Keeping Time

Today, I give my body one hour. I descend a stone staircase cut from this very escarpment and am embraced by cedars. Here, I feel grounded, the forest floor soft with moss and decaying leaves, littered with holes from various critters. I take note of the light’s angle, the way it casts cedar shadows onto green rock. Vines grow up trees, trees grow in circles around rock and reach for light. The trees sway deeply in the wind—a bit aggressive lately—and I’d headed for the woods with this in mind. A cedar creaks and I become alert. 

I hear water, barely, just a few drops trickling between rocks. I track the water as it moves downslope, both of us ruled by gravity. Gradually the trickling water becomes a stream, then the stream becomes a pond with a little island where wild geese laze about. I feel glad they’ve a chance to relax. Onward I go, my feet keeping pace with my thoughts, my true mission today to see the prairie. I pass a group of athletes distractedly picking trash from the trails, smile, silently thank them for taking the time to do so. I am thankful for this time to escape the Earth Day marketing onslaught that clogs my inbox, for my close proximity to nature and my ability to access it. 

In the distance I see another small pond, fallen logs adorned with ducks and baby turtles. April wakes the world. I make it to the prairie, aware of the slight ache in my chest but moving forward with anticipation. She is beige, flat and squashed by Winter’s snow. I look for signs of life—I know they’re there, but instead find myself drawn back into the woods. Here, I am greeted with yellow, green and white. 

In the woods, I feel spooked. I wonder why, remembering myself as a child with her own ‘secret forest’. Maple and oaks tower above, swaying with less grace than the cedars and knocking into one another. They feed the squirrels and chipmunks who bustle through leaf litter; these startling noises still cannot cover the sound of the freeway that borders one side of the arboretum. I decide it’s time to turn back and start the slow and gradual ascent.

 The mind favors endings of closure, and my final steps turn introspective. I walk the same trails I did five years ago in disbelief that I’m still here. Having access to a place I’d once flocked toward while leaving another place behind feels new, complex and overwhelming. I am learning that I do not have to keep letting go, forgetting. Previous versions of me do not have to be hidden, erased. I start to feel something that resembles contentment. I find stone once again and climb up, up, up though my legs are heavy. It’s nature, the trees—the way they see and hold me. This is what I want for Her, too.

Photo by xandro Vandewalle on Unsplash.