How bizarre it is to wander barefoot in what was once my favorite backwoods. Huge expanses now visibly surrender due to the recent clear cutting and brush hogging. On the inside edge where it once required nerves of steel to traverse the brambles, there are gaps that force me see the unsuspecting people on the trail.
The immense tree that I climbed much too high to get the picture of the hawk completely caught off guard as it looked across in shock at seeing a human right across from it and taking its picture…that tree is a memory.
On a day like today, the cloudy October sky flying by due to the approaching rain, it’s beautiful. A red-tailed hawk flew by and acknowledged me. But the dozen variety of other birds that always welcome to me here, they are absent. The gap in the canopy overhead is an offense to me.
Convenience of access holds no advantage because people will not take the time to walk through here. The clog of foliage that once stood here was barrier enough to keep it private for me and provided the sanctuary of the birds and animals that I used to watch and listen to.
Maybe if the brilliant engineers erect the proposed steel bridge that will overpass the slippery and often submerged water dam, I will have fingers crossed that almost no one will deviate from the new concrete trail. They’ll pass through and eventually the foliage will reclaim its territory. I will, of course, find a new path, one that ignores the modern convenience of a direct dry walk.
The old long-buried sidewalk to nowhere takes offense at being exposed and replaced.
The trees that surrendered to gravity but kept growing, the overreaching and tangled branches, they have been truncated after decades of winding their way almost horizontally across the land. Not even the worst storms could suppress them. Blades could.
My gaggle of crows sits along the creek bed, shouting and screaming. Though I’m sure their screeches derive from something mundane, I’m blaming it on this new absence.
What once was mine now belongs to everyone. Which is to say, no one.
It’s possible to walk through the beauty once all of this is done. That’s all it’ll be.
Passing through, rendered as observers only.
Nothing beats feet uninterrupted on the ground, surrounded by the mess and chaos that nature offers.
Maybe one day I’ll stop bitching about all this.
Time heals wounds but salts memories.
