Selleck’s Woods emblem (hand-carved meticulously by multi-talented Chris) invite gatherings of school classes and "I Spy" games to identify birds and animals, which might include a fox, a wild turkey, a raccoon or a deer.

Near the north entranceway off Parklands Drive is a native plant exhibit with more than 25 plantings, including dogwood, fringed bleeding heart and goat’s beard. Chris and his helpers have planted 200 pines and hundreds of daffodils, which, while not native to the area, provide a welcome wake-up call to nature’s beauty in the spring. Chris designed the colorful signs that greet visitors as well.

The goal has always been to make the 50-acre forest beautiful, attractive to diverse species and an inviting place to acquaint the young with nature. A forest glade was the setting for scenes shot for the recent film, "Revolutionary Road." For generations a sheep farm maintained by one of Darien’s most prominent early families, the Sellecks, the gently sloping territory is an easy hike. Old stonewalls bespeaking the land’s agricultural past have been restored.

All this hard work has called for celebration. Most recently, Chris staged the "Celebration of the Woods" a year ago in June, with artists invited to paint pastoral scenes, guided nature hikes, exhibits and a photo contest.

Chris’s good deeds have caught the attention of the state’s Environmental Review Team, which selected Selleck’s Woods from among many applicants as a subject for detailed study last May by experts in all fields of the natural sciences. Their report assessing the site and making recommendations for ways to enhance its functionality, diversity and ecological health is due shortly.

Chris’s good deeds have not gone unnoticed by the younger set either.

In June, Laura Coupe’s third grade class at Ox Ridge Elementary School presented Chris with a canister of $187 in coins, including 1,350 pennies, which they had collected to help advance the goals of Friends of Selleck’s Woods.

And what of the rescued gnome?

Chris discovered an injured gnome somewhere in the woods during his purposeful amblings. It required a bit of paint and touching up before it could be established in the hollowed-out base of a tree alongside one of the trails.

Which tree? Which trail? You must enter the enchanted woods and the tree fairies will reveal themselves and guide the way …

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