Lost in the Woods

The salal is thick and covers the contours of the land. Fallen trees decorated with moss and turkey tail mushrooms are ladders through this curvy bramble, this cemented puzzle of branches and leaves, but their bodies only reach so far before returning me to entanglement. The sky, barely visible through waves of trees, is slowly crumbling into darkness. 

Being lost in the woods in a park surrounded by roads and houses on an island surrounded by water isn’t as dangerous as being lost in true wilderness, but at the time my mind cannot differentiate between the two kinds of Lost. I’d hopped off the trail to avoid a puddle of slushy icy mud and reasoned if I just walked a bit this way and that I’d come to the trail again. With less than a half hour until sunset and temperatures dropping below freezing, all I can think is Walk Faster.

I navigate in stars, wheels, a splayed body of radial arms testing out trails that lead to tangles I must push through. My mind says “That will take too long! Try another way!” My heart creeps up into my throat, pounds in my ears so that I can barely hear the rip slip slide of branches against my down jacket. I know this feeling of panic and I know it won’t help me find the trail. I breathe into my belly and my belly responds with kicks and flutters. She is here with me and I say, “We will be OK.” I hope it to be true. 

I come to an opening in the dense forest. My eye is following the blackness creeping from the ground and up the trees. Lightening? I wonder. In the charred clearing I find a small fuel container, melted plastic bottles, a white shirt (unburned) hanging on the end of a downed trunk. Then I see the camp. The shelter is made of tree limbs and there is something inside, a green suitcase of somesort but being the polite (anxious) person that I am I do not investigate the contents of the dwelling. I don’t want to go anywhere near it. I feel like I’ve stumbled into someone’s living room and although I am pretty sure there is no one around I can’t help but feel like it was my fault I ended up here, as if I was being nosy. Am I being watched, tracked, lured somehow? I think I see a movement in the camp. 

I don’t turn back to see if it is a man, a fluttering cloth, a bird.

I scramble up the hill.

I want to find a trail, any trail, and go home. Just walk in a straight line, I tell myself. Stop doubling back, I chide. Asphalt roads on two sides, trails on the other two, I can break out of this box. Walk. Keep walking.

Kicks in the belly.

I need to keep us safe. 

I push through bushes and climb over nurse trees towards the remnants of sunset. There is a break in the bushes. The trail was less than a hundred feet away from the camp! I walk. My vision blurs in the dusk and I turn around quickly to find shadows hiding in the hollowed out curves of the trail. There is no one following me.

We are OK.

I let my mind wander and it soon outpaces me. My hands gravitate to my belly and the wanderer within. I think of all the women who are forced to walk on trails that were not loops in parks, to be forced off onto paths or through thickets they never imagined they’d face, through woods that were not leading them back to a warm home. Women whose bodies swell with the ocean inside as they cross the sea in leaky rafts and over-burdened fishing boats. I imagine them rubbing their bellies and telling the babies inside that they will be OK, we will be OK, and wanting to believe it is true as the water washes over the deck and pale, drawn faces search the horizon for shore. And once they are on shore they walk, they stumble, they rely on whatever they can find to nourish the life inside. They find camps and perhaps worry about their safety among a bramble of strangers. They search for a trail to lead them away from the camp in offices designated for refugees where they hope to find a country to take them in. Somewhere they can create a new home. Somewhere their baby can be born and thrive. Out of the woods, out of the danger of forced transience.

I walk faster as the forest gives way to a clearing I know means I am just a car ride from Home. I am tired and grateful and tell myself that next time I will pack a headlamp, food, water, one of those foil blankets, because who knows what can happen in the woods when you go off the path. Or stay on it. Nothing is certain. I am grateful for this life I have, this life I am holding within me. I am in awe of those women who hold chaos, grief, and loss with the other few possessions on their back as their bellies swell with life and hope in a bittersweet counterbalance.

A Walk through the Fall(ing) Woods

I should not have been in the forest. 

When I first stepped in I tilted my head skyward, eyes fixed on branches 200 feet above the mossy ground below my feet. I grew dizzy as the tips of hemlocks and cedars swayed and shuddered in the river of wind dampening all other sounds in the forest. Old limbs creaked and crumbled under my boots scattering compost into the soil. New limbs creaked and split above me showering lichen into my hair. 

I breathed in the movement, smiled at the dance of the forest, and kept walking. 

I walked and breathed and swayed with the trees. My deafening thoughts competed with the rumbling of twisted limbs through turbulent air. Then quieted as I climbed the hill and gasped at the beauty of a thousand tiny mushrooms, their bright orange caps like braille spelling out Mystery on a rotting log.

I heard it from the clearing. 

I had backtracked from the path to find this little shelter in the woods. “Frolicking meadow,” I think the sign proclaimed when I last visited. But the sign was gone and evergreen branches lay strewn across the grassy field. Yellow leaves littered the wooden platform where an Adirondack asked for my company. The planks soft with this week's rain, the seat squeaked a greeting and attempted to soak memories of once being a forest into my skin. 

Summer frolicking officially ended.

Crack shudder whoosh bassdrum. 

I assumed a truck from the distant road hit a pothole. Or backfired. Or dropped a huge trailer of something very, very, heavy.

The wind picked up again, the trees around the clearing danced frantically, a moss-covered branch landed near my foot. 

I knew it wasn’t a truck. 

I knew I should probably get out of the woods.

If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? 

Yes. I was that somebody there to hear it. 

I packed up my journal and took one last long look at the coniferously-tipped horizon, distinct grey clouds hurrying by on their way to the sea, perhaps late for a celestial Thanksgiving dinner. I was about to run a gauntlet and I wondered how long a tree takes to fall. How big of a branch it takes to kill a person. With how much of a concussion could I stumble out of the woods.

The tree trunk was broken in six places. Fresh jagged chunks confettied the surrounding ferns. The trail, the one I had backtracked from 20 minutes before, was now partially obstructed by this newly fallen tree. This newly fallen pretty damn big tree. Definitely out of “concussion” territory and in “full blown dead” realm if we’re talking diameter. Right on this path where I had stood. Not next to the path, or 50 feet from the path, but Right On The Path, following the trail with its broken body like a dis-jointed toy snake.

Now, I’m not usually one to hide at home in fear of being hit by a random bus or struck down by lightening. Hell, I go to sea for a living knowing that once you are Out There, there is very little  control (as in None) you have over nature. Anything can happen. But for some reason walking through the woods on a thoroughly windy day seemed like asking for a (large jagged) stick on (in?) the noggin.

I skirted the newly fallen pretty damn big tree and listened to the thousands of shaking leaves around me as I sidestepped blushing mushrooms and flooded dips in the path on my way home. I sang and skipped and smiled my way to the road where I live, the lingering anxiety dissolving as I stepped into a nearby clearing. I raised my hands to the branches and gave gratitude for the reminders about flexibility and impermanence and the unknown consequences of simply going for a walk. Simply being alive.

How quickly does a tree in the woods fall and if so, can you hear the sound if standing directly below that tree? Today I didn’t need to be the one to find out. 



(but if it had been my day to be smashed by a tree, I would've gone out with deep gratitude in my heart and an overjoyed sense of a life well lived.)

It is a Day of Deep Thanks:

I am grateful for being alive, not just Not Being Smashed by a Tree Alive, but Living a Very Amazing Life Alive.

I am grateful for the woods and wind and water that surround me.

I am grateful for my community of friends and family; those who I already know and those that I have yet to officially meet.

I am grateful for my strong, healthy body (especially when I need to get the hell out of the woods).

I am grateful for all the wild blessings in my life and for my gut leading me to more and more every day.

Provided for

There is an apple in my palm. 

There are ants on the apple and bruises on the skin. I brush off the dirt gathered after its fall, its settling on the forest floor. The ants and mites abandon ship and search for other fallen apples among the crunchy leaves. 

White teeth through green flesh into another sweet whiteness with which my mouth cannot compete. I chew, I smile, I scrunch my eyes at the mingling of tart and sugary deliciousness. My fingernails excavate caves of brown and pick at speckles of black across the otherwise smooth surface. I watch a lone mite crawl on the stem and jump off.

I was hungry. 

Not a starving hunger, just a little nibble of a nag, a grumble of intentions south of those (my) lungs gulping fresh air. I had one of those protein bars in my little black bag, next to my water bottle, nestling against my notebook. But I didn’t want a chewy bite of soy that looks nothing like a soybean. I didn’t want that sweetness that sticks to the top of my tongue but doesn’t infuse my whole mouth with luscious thoughts of rain and golden afternoon sun. I didn’t want a square instead of a curved or jagged or root-haired morsel. 

I don’t know why I looked up when I did. Maybe it was the smell of cider mingling with damp leaves in the clearing of this narrow valley. I looked up and saw globes of green hanging from haggard brown branches. 

I thought about climbing. 

I thought about throwing rocks. 

I thought about grabbing and shake shake shaking until orbs of tart came raining down on my head.

Taking action, right?

My eyes pulled down to the earth I breathed in the stillness and birdcalls and slight rumble of a deer trampling down saplings, creating mulchy compost underfoot. Apples were everywhere. I picked up several, gazed into smooshy tan, returned them to the ground. The ants were five steps ahead and devoured flesh and innards alike of the decomposing fruits. Sharing.

I found her: only slightly bruised, minutely gnawed, and totally perfect. For me.

There is an apple in my palm. 

I wasn’t expecting there to be at the beginning of my walk through the woods. I was hungry but I waited for something real. I didn’t really wait, I just walked forward into the shadows and breeze and let my gut speak to the trees. I trusted I would not starve and the universe provided, surprised me. 

This apple makes me happier than anything right now. I trust it will all come to me as I open up my hand, open up my eyes, look up and ground down. Find the bounty surrounding me, not perfect aesthetically, but perfect in this moment to nourish me among my grumbles and sighs.

I take another bite and savor each step into this trust, this process, this devouring of luscious life.