My Woodland Path

To reach the pastures of the back forty, I must first travel a winding footpath through the woods. Most often, my passage signals the start or the completion of a day of work. Less frequently, the woods are themselves my destination.

Our small wood of twenty acres is crossed by a steep ravine. Three offshoots, broad church aisles of ridge land, converge on a private sanctuary in the heart of the forest, a natural presbytery for the unchurched. The time of day, the wind, the season, all influence where I stop and sit. I’ll light a cigar and lean back against a tree and drift. The light slants down, filtered, dropping in through high lancet windows of nature’s cathedral. It falls onto and illuminates my pew, where the smoke lifts up through the leaves in an offering to the peace found in quiet observance.A South Wood Walk 018

The dogs, after a bit of chasing around, like kids at a Sunday service, pick up on the mood and settle near me. This is not a formal ceremony where members of the elite sit in designated and privileged seats. It is a come as you are, find a convenient rock, fallen tree or flat ledge of land, where the ritual begins when you are ready.

An hour of simply sitting brings to me a satisfying mental quiet in which thoughts eddy and drift with the smoke along unexpected paths — a reverie softly interrupted by the distinctive devotional of a woodpecker, heard in its search for a communion grub, or the alarmed bucksnort, a cough by the old man of the woods as he catches a whiff of the dogs, his whitetailed flag flown, signaling if not surrender, then at least a quiet retreat up the central nave and out the back door.

When my cigar is near its end, I stub it out on a nearby rock. The dogs are off chasing squirrels and the scattering scent of the vanished buck. A cloud obscures the light from the upper windows, and I, the remaining congregant, arise and start the journey home along a familiar and welcome path.

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7 thoughts on “My Woodland Path

  1. A really nice piece and I’m surprised its not attracted a single comment yet.

    As quibbler of some experience though I will toss out a thought about there being (or not being) any ‘elite’ taking positions within such a cathedral… Let us for a moment consider the great trees of the wood (the Ents??) those holding the canopy high above the surface and creating such a magnificent space – are they not elites in a very real sense of the word? Perhaps they do not represent the elites of a religious gathering of humans… but I suspect to the ordinary attendees of this wood they do constitute a certain magnificence. Without them the whole is surely less than we experience.

    I’ve often considered the enormous brick and mortar efforts of humans that we call cathedrals the mere wishings of our forbearers to imitate the magnificent aspects of nature. Hubris I suppose, but we also engage in imitations of nature at smaller scales all the time. We may scoff at human creations as poor imitations of natural beauty – and there is certainly something real in this. The wood you’ve described is real and repeated in many places. Perhaps the pity is so few of us have the opportunity to see and appreciate it like you do.

    Thanks for writing it down so succinctly.

    • They don’t call, they don’t write….

      No doubt the great cathedrals have the forest as their root inspiration. BTW there were a number of comments on Resilience on this piece. It started off with someone saying my post was evident that the resilience site was going downhill fast. I was called, gasp, a slacker.

      PS Loved the Ents as characters in both the books and the movies.

  2. I almost didn’t comment (since it’s pretty out of date now to reply), but also, and this is pretty big – the picture took me back to times when I felt and did this with the wood surrounding me or perhaps it would be a warm rock to view an expanse of sky from. Point being, sometimes there is just a reaction to words or a picture that isn’t more words. Sometimes the moment is internalized, and the feeling is carried away.
    But if you needed validation or a ‘review’ or an honesty reaction, this was a terrific post!

    • Always glad to get a response on my posts, thanks. I agree, a picture can help set the experience. Woodland pictures, much like pictures of the ocean or a river, have such a calming influence.

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