What you describe is almost identical to what is outside my window behind the house. This area used to be a large dairy farm and is now mostly proportioned into 10-acre lots. I assume that before it was subdivided, it was mostly cattle pasture and some mature trees. Now, the area behind my house slopes rapidly from tall grass (we leave it in a natural state) to short thorny shrubs to a grove of mature oaks and mostly young elm trees. The older ones have fallen to Dutch Elm disease.
In the years I've lived here I have been amazed at how rapidly trees grow. The bottom of our pasture was mostly tall grass and a few tiny saplings. They are now approaching 10 feet tall and need to be bush hogged because they are interfering with the growth of grass. At the same time, the undergrowth in the area we have left untouched (the rest is horse pasture) is amazing. There are wild apple trees, enough wild grapes that I made a 5-gallon batch of wine a few years ago, raspberry bushes and stuff I can't even name.
In the years I've lived here I have been amazed at how rapidly trees grow. The bottom of our pasture was mostly tall grass and a few tiny saplings. They are now approaching 10 feet tall and need to be bush hogged because they are interfering with the growth of grass. At the same time, the undergrowth in the area we have left untouched (the rest is horse pasture) is amazing. There are wild apple trees, enough wild grapes that I made a 5-gallon batch of wine a few years ago, raspberry bushes and stuff I can't even name.
tl;dr - I'm seeing that in my backyard right now.