Today I went to walk in the woods . I had not been there for over 4 years but they have not changed much. There was no vestige of autumn there, winter had already spread her cloak over the forest. Ducks swam confidently on the lakes that dot the preserve and a lone swan stretched its neck in the distance as I watched from a bridge. It was a stark and stiff landscape. Trees stood so tall as if starched and no wind blew. The only color in the drab scenery was the ubiquitous bittersweet vine. Bittersweet is native to America found in woodlands across the East, and in the colonial days was given that name because it looked so much like a nightshade plant found in Europe , one that they all remembered. The Indians and settlers used bittersweet to induce vomiting and of all things to treat tuberculosis. The pretty berries are poisonous if ingested by humans but are manna to birds in winter. I stopped to listen to the water rushing over rocks and could have sat there for hours just looking out upon that ancient scene. There were too many people whizzing by on bicycles . They came up behind you like noiseless, creeping things and I kept thinking if I had moved a hair's breath to the left or right, I would have been knocked over right then and there. One man was going so fast that the walkers stopped and stared at his unconscious pedaling. A mother with her two sons, one fat and one thin , looked at me in hopeless dejection as she scolded the fat one for his clumsiness on his bicycle. Exasperated at his unwarranted complaints, she turned to me, a lone walker on the path, and rolled her eyes. I smiled and wondered how often this scenario repeats itself at her home. It was good to be on that road again. Autumn in November is the doorkeeper to the cold and snow to come, and I thought it would not be much longer until the ice would form on the ponds and the branches crackle and break under the weight of a January snowfall. I will go back again, sooner now rather than later. After all, it is the place where I got my first kiss and the place where the past tangles with the present amid the fallen leaves and the blue jay cries.

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 Walking early this morning, I encountered almost no bicycle riders other than one intense woman who pedaled furiously down the path, but other than that the woods were relatively silent. I love the smell of the woods, the dampness, the warm earthy scent of decay and new life. I took a photograph of some hepatica on the path. It had a deep perfume, heady and fragrant. The kind that makes you want to dive into it and get lost. I did a lot of imagining on this walk. Looking through the dense brush, I thought I saw the outline of my cabin there. Perhaps I would have been starting breakfast and coffee would be boiling. Then I thought of the difficulties people in the past had when cutting their way through the wilderness. Those trees we admire today were just another impediment to progress for them. They were everywhere and if you wanted to settle down and make a home and a farm, they would have to be dealt with and soon. Each day in those long ago woods would bring unexpected challenges from Indians, from the weather, from animals, from accident, and from disease. No wonder their faith was strong and ever present. There was no idle reflecting on the possibility of God or of your own place in His universe. God and the transience of this earthly life was a given as is attested to by the sentiment on gravestones everywhere from that time. I also thought of all these pretty flowers I encounter on my walk. All these wildflowers had a medicinal purpose in the past. The Hepatica was known as a healer of the liver, hence its name in the vernacular, liverwort. Last night, I found one of my old herbalist books that I used to consult. Reading through it, I found this passage for a long life written in a far away century by someone who "was continually in health". His name was Cornaro and some 300 years ago he wrote, "Treatise on temperance and sobriety" where he says at 83 of age, " I am not weary of life which I pass with great delight. I confer often with worthy men, excelling in wit, learning, behavior and other virtues. When I cannot have their company, I give myself to the reading of some learned book, and afterwards in writing; making it my aim in all things , how I may help others to the furthest of my power." A powerful vision of life's purpose, I think.

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18Erin Fish, Lucy Booker Roper and 16 others

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 I headed out this morning at 6 am and took the northward path through the woods. It was not as I remembered it at all. When I was a teenager, the path wound around the stream which at this point had widened almost to what you would call a river. There used to be a bridge around a bend but the water is so choked with reeds and decades of growth that it is nearly hidden from view. There was a small clearing where I could hear the water spilling over a stone ledge and I made my way to it. I could see that the stream was still there , more primitive looking than I recall. No ducks lingered and the heavy scent of undergrowth makes you want to dig your toes into the earth . It also makes you keenly aware of movement. A rustle there of an unseen creature, the call of birds from the deep wood, all of these things stir up the sense that even in this silence, and it was silent of people, there is noise and life and a world going about its business. I continued to walk and came to a spot I was aware of but had not seen before. Some fellow hiker with a tender heart planted flowers along the embankment. Black eyed Susans and Geraniums were lush along the shore and they looked like the adornments they were intended to be. I decided to turn off on a dirt path that wound around the west side of the stream. Cut off from the main trail , I only came upon two teenage joggers training for a race. There was a stillness everywhere . The only sounds were birds and the crunch of gravel under my feet as I walked. It was a long route , circuitous and winding, I passed cut offs into thickets and at one spot , the clearing revealed the remains of a doll that had been ceremoniously burnt in a ring of fire. What I kept thinking about was that rambling carefree in the woods is a thing of the present. In the past, there were all manner of dangers there. Wildcats screaming like stricken females were the stuff of nightmare in the centuries past. How easy it is to take one's time and explore today when the distant sound of cars and rail road trains remind you that the world is out there, no longer dependent on the rhythm of the natural world. When I was in college I read a trilogy called The Awakening Land by Conrad Richter. In the first novel, he recounts the migration of the Luckett family from Pennsylvania to the Ohio Valley. They walked through woods like mine all the way. I remember that the daughter, Sayward, described the woods as consuming , dwarfing the family as they trudged ever westward to their promised land. I tried to envision that today as I wandered further and further into the center of the Preserve. The trees in the woods are deciduous ones with almost no conifers in sight. That being said, I did see one lone Pine tree, tall and out of place among the oaks, at one point along the path. The sunlight began to bathe the road in gold and I stood there for a minute. I thought, this is how to connect with God, who speaks through His creation. I wanted to absorb the color like honey but a renegade cyclist , ringing his scratchy bell and hollering "on your right!" came barreling through the rocky path , tires wobbling, dispelling not only the mood but the mystery.

Musings From Nature 

Woods at dusk" September 2016

Tonight was one of those red sky in the West nights where you don't have a clue where you are going, but you know you need to be in the woods somewhere. I had to think and maybe find answers to questions that still remain an enigma, not willing to give up any truths. I walked down the paths I know so well from my youth only the brush is so thick now and there were no birds. I wonder if they sense something. The woods usually resound with the squawking and the squeaking of blue jays and crows, robins and tanagers. But this evening only silence curtained the heavy lidded oaks and maples. Even the ubiquitous geese remained aloof, never once skating down the stream or taking their station on the footpaths. There was a deep perfume there like heady citrus from already decaying greenery. Their glory is already fading. Heavy and exhausted looking, the sassafras tree seemed lost and overwhelmed by the straying of vines from wayward weeds. Soon, colors would inundate this little preserve of Indian trails and make believe. It will be glorious of course. But then winter will come, no mistaking that, and it will be over. Dry and brittle will the branches be and nothing will remain but the trees, stately and shorn in the cold blasts of ice. Pagan people would gaze upon this once upon a time and fear that the spring would never come. The cycle required a sacrifice of something. I wonder if it still does.

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6Bill Clinger, Cynthia A. Sandor and 4 others