introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the woods walk up for air - 29 april 2o15 "chunks of you will sink down to seals / blubber rich in mourning, they'll nosh you up / yes, they'll nosh the love away but it's fair to say / you will still haunt me"~alt-j on sunday afternoon, at just after two o'clock, laura, the woman who was my midwife, arrived for a visit. she came in and we hugged our familiar friendly hellos. my sister, up for the weekend from boston, introduced herself and then wanted to get on her way back. i don't blame her. i know how long the ride is...i can't imagine doing it with a back injury. we did this non-hug thing my siblings and i do and she headed out the door. laura and i talked a bit and it was time for her to head south to searsport and home. i don't know when i'll see her again. laura was such a constant in my life for the last year, company i could look forward to when things got a little lonely. laura was my first goodbye. things are moving quickly...more quickly than i expected, i suppose. there are daily trips to hannaford's for apple boxes, pricing rental trucks, bribing volunteers with promises of beer to help me load the few pieces of furniture i'm keeping, estimating tolls and fuel and a hotel room. i'm pretty good at orchestrating the logistics. i've been feeling a lot like i've been complaining. i'm definitely coming off an angry phase of grieving this, i'll admit. i'm done feeling sorry for myself for what i'm about to leave behind. the change...it happened in an instant when my sister and i were walking in the woods on saturday. we were three miles deep, she had the baby tucked in the wrap because she likes to carry him--it was the first time i was in those woods without that little guy riding inside me or strapped to me. it was strange how markedly lighter the journey felt. we were catching the loop road back to the main trail when she stopped abruptly. what is that? there is only one such clearing like this that i've found in those woods and i always spy some creature or other that is worth noting--probably because they are stripped of their camouflage in the wide open space. on saturday, in the almost-sunset light, a porcupine noticed us, turned, and started a slow walk in the other direction. she wanted to take pictures, of course. our quilled fellow eventually wandered beyond the woods-line and disappeared between the balsam. shortly after, we rounded another bend and another larger porcupine was munching away at the micro-greens in the mud alongside the trail. she was ecstatic. i remembered the first time i saw one and recalled how excited i was out there on my own. i was bursting to tell someone. i've seen so many new animals...birds i've never seen before, plants and flowers i've never seen before. for every new critter with whom i crossed paths this past year, i have had an accompanying pang of wishing there was someone with whom to share the discovery. i totally understood what she was going through. it is a rare thing for me to empathize so closely with my sister who is as far opposite me on the human spectrum as can be. and then...somewhere after the porcupines in the dappled last light of sunset perhaps by the bog brook she said "i can see why it would be really hard to leave this" and i knew that she saw the magic in the place, too. in that moment, i felt like someone saw the city forest the way i see it. maybe it was all those weeks we spent each summer and fall in the adirondacks and those hikes we took together like the hike on the otter hollow loop. my whole family got 'lost' in the woods and had to be rescued by canoe in the full moon misty cold of an indian summer night*. it's probably because of the way we grew up together. we shared so many experiences in the woods as a family. our parents taught us to notice things and so the three of us...we're all hyper-vigilant notice-ers. they marched us through the woods on trails, following markers as often as we were marched through museums and factory tours (we had some really weird vacations, guys.) we heaved canoes over canoe carries from pond to pond. we made entire islands our kingdoms. at night, by a campfire, my father told ghost stories that were probably way too scary for our age and that ancient fire ritual of storytelling is probably why i like to tell stories now...probably why i still love to sit by a campfire so much as an adult. there were loons on the lake. there were moonshadows. i hope my son enjoys the time we have in the woods together. i look forward to watching him learn birds and trees by their calls and leaves if he's into it...to teaching him to read maps, to telescoping and star-partying on lightning bug summer nights, to teaching him to build a campfire and pitch a tent. i wonder if he'll be super curious. maybe i'll raise my own little notice-er. our parents gave us a magical connection to being in the woods that i've appreciated most of my life. i knew last may as soon as i set foot on those paths lined with balsam needles and pinecones; i knew that i wasn't imagining the thaumaturgy going on between the trees. there's something special there that always gobbles up what ails me and spits me back out in better spirits. there are woods that make me feel similarly back home that i'm looking forward to visiting again with new eyes. i want to get an updated copy of 50 hikes of western pennsylvania and start checking them off. so i'm ready. it took one meaningful walk in the woods to get some clarity and i'm ready to make the best of leaving them behind. until then, i'll spend all the time there that i can. i want to tell the stories i thought up to my little boy while we walk through the woods that inspired them. i want to show him the woods-witch that momma met last year and the burial ground of the giants...and the throne of the woods-king hidden deep in the darkest heart of the undisturbed forest. they're probably stupid stories to anyone else but there is a web i've woven for that little boy and for me, too. i don't always share my stories but i don't mind telling them to him. he makes me brave and i feel less dumb but that's a whole other thing completely. the point is that there are stories. i want to tell them to him while we're here. i want to start new stories with him when we get south again...there are so many stories we've got ahead of us and i am ready to take them on. part of me, though, is always going to haunt these wild places. xo, jones
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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