The Winding Woods

photo by ayacata7.

It isn’t always straight forward, the way we find our way through the woods. It isn’t always by light of morning but sometimes by light of moon, when the owl’s hoot and silent wingspan fills dark spaces between the trees, and when eyes aglow follow our trail, quiet, waiting.

It isn’t always plain to see, the town that comes beyond the hill. The ramshackle huts with smoke drifting skyward, or the laundry drying on the dead brambles, or the twisted sheen of the madmen gathered near the well.

It isn’t always what we thought it would be, this love of the girl we travel to see, this milkmaid or seamstress or nursemaid’s scullion. At times she hides a blush behind her hand, while others she screams with pretty little fists that beat your chest, hollowed and tight like a drum. Then the stolen moments, fleeting for the memory to cup, and ugly moments that will never end and neither drink nor sleep will see it fade, and once she is gone there are all the moments that never were, but that we play upon and mould with hands now empty. Linger upon days that could have been, if we had found our way by different paths, for the woods know best, in their weathered bark and aged span of limbs, which is the path for me that day, and the next, and the next.

Have You Seen My Tree?

photo by dick_pountain.

The tree was gone when I got up in the morning. For one hundred years it had stood to the left of my front step, and on the morning of July 28th I stuck my head out the door to pick up the paper from the front step and saw that the tree was gone. No jagged broken stump, no charred remains. The grass was smooth, as though a tree had never grown there. I drove around town, looking for it. I hung signs:

Have You Seen My Tree??
60 ft. black walnut
5 ft. trunk cir.
Last seen on the evening of the 27th
on the 3100 block of Manor Dr.
Call 612.366.1477 with information
$500 REWARD!

I got a few leads, but most were dead ends. Many were pranks. Some people called with real concern and compassion in their voices. Long after the signs came down and the calls stopped coming in, neighbors would mention to me that they might have seen it, on their last vacation out west, or the other day when they took their kids to a wildlife preserve in Washington County. It looked happy out there in the woods, they said. Maybe it was for the best.

I have picnics now and then on my lawn, right over the spot where it should be. Maybe I’ll plant something new over the spot next spring. It’s a shame. It really balanced the front yard.