Category: The Orphaned Woods

Last night after I wrote Breathing With The Spiders Web on my blog, I read it out loud to Jon.

He enjoyed hearing me read it and suggested I make a video of it.

I wanted to read the piece at the pond  but there was too much background noise, so I took a video of the pond then did a voice over.

It was a little tricky trying to get the video to be the right length.  It goes on a bit after I finish reading, but I think it’s a good first try.

Jon was encouraging about doing this more often with some of my pieces, reading them as well as writing them. And I like that idea too.   So I’m looking into Sound Cloud which is just an audio link (no visual)that I could post with some of my writing.

I’ve always loved being read to and I like to read out loud, and Jon’s been very encouraging saying I do it well.

I think it sounds pretty good too,  so it could be a nice new addition to my blog.

Already the logged woods are beginning to heal.

Brambles and ferns,
the place where the bear runs,
felled trees and branches left behind
becoming earth.

Zinnia does that Lab dance through the muddy pond, kicking up her heels and tossing her head.

She comes out a black and white cookie,
rolling in last years leaves,
groaning in pure pleasure.

Mosquitos sing and sometimes sting,
gathering blood for their babies.

I only have eyes for mushrooms, which blinds me to all the other wonders of the woods.

But it is their season.

I seek mushrooms, as mosquitos gather blood and Zinnia rolls in mud.

Thanks to Lois, I knew when to go back to the place in the woods where the Rattlesnake Plantain grows to see it bloom.

Later in July or early August, Lois wrote.  “It sends up a single spike of small white flowers.  An unobtrusive native orchid easily overlooked.” 

So I went to the woods to find the  unobtrusive orchid.  I know where the Rattlesnake Plantain grow now.  Just off the path, before the swamp where the skunk cabbage grows.   South of the tree with the thick black mushrooms low on its trunk.   The tree that often has a dinner plate sized mushroom growing at its roots.

A fertile place.

The Rattlesnake Plantain leaves, though only an inch or so long, are easy to find in the brownish-gray leaf litter.  They stand out with their rich green leaves veined in white.

One of the flowers had already bloomed, the long stem brown and shriveling.   But another was in full bloom, flowers so tiny, I had a hard time taking their picture.

I was thrilled to see those little white orchids, the ones that Lois described so well.

I might never have seen them or been able to share them, if she didn’t let me know when the orchids bloom in a comment on my blog back in April when I posted a picture of the leaves.

“When much in the woods, as a little girl, I was told that the snake would bite me, that I might pick a poisonous flower, or goblins kidnap me; but I went along and met no one but angels, who were far shyer of me than I could be of them….”   from a letter by Emily Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 

“Wonder is where it starts, and though wonder is also where it ends, this is no futile path. Whether admiring a patch of moss, a crystal, flower, or golden beetle, a sky full of clouds, a sea with the serene, vast sigh of its swells, or a butterfly wing with its arrangement of crystalline ribs, contours, and the vibrant bezel of its edges, the diverse scripts and ornamentations of its markings, and the infinite, sweet, delightfully inspired transitions and shadings of its colors — whenever I experience part of nature, whether with my eyes or another of the five senses, whenever I feel drawn in, enchanted, opening myself momentarily to its existence and epiphanies, that very moment allows me to forget the avaricious, blind world of human need, and rather than thinking or issuing orders, rather than acquiring or exploiting, fighting or organizing, all I do in that moment is “wonder,” like Goethe, and not only does this wonderment establish my brotherhood with him, other poets, and sages, it also makes me a brother to those wondrous things I behold and experience as the living world: butterflies and moths, beetles, clouds, rivers and mountains, because while wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity.”  Herman Hesse

I read this Herman Hesse quote on The Marginalian.  And when I did, except for the reference to Goethe, because I’m only familiar with a small amount of his work, it explains exactly how I feel, and have tired to write about myself,  when I’m looking as the smallest things and beings that live and grow and exist on the farm and in the woods where I walk.

There is a silence and a stillness as I enter the woods.

Yet, it’s not as if it’s quiet.

I can still hear the rumble of a distant car, the drone of an airplane, the peep of a bird,  the hum of a mosquito, the crack of a twig.

Maybe it’s more the feeling of silence and stillness.   A waiting, a hush that seems to surround me.

Because I know the woods are neither still nor silent.  There’s a whole world of activity and noise, most of which I can’t see or hear.

Yet it’s worlds apart from the noise and busyness of us humans in the environments we have created for ourselves.

Maybe it’s something about time.

I tend to think time is slower in the woods.  But that’s not right either.

I know how quickly mushrooms can grow, how fast a chipmunk can run, how slow a slug moves,  or how long it takes certain trees to grow.

Maybe it’s that in the woods, each being has its own clock.  Content to exist within its own sense of time.

Unlike the measured time we humans have created for ourselves and everything around us to adhere to in order to fit into society.  Even if it might feel unnatural to us.

Maybe in the woods, I’m finding my own sense of time and it alters how I hear and move when I’m there.