My Walk in the Woods
“I rest in the grace of the world, and am free”
From “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry
I took a walk in the woods today on a little known trail in New Jersey that my friend Gene showed me last Fall. It was an overcast day and once in a while there was a little splash of a raindrop. The woods smelled damp and fresh. A salamander scurried across the trail as I approached. Little star like white flowers adorned the sides of the trail and sometimes dewdrops glistened on white pine needles when the sunlight caught them a certain way. A couple of birds picked through the leaves. Moss and lichen were in full bloom. Tool marks on some of the rock told of mining operations a century ago. It was a wonderful day for a hike.
When I was in hospital receiving chemotherapy for leukemia, I promised myself that I would go for a hike again as soon as I was well enough. I had been a Park Ranger for over twenty years and I used to get paid to hike in the woods, where I monitored changes in the fauna, educated other hikers about the hidden dangers of slick shale and freezing cold streams. Sometimes my hikes were more serious. Sometimes I hunted poachers or to rescued people who had fallen and been injured. Once it was to walk a grandfather to a waterfall so he could understand how his grandson had died. When we came to the churning waterfall where the boy had tried to walk against the powerful stream we stood silently sharing the sadness that comes with loss.
Lying in my hospital bed, I often took a hike in my imagination, remembering some trail or adventure I had been on, I recounted the smells, the way the sunlight cast shadows, the colors, and the sound of my footfalls on dried grass and gravel. There was the walk through the high grass in Eastern Colorado, so quiet I could hear the grass heads rub against each other as the breeze blew. There was the walk up the Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon, each step only as far as half the length of my foot, so I could keep time with the slow pace of the Canyon. There was the walk down what seemed an endless beach along the Outer Banks, listening to each wave lazily roll onto the shore as plovers ran in front of me like little escorts, cleaning a path for me. Each day it was a different place and a different walk.
When I was a kid growing up in Eastern Kentucky, the woods were my playground. It was there I learned about tracks and scat. I learned where morels like to grow and the best places to harvest mistletoe to sell on the court square at Christmas. I learned to avoid poison ivy, oak, and sumac. Each day in the woods was filled with discovery and education.
So it should be no wonder that now I am healthy again you can find me back in the woods from time to time. I know that these green spaces refresh and revitalize us. They contribute to our overall well being. For me, they are also a link with my past and a promise kept.
