At first Fate walked behind me in the footprints of my snowshoes, but then she took off on her own, hopping through the snow. We went to the waterfall where I could hear it, but not see it. It was completely buried in snow. Then we visited the big old Shag Bark Hickory on the edge of the property line.
That’s where I got this picture of Fate, snow on her nose and all.
I get this feeling when I walk in the woods as if I’m not alone. I’ve always felt it, even when I was a kid.
It’s a comforting feeling and it comes when my mind goes quiet and I begin to listen. It’s the same thing I do with the donkeys, when I sit quietly with them.
A full and round feeling fills up my chest and my heart beats a little quicker. I always say “hello” welcoming it, hoping it will stay. And it does stay for a while, but the intensity of it eventually fades.
I don’t think of it much when I’m not in the woods, and I don’t go there looking for it. Not consciously. But when it happens, I remember again how loved and safe it makes me feel.
The tall grasses were like turnstile after turnstile on my legs and shoulders. They bent to my body then sprang back into place as I passed though them.
This passage into the woods.
I hadn’t been here since the beginning of the summer when it becomes unpassable. The grasses too tall and thick, the ground too wet, the ticks too many.
I step thought the break in the low stone wall into the woods. I make begin a new path, just a few foot steps, around a dead tree that finally came down. The little waterfall is loud and frothy from the rain. The bench Ed Gulley made has acorn shells on it and I imagine the squirrel sitting there, eating.
I pull my fingers into my gloves warming them in a fist. Then I decide, instead of resisting the cold, instead of tightening my body, my muscles, my brain against it, I let go.
I breathe out the tension in my muscles, I stop thinking that I’m cold and start seeing what is in front of me instead. My body becomes soft, more fluid in its movement and instead of feeling like I’m walking in the woods, I become a part of the woods. I let the cold and damp seep into my skin, down to my bones, without judgement.
I am the air around me.
My body is still cold, but it doesn’t matter anymore.
Maybe this is the gift, I think. To not resist what I’m feeling. To not judge what I’m feeling. To not let my feelings keep me from seeing the reality that is right in front of me.
On the way back home, I visited the big, old shag bark hickory. I stopped and touched my tongue to a raindrop hanging off the tip of a branch. Fate ran ahead. I knew she’s be on the other side of the pasture gate when I got there. Both waiting for me, and getting as close to the sheep as she could.
” If the Maple is an “it” we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a “her” we think twice.” Robin Wall Kimmerer
What if everything that was not man-made was alive. The trees, the rocks the soil the rivers.
I’ve always had a feeling for this idea, but never a name for it. Or the proper understanding of it. For me it was more anthropomorphizing, but maybe that was because I didn’t have the language to describe what I was sensing any other way.
Now I understand it’s really animacy. The belief that woods and rocks and soil and rivers and all of nature is alive and intelligent, not as we are, but in their own way.
Today as I walked in the woods and greeted the trees I know so well I saw them in this new way. As nations all their own, but connected to me as well. And I thought of how the soil under my feet know my tread well by now, as I walk the same paths again and again.
I made an effort to get to know some new trees. As I walked I was conscious of all the life around me getting to know me just as I was becoming aware of them. And I didn’t see just with my eyes, but felt the woods around me with all of my senses and being.
When I got home I stitched this piece. As I was making it the words “my walk in the woods” were actually circling through my mind. I knew they were a part of the piece not just the title.
My Walk in the Woods is Sold for sale. It’s a small piece the image is about 10″x 11″ and the entire piece including the border is about 18″x19″. It’s $60 + $10 shipping. If it speaks to you and you’d like to have it, just email me at [email protected].
Here’s some of the trees I spoke to today…
The woods are green again. Not up high, but low to the ground.
The raindrops are big and heavy. They splat loudly on and around me.
Marsh marigolds with yellow buds, perfectly round hummocks sprouting grass like sunbeams, wild mustard, the spotted leaves of Trout lilies and hundreds or thousands of tiny stems and leaves.
There’s a hollowed out bone, like a sacrifice, nestled in the moss on a rock. The underside is smooth and the top chiseled by rodent teeth. It’s been there long enough to leave an impression in the moss.
The rootball of the fallen Shagbark Hickory is starting to sprout. The plants still grow straight up towards the sun, it’s just that their “straight up” is different than it used to be.
The deer trail is even easier to find with green on both sides. Fate and Zinnia’s curious noses find deer poop too good to pass up. I don’t call them away, just as they leave me to stare at the raindrops decorating the thin horizontal branches of the Musclewood.
I step over a broken elm, thin enough for me to wrap my hands around, the buds still green with life.
No way, I said out loud. I thought it was a bird in the hole in the old Shagbark Hickory, but couldn’t see it clearly from where I stood on the ground. When I looked at it using the close-up on my iPhone camera, there it was, a little bird calm as could be checking out the world outside its home in the tree.
I don’t know what kind of bird it is, perhaps someone reading this does and will let me know.
I’ve always thought of the trees as lovers. The ones that can’t seem to keep away from each other.
Some lean into each other the taller they grow, others, though different species seem to grow from the same stump. Then there are the ones that wrap themselves around each other. And the trees that seem to be hugging.
The Orphaned Woods has a few of these lovers, and today, in honor of Valentine’s Day I took their portraits.
I didn’t expect to be in the woods so long. But it was one of those days when I longed to be outside.
Back when I was I was in school or worked a job where I was indoors all day, the early spring weather was also about freedom to me. As if the warmth, sunlight, and smells were luring me to start walking without knowing where I was going and only stop when I was too tired to go any further.
I no longer crave that freedom. Since then I have learned that I couldn’t get it from running away, but from going within.
So now, even though the smell of warm air might flash me back to those days, for me, this early spring weather even in the middle of February, is about being outside. About feeling, seeing, and smelling what is right in front of me. And appreciating it for what it is.
I didn’t wander far today. We stayed in the boundaries of our property. Zinnia found the bone of a deer leg to chew on. And later the gray fur of a rabbit spread thin on the forest floor kept her busy.
There were no bones or skin, just the carpet of fur and a tuft of tail.
Snow only lingered in the shadow of fallen logs and the stone wall and ice still laced the edge of the stream.
I did find some color in the animal dropping under the old Shagbark Hickory. I thought it might belong to the Pileated Woodpecker who left shaving in the same area and a hole in a branch of the hickory.
As I walked, I thought of how fortunate I am now that walking in the woods and bringing back stories and ideas is a part of my work. And how all I have to do is listen with my whole being, because there is always a new story.
When the strap on my snowshoes broke a few weeks ago, Jon bought me a new pair of snowshoes for my birthday.
My old snowshoes were the big wooden kind from LLBean. They are over 30 years old and still in great shape except for the broken strap. I would have just replaced it, (and I probably still will), but I was eager to try the new lightweight smaller kind of snowshoe.
Every year when I went out into the woods, I always told myself I’d buy a pair, but I knew that wouldn’t really happen as long as I had my old reliable snowshoes.
So this was the perfect opportunity to get new snowshoes. And it being the middle of the winter there were a lot of sales too.
I knew the new snowshoes would be easier to walk in, but I had no idea how much easier and that I’d be able to see so much more of the woods than I had been.
I first found out when I crossed the Gulley bridge which was covered in ice. With my old snowshoes, I’d have to slide them one after the other horizontally across the plank. They always slid a little too easily on ice.
But my new snowshoes have a metal grip on the bottom of them. That makes it easier to walk on ice, but also easier to walk up hills and down hills. And with the smaller shoe it is easier to step over branches and logs.
With my new snowshoes, I was able to walk on the frozen marsh along the stream. It’s there I saw this tree that a beaver started to cut down some time ago. It looks as if the tree did some healing before dying.
I got a view of the farm that I’d never seen before too. Even walking across the cornfield with all the stubs sticking up from the cut corn was easier because my new snow shoes have less spaces between the frame and my foot.
The grips on the bottom of the shoes make it easier to go up and down hills because they keep the shoes from slipping.
It’s not about being able to go faster, or farther. It’s about accessing spaces I hadn’t been able to before because of ice, hills, or thick brush that’s hard to maneuver through with big shoes.
It feels to me like I’m able to go deeper into the woods so I can know it even better.
What a pleasure it is to be able to walk through the gate in the back pasture and into the woods. Now that hunting season is over and the snow and cold are keeping the ticks away, getting to the Orphaned Woods is easy again.
Easy if I have my muck boots on because the stream is so high the water is flowing over the Gulley Bridge and freezing. But that doesn’t bother the dogs or me, we wade through the water and then the icy mud to get to the other side.
The woods have opened up again, the bare trees invite the winter blue skies and bright sun to line the snow with periwinkle shadows. I breathe in the cold air and it calms the fizz and hum under my skin.
I want to keep walking, but I still have work to do. And the winter brings with it extra chores. Bringing in wood for the fires and tending them, graining the sheep, keeping the bird feeder full, sanding the icy steps.
It takes me longer to get to my studio in the morning and l leave earlier in the evening. But I still seem to get my work done. This is the last batch of potholders I keep telling myself, but then they sell and I make more. Make hay while the sunshine, I think as I muck out the barn which also takes longer to clean up. Soon it really will be too late for people to get them for Christmas, then I’ll stop for a while, for sure.
As I step over the crumbled stone wall, out of the woods, and into the snow-covered marsh, a raven flies over the farm, a shiny silhouette against the clear blue sky. It calls as it flies, and I pay attention.
I’ve come to see Ravens as a symbol of creating our own reality. Not magic as much as changing the way I think to get to a better place. Maybe to slow the anxiety that comes to me this time of year.
I think about that as I get closer to the stream and the mud sucks at my boot, then the water washes them clean.
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