Through the Woods

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This mid-November day, the leaves have blown from most of the deciduous trees. The wind surges as if it needs no time to inhale before blowing again.  A young cedar flips its boughs northward, showing off the lighter green undersides.  Stepping carefully down the trail to the treehouse, I look back from where I came, through the woods.  Now with so many bare trees I can see through the woods, can admire the ferns surrounded by a thick layer of maple leaves.  There is the split rail fence on the other side of the trail, and white birches, like candles thrust into the hill frosted with a mosaic of leaves. A panorama opens because the leaves have left, and I ponder the coincidence that the plural of leaf is leaves, and that is exactly what has happened.  Things are leaving: leaves, songbirds, the very year itself.  One month left of 2021.

Through the Woods.  I begin to sing with the wind: Over the meadow and through the wood, to Grandmother’s house we go.  The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh…” As a child, I had a picture book that accompanied the lyrics.  It opened with colorful illustrations of a bountiful sleigh piled high with laughing children snuggled under blankets.  Turning the page, I found Grandmother in her apron fronting a bountiful table laden with roast turkey and pies.  Clearly it was worth going through the woods to get there.  And how fortunate the horse knew the way to carry the sleigh.  My wandering mind sets on Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.  Frost pauses before progressing through the woods, his horse giving “his harness bells a shake to ask if there is some mistake.”  Once more, humans are leaving to a horse the directions for going through the woods. 

Childhood tales prepare us for crossings through woods,  cautionary tales for the remainder of our lives.  Little Red Riding Hood, confident as she is, must walk through a wolf-inhabited wood to reach her grandmother.  She enters fearlessly, even joyfully, stopping on her way to stoop for a patch of wildflowers that might delight her aging grandmother.  We fear for her more than she fears for herself, because we are more experienced.  We have traversed the wooded way frequently enough to suspect what lurks there.  Then there are Hansel and Gretel, also innocently confident enough to escape through a wood.  A little more experience here with caution, they drop bread crumbs to follow on their way back.  We all know this isn’t the best REI advice for hiking, and surely Hansel and Gretel were lost, the birds having eaten the breaded trail with which they hoped to retrace their journey.  Woods equal lost, equal witch and possible death.

When you decide to write a blog about thoughts after seventy, it is inevitably going to include reminders of mortality.  As seasons turn, one after the other, you begin to figure on the remaining seasons left to enjoy.  Friends whose spouses died talk about the “last Christmas, or the last birthday.” Their calendar is marked with anniversaries of loss.   Kicking through big-leaf maple leaves, I smell the smoky aroma of leafy decay.  Curiously, it is a sweet aroma, somewhat like cotton candy.  It is not an aroma or a season to take for granted. Will it be the last autumn I pause to look back on the trail and comment on how easily I can see through the woods?  It is not the finality of a lost season, but the presence within it that rewards.  In my over-seventy years, I have travelled through many woods, some tangled with downed branches and dense salal.  I kept going because there was always something ahead worth reaching.  There are still destinations beckoning around the bend, but more often than not, I am pausing along the trail to look back from where I came.

Only six months ago, I applauded the buds on the maples. I could hardly wait until they widened into those foot-wide leaves of summer. But today, the view I admire is the one where I am looking back. Trees we had planted are masters of the woods. They stand naked against green cedar and fir. If they were human, their branches would be ribs. I needed that loss of foliage, that almost bare landscape through which I can travel. Like cleaning house, the forest is down to the essentials. In the present moment, I can see clearly now . . .