Into the Woods

This is an old post from January 23, 2017.

Everyone told us Michigan winters were the worst around, but for one day in January there was sunshine and warmth rivaling even Southern California, our home of five years.

It was the day after the inauguration, the day when women marched around the world. My soul was heavy but rising. There were fresh pink tulips on the table at home, my daughter’s very favorite. As the thick fog that had covered the city for the past week began to clear, we saw that the sun had not abandoned us after all, and we decided to take a walk in the woods.

We almost did not make it. Being newbies to the area still, the first place we tried was gated and padlocked shut. So much for that. So we went to another place, further away, and when we arrived we knew we had chosen wisely. There were rows and rows of evergreens in a deep dark wood, and the golden light of coming sunset sparkled between the slender lines of boughs. Except I had forgotten J’s shoes. He was only wearing his socks.

A frantic twenty minute trip to a nearby store later, we climbed down the gentle slope into the hushed forest. There was ice on the path, but only the path, and everywhere else the snow had melted. We left the path and wandered between the trees, discovering a tee pee someone had made of fallen trunks. We stood inside and out of it, and then B pointed to a hill and said, “Let’s go there.”

Where were we? It smelled like wet leaves and pine needles; spring had come for a day in winter like a miracle. It reminded me of the time when we drove up into the mountains near Valencia. One moment it was nearly 70 degrees with palm trees–the next moment, there was ice crunching under our tires, the temperature had dropped to 20, and all around us the pine trees were laden with snow.

The path we had chosen was really a cross country trail. That explained the ease and freedom of the trails, the gentle sloping up and down, the sudden strange hill of sand we came upon. And we were not alone. Everyone seemed to have known about this secret place before us; there was the sound of children playing in the distance and dogs snuffling past, and between the lines of trees were strung hammocks, teenagers smoking in covert and an old couple snuggled close together. But for the most part, we could not see anyone; we only heard them, as though they were phantoms in another world. It was our own kind of march, but one without agenda; a march into the wild, into things both visible and unseen, a place to hide for the day, to rest, to return.

I’m thinking as we walk of how troubled A has been of late. I remember her withdrawn face and how, when pressed, she had said, “I don’t want to die.” In my child I see reflected the truth that we were created to live forever. We were meant to live on and on, without fear of ending, on and on into brighter and brighter days.

We came into the world with nothing. When we walk in the woods, we have only our shoes and coats and a bottle of water. We have only our senses, and our senses point to something more than touch or sight or sound or smell or taste.

There is longing and mystery in the woods, as though all our senses point to somewhere beyond the shadows, beyond the light, to perhaps something like a secret door. It is the yearning that draws us to the distant hill, that makes us gaze into the depths of darkness with hope. And if we could just find that door, and open it, and get through, somehow we would become as we were meant to be.