I Miss My Woods

I miss my woods.

I miss getting lost to the world in them.

I miss the anonymity they bestowed upon me, the namelessness...

I miss the absence of judgment among the trees and low-growing things...the things that crept across the ground, unnoticed, unremarkable in their own anonymity…

I miss the silence. Profound. Deafening in its stillness. Pure. Even despite the noise that tried to insinuate itself from “out there,” it was complete as only it was able to be complete. Because that noise “out there” can never mesh with the music audible only there…the notes never look right upon the page...never sound right...

The music of the wind in the trees...sighing...soughing...whispering...moaning softly...of tree boles touching, embracing, swaying together, crying out in their ecstasy…of a tired one tipping too far, snapping, coming to rest finally but not completely. Never completely. For nothing in there ever dies...not completely...

I miss my woods.

I miss the pre-spring lack of color, the browns and grays set against what will soon be green...not long now...not long at all...against the low blue sky...against clouds just brushing past...low, white, faultless…

I miss my woods.

That place where nothing tainted, defiled, infected...made ill...pronounced finality...for there IS no finality there...among the low-growing and creeping things whose lives continue endlessly renewed, reawakened, rejuvenated, recreated...but always different if only slightly from what came before…

I miss my woods.

I miss the place where I could forget “out there...” where it never quite reached me albeit how short my time there was...how few minutes my feet tamped the still-winter-damp ground as I went...no destination in mind...none needed...the place being all that mattered.

I miss my woods.

March 16, 2020

A Bending of the Light

It happens every year at about this time without fail in this part of the world. The heavy oppressive damp days of July and August descend upon us, and for days that sometimes grow into weeks, the air waves are filled more often than not with the sound of air conditioners and fans running. The sound becomes commonplace after awhile, and the silence almost deafening on days when we must turn them on early as the sun aims its hot eye once again upon us.

Without warning, the wind direction shifts from south or east to west and north, and we are refreshed by the cooler air from Canada that banishes the high summer haze from the landscape. Freed from the ephemerous curtain that hangs over everything for most of July and sometimes into August, objects become clearer, more sharply defined, colors brighter and richer, and we can see again. And then one day, again without much fanfare, there it is. The decidedly altered slant of the light, both in early morning and late afternoon, signaling once again the earth's slow but inexorable tilt away from the sun's intensity. It is almost as it if one day, the light and heat are fully upon us in their insistent mid-year way, and then the next, they have turned their attentions away from us to focus on something else besides baking us and coaxing sweat from every pore. Shadows fall sooner than they did, and birds no longer sing into the twilight hours.

It is once again coming upon my favorite time of year-early autumn. Not a huge fan of heat and humidity, I welcome the cooler drier nights of this end-of-summer month. Just knowing the evening and night will be cooler makes the day's heat more tolerable, and that this month is a gateway of sorts to that glorious season of multicolored tapestries and still mild but bug-free days. There is no question that this cool-down invigorates me and makes me want to get back out there roaming and seeing what I've been missing these last few torrid weeks.

Butterflies congregate on flower shrubs, and birds busy themselves seeking out the plump seed heads of many plants and some species of trees. My little chipmunk friend has been running back and forth across the porch these last few days, most likely foraging for and storing away supplies for the coming cold months. I've started putting bread crumbs out for him, and they are disappearing. That tiny creature keeps me grounded and connected internally to the wild places. We share a common love, it and I, for the places untrodden by the rest of the world.

At night, the window fan pulls in much cooler air now, and a very large cricket managed to sneak its way into the kitchen one day last week. It emerged in another room today, so I gently picked it up and redeposited it outside where it hopped away instantly. I hear its kind loudly now each night, one of the most familiar and comforting sounds of late summer. Its distinctive chatter, which it produces by rubbing its wings together, sometimes manages to transcend the other noises around here, coming at me from the grass beneath my bedroom window, and I find myself listening for it now at night when I manage to resist thoughts of those other things that should be consuming me but don't quite make it across the vast fields of my mind.

The end of August approaches, and right behind it, a month of beginnings and endings. Children will be returning to school, yellow buses will be rolling once again, corn fields will be shorn of their late gold, and early apples will spill from baskets at roadside stands. The seasonal shift is like an invisible wave that I have been riding now for several decades, and it is a journey I never tire of. This is the best part of the ride, when the air sweetens from the rich aroma of the season's fullness, the days shorten and the light reaches me from a different direction. For a few days, I'll see the sun rise through those trees across the street, and then one day, it won't be there. It will have slipped behind buildings and I'll miss its first peek above the urban horizon.

Through the still-green trees, this closest of morning stars scatters its brilliance among the branches through leaves more than willing to help split its light, and I find myself wishing quietly upon it as I would upon any other more distant orb as it reveals to me another new day.




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Stormy Weather

As I write, nature is unleashing her power with rare ferocity as my neck of the woods experiences the latest phase of the storm called Irene. Appearing to be tracking northwest and toward upstate Vermont and the Adirondacks of New York, the storm is still wide enough to be expressing itself here in southwestern Maine via tossing trees and roaring wind. While I hope she remembers to practice wind economy, I am aware of what could happen were nature to vent her full fury upon this wooded place, a fact of which she is reminding me over and over again at the moment...



Such was my journal entry for Sunday, August 28, 2011. Craving a change of scenery and relief from the stale close indoor air, I went out to the potting shed at one point during the afternoon with my book and journal and sat awhile observing the storm from another angle. I realized quickly that this provided me with too alarming a production, and after seeing the trees dip down to the roof more times than I'd expected to, I went back inside and contented myself with a more narrowly framed view through a window. Once darkness settled, there wasn't much left to do without electricity but to light a few candles and, well, listen to the wind.

Earlier, around 10 a.m., I took a walk up and down the road and out through the woods to my neighbor's small pond. On the way back, I looked up and realized how close the trees hold me to them, evidenced by the branches that seem to hold my humble dwelling in a sort of embrace. A neighbor who occasionally flies over in his plane told me recently that he can no longer see the roof as it's now completely obliterated by the trees. While that did present me with a cause to fear during yesterday's storm, it seems that they did, after all, protect me. Most of the wind activity occurred in the outermost smaller trees, while the old nearby faithful oaks, pines and maples stood their ground, creating a barricade of sorts between the tempest and me. As low as a couple of them dipped at times, I just knew they would persevere.

What a welcome sight was the sunlight this morning after a long dark and uncertain night, as was feeling a wind that is now more friend again than foe. In my journal today, I will mention the sweet scent of the air at the height of the storm as the trees, their bark taxed to the extreme, exuded their fragrant sap at every turn. I'll devote a few lines to the sound of chainsaws in the distance as residents clean up and, in the process, benefit from debris left in the storm's wake that will warm both hearts and hearths in the cold months to come. And I will touch upon the frenzied dance the treetops did as they gave themselves totally over to the wind's lead. I notice quite a few leaves today dangling precariously from their stems, their bonds already weakened long before the trees are due to discard them. I wonder if this will hasten their fall and if I will see them turn crimson, orange and yellow sooner this year than they normally would. When I looked up into the maples in the back yard early this morning, it appeared that their topmost leaves have already started to wither and dry. Not surprising, considering what they endured yesterday.

There is laundry to hang out and plenty of kindling on the back porch to sweep into a pile. Here in the woods, one must wait till dawn to see the effects of a late night storm, and daylight now reveals the causes of some of the loud thumps I heard when there was no light to shed on them, larger branches that came to rest in odd positions against the porch railing, others piercing the earth where they fell. I look at them this morning and think of how much worse it could have been.

I will indulge today, too, in whimsical thinking, of how, because I insist on giving nature her due and never question her strength, she spares me time and time again. I will ponder, too, whether these trees and I have some sort of unspoken agreement whereby I afford them a slight edge by never tempting them to prove their might by falling on me. It's a delicate balance, this compromise between animal and plant, one of which I am reminded anew as the storm clouds part and the sun reappears.

Mere hours ago, this place was a dark maelstrom, and now, the sun-washed leaves float on the gentle air as though nothing had ever been amiss. Peace has returned once again to this green world, and though slightly altered for the experience, is yet still comfortingly familiar.


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