Search Results for: Ferns and leaves

A few weeks ago I wrote how Jon wasn’t able to take walks in the woods anymore.

Now, a week after his heart surgery, we took our second walk together in the woods.

Slowly, arm in arm, stopping to take a few pictures, but mostly, just walking.  We watched the dogs chase after deer and then come running back to us.  They never go far.   We talked little, enjoying the company of trees, the pine needles, ferns, leaves, and other vegetation beneath our feet.  The air was cool the insects spare and the smell deep and rich.

It may seem like a little thing, to walk in the woods together, but I thought it would never happen again.

Now I know Jon and I will have many more walks in the woods, but still,  I don’t think I’m going to forget this one.

I walked through the woods and didn’t see anything.  Not a single tree not a leaf, not the brown pine needles and gray leaves under my feet.  I didn’t feel the new ferns tickling my bare legs, even the mosquitos couldn’t get my attention for long.

My feet, my legs, my swinging arms, the movement of my body all unraveling the tight spool of thoughts tightly wound in my head.    I could only see what was behind my eyes, not what was in front of them.

I was stuck inside myself, growing smaller and smaller.

This is what panic attacks do to me.   They makes me forget the larger world.  I collapse inside  myself like a black hole.

But as oblivious as I am to the reality surrounding me,  my walks in the woods do help bring me back to me.  Are the woods innately healing?

It took a dead tree to get my attention.  And only because it had fallen on the path and I had to step over it.   I don’t want to be this way, I thought, walking unseeing through the woods, taking what she has to offer without giving back.

But sometimes it’s all I can do, waiting for the panic to subside.  Allowing the memory of fear to slowly loosen from my body and mind. Finding my way back to now.

A couple of weeks ago I transplanted a bunch of Hostas and Lilies of the Valley into a small shade garden by the back door of our house.  The next day, I noticed in one spot the ferns and Lily of Valley were flattened as if someone had laid or walked on them.  I suspected Lenore, but Jon insisted it was Frieda.  (She’d the kind of dog that gets blamed for everything and with good reason).   A few days later there was a hole in the ground in the same spot.  Someone was digging.  All this time I wasn’t able to catch any of the dogs in the act, but just now I walked out the back door and there was Lenore, innocently looking up at me though the Hosta leaves.  Innocent, because she has no sense that she’s doing something wrong.  She’s just resting in the cool damp soil.  I thought of putting big rocks where she was laying, (we have plenty of rocks in Washington County) but then she would just flatten out another part of the garden.  So I think I’ll move what’s left of the plants that are there and let Lenore have her garden bed.