a walk in the woods

we went for a nice walk in the Berkshires this weekend.It has been a while since we went walking around in the woods. Much too long, in fact, given how much we both enjoy it.

It was a cool, crisp morning full of sunshine, with that bite in the air that says that it is not winter, yet, but it sure will be soon. The shadows of the trees were etched in frost on the ground, and as the Earth turned and the shadows moved their ghosts were still on the grass in spiky white crystals that melted slowly in the morning sun.

We started up through a meadow and then were in the woods, following an old rusty barbed-wire fence that marked the edge of some long-gone farmer's property. By and by we came to some persimmon and crabapple trees along that fence. I imagined the farmer's family planted them as little saplings and nurtured until they grew fruit big enough to make into jellies and put up for the long winters. Now they continue to make fruit, though only the deer and birds and squirrels enjoy the harvest, these days. Huge old twisted apple trees like those always make me think of Prince Caspian, and how the apple trees at Cair Paravel must have looked when the children returned after all those generations.

Up the hill from the fruit trees we came on the Appalachian trail. I have walked very small parts of this same trail, hundreds and hundreds of miles to the south, and could not help feeling a southerly pull standing looking at that sign. So much more impressive (or maybe poignant) somehow than an interstate that plows through hill and dale traveling the same distance. Here is a quieter highway, one that was made by people working together across vast distances to make a free and open way to walk these mountains. Down in Georgia there are folk who were on the same trail that we walked yesterday, maybe when we were on it. And in North Carolina. and up in Maine. Nice to have that company for a little bit.

The hills and woods looked almost exactly like the woods that I grew up walking in. The calling cards of the local denizens littered the forest floor, announcing the presence of the same trees that I knew as a child: oak, maple, sycamore. The smell of the cycle of birth and death and rebirth assailed our noses, that utterly healthy smell of forests and outdoors and walking in the woods. We both miss it, and know we need to do it more.

There were a few trees still hanging on, still with vibrantly colored leaves, still living in the fall for a little longer. They greeted us with gently waving arms in the bright morning sunshine, and told us to come back soon, this summer if possible. We promised we would.

Often, I look at a tree and think about the lumber that is inside it, and whether it would be nice to work, or have some great figuring or strange grain pattern. This trip, though, I was happy to just be in the presence of these trees, who are so generous about letting us occupy their space. I did not think about them and how they could enter my world, I was happy just to be in theirs. It was so calming, that shift of view. It has been a long time since I looked at a tree and did not think about it slabbed up like a corpse on my workbench, but really and truly thought "that tree looks great right where it is, and I am glad that it is there and that I can see it there."

Different ways of thinking about wood. Always something to learn.