If you were to knock on our door these days, you probably wouldn't find me at home. Like as not I'm in our little patch of woods out back, digging up thorn bushes, pruning back branches, tying scraps of orange fabric around tree limbs, or just standing, leaning on a walking stick, staring around me. I'm making a trail, you see.
The idea came to me in the middle of the night. I was lying awake about two a.m., fretting about how I really needed to get more exercise. 'But walking is so boring!' I was thinking. And where could I go? We live on a country road. Our little plot of land is hedged on three sides by farm fields, and across from us is a marsh, where a slow-moving river makes the land soggy and treacherous. Down the road is a forest, marked every fifty feet with "No Trespassing" signs. Not promising.
So up till now I'd just walk down the road to the corner and back. A few cars would pass me along the way. Dust from the fields would make me cough. I'd pick up a few beer cans as I went. Then, when I reached the dirt road, I would sigh, turn around, and trudge back. If you want an example of how exercise can be boring, uninspiring and depressing, there you have it.
I should make a walking trail through our woods, I thought, and the idea brought me wide awake in an instant. A trail! My own creation, winding through the trees. Suddenly what had felt like a chore became an intriguing challenge.
See, we have a little patch of woods on our land, maybe three acres at most. I’ve never spent much time in it, aside from walking through the narrowest part to look at the sunset, or walking around the edge with our dog. It never looked very interesting: it was dark and hushed, with lots of fallen trees, a few abandoned farm machines, and the odd shaft of light poking through.
A trail. Hmm.
I started looking for ideas online. No, I didn't want to take a chainsaw to our woods or chop a path through. No, I didn't want to lay down gravel paths or decorate it with cute gnomes and signs. I wanted to explore the woods, first, and see what was there - and then I wanted to figure out how to weave a way through it. I wanted to make a perfect winding path that I could walk every day.
Soon I was ready to start. Tall boots. Heavy gloves. Clippers. Bright orange strips of cloth for markers.
You know what I discovered? Just getting into the woods was hard. I walked back and forth along the edges, looking for openings, pushing past thickets, stomping down grasses and pulling up thorn bushes. Hard work. Finally I had two small paths into the dimness beyond. My reward? Within a few days, the deer were already beginning to use them. Hey! I was making it easier for them to get in, too.
It was a little better once I reached the woods, where it was more open under the trees. I began to venture in, ducking under branches, getting tangled in briars, stepping over fallen trees and swatting a few late autumn mosquitos. Every day I'd wander back and forth, moving a little further each time, looking for the best way through and marking it as I went.
I spent a lot of time just looking around, really. Looking for the way ahead, but also just exploring. Craning my neck to find the woodpecker hopping its way up a dead tree. Bending down to peer at tiny mushrooms marching along a mossy log. Parting leaves to look for animal tracks.
Every day there was more to discover. The forest I'd thought of as empty and uninteresting was, of course, full of life: ferns, grasses, bright autumn leaves, young saplings making their way toward the sun and huge fallen trees covered in moss lying on the forest floor. The dead standing trees were living a second life, riddled with holes that were homes for birds and squirrels. There were mushrooms everywhere: clinging to the sides of trees like little shelves, curled like sea coral under the ferns and rising like perfect umbrellas out of fallen leaves. I came across a little gully lined with mossy stones, fallen trees resting in each other's arms, and even one young sapling bent double by a felled birch tree, growing back up from the ground in quiet triumph.
Every day it seemed there was another discovery waiting for me. One sunny morning I walked out of the dimness into a clearing, a perfect circle of light in the middle of the forest. In the center was a mound of green, and when I parted it I found the stump of a white oak. It was still alive and growing, covered in green leaves. Standing in the sunshine, suddenly I thought, this is a holy place. All of this is holy, and I never knew it was here.
I soon discovered I had plenty of neighbors, too. Often when I arrived the crows would announce my presence, cawing the news for all to hear. Chickadees would flutter up to the branches above, or a squirrel would chitter down at me, flicking its tail. Once a chipmunk dashed into its hole under a tree trunk, and then poked his head out to stare at me. Sometimes I saw a flash of white as a deer dashed away. I hope they'll get used to me over time. I'm trying to stay on the edges, and leave their homes undisturbed.
It was hard work, though, day after day. So often the way was blocked - everywhere I looked were thickets and briars and fallen trees. There were times I looked around and hadn't the faintest idea where to go. So I'd back up and try another way, and then another, or give up and find a way back home till another day. But sooner or later, looking and searching, I'd find a way through, cutting away as little as I could, and move ahead again. My trail became longer, and then longer still, until it became two long intersecting loops, wandering through our little forest.
Little by little, as I walked the path again and again, over and over, it began to appear. I could see it taking shape, the weaving trail I imagined that first night.
It threads its way through a stand of pine trees, with the ground soft and brown with needles. It ducks under an arch made by a broken aspen tree, and curves past a clump of three sturdy maples and a huge oak tree with frilly mushrooms growing up its side. It wanders into the sunlit clearing and skirts around the little mossy gully. And it turns and heads down a long, straight path through two rows of tall pines, stretching ahead like a long, sunlit cathedral.
Today I finally walked the whole trail from end to end, both loops, the north trail and the south. Every bit of the trail was clear, and I could see my way ahead winding through the woods, my little fluttering tags on the branches leading me on.
It's only a humble path through just a few acres of land, really. It's nothing dramatic - there are no hills or overlooks or even a stream to cross. But when I reached the end and turned to look back, smiling, I imagined how it will look this winter, with my footprints in the snow and all the animal trails to look for, and how I'll look for the first signs of spring here, and watch for next summer's flowers in the little clearing.
Too often these days I look at my own struggles and all the problems of the world and sigh, thinking that change is too hard, even impossible. But I've learned some lessons in the woods this past month. I've learned to take it slowly; to try, again and again and yet again, to find the way through. I've learned when I change my thinking, my whole life can change. I've learned to look for the gentlest way to be in nature, the way that respects, rather than dominates. Most of all, I've learned the wonder of finding the holy in the ordinary, right in my own back yard.
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