Grass Lake #2

It is a crisp, clear autumn day, and I can see my breath for the first time this season. The dew sparkles in the morning light, on the grass, on my way into the woods. I feel the sunshine warm my face, and I open up to it, trying to capture that feeling for the short dark days ahead.

The woods are quieter, today. The leaves rustle aimlessly in the breeze, and my steps crunch along the forest path. The alders have lost more leaves. They go from green, to yellow edged, to brown, and fall along the path like confetti. There are Big Leaf Maple leaves, too, not as showy as their many cousins, but what they lack in vibrancy, they make up for in size. Everything seems bigger, here, in the Pacific Northwest. Plants that I recognize from my childhood make me feel like a child again, as my hands seem so small in comparison to them.

I walk along, surprised at how much green is still here. It is just in the alder grove that the leaves have begun to drop. Under the conifers, I thought that the underbrush would be fading for winter, but they seem unphased by this shift in light. Perhaps, in the shadow of the evergreens, the shortening of the days seems less like change than it does in the open spaces. The sunlight rarely reaches the underbrush anyway, except, maybe when the sun is at it’s highest point in the sky.

There are so many kinds of ancient beings in this wood. The oldest plants, the mosses, the lichens, are almost everywhere I look. On the broken branches of fir, streamers of silvery green carve out their niche. Under the grape along the path, there are beautiful little mosses, shaped not unlike the conifers, themselves. They cover the earth in a thick, dewy carpet. There are mushrooms, again, in various stages of life. Many more types than I noticed last time, and many of them at the end of their time, melting back into the earth like cupcake frosting in late July.

I reach the turning point of my journey. I stand for a minute, and listen to the woods. Without the crunch of my steps, I hear so much more. The woods seem alive with animal life. A crow flies overhead, and I look up, this time seeing the tops of the trees, and the blue sky beyond. I breath deeply, enjoying the smells of life all around me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see movement, and turn to watch a chipmunk watching me. A Downy Woodpecker spirals around a fir tree, and juncos flit amongst the Oregon Grape.

The sounds fill me up. I breathe them in on each breath, and wonder how to move more silently in the woods, how to bring this awareness into my movement. I feel like such a clumsy modern person, out of touch with the ways of the woods, and vow to walk more purposefully on my way back home today.

I look out towards the lake, at the opening in the trees where the sky is more visible. I see the cottonwoods and the alders, and I wonder if I will see more, as the season progresses, and more trees shed their leaves. I am drawn to leave the path, and try to approach the lake, but the spiders have staked their claims across the deer path, and I am loathe to destroy their works of art.

So I turn back towards home, and walk more silently than before. Without the persistant dripping from the trees, there is so much more chatter to hear in the woods. And my steps are a bit quieter, and a bit slower, and a bit more purposeful. And I remember to breathe, and be present, and slow down.