Old post from Facebook. I am in the process of looking at these and buckling down to see what I have to say, and how. Chanterelles When it gets lighter out I will look for chanterelles in my back yard, which is all woods. I live in the country of ravine and stream, steep slopes, fallen trees, limited horizons. All streams run to the river. The landscape now beginning to withdraw into itself, trees bare in spots already. The yellow desiccated leaves. On some mornings, there is a sere feeling of November. I am back already to grabbing stove wood in the early mornings. Cursing my improvidence in not having ordered more. I’m on a waiting list, begging, but they have good wood. I like the hardscrabble climb up the ravine’s hill, which I used to do with my springer Barney, who ran ahead and then stood and mocked me from the top of the ridge. In daylight, things seemed quiet and empty up the hill, but I know better, seeing the gnawing at the base of trees, small holes in the ground, piled leaves. The evidence of nocturnal visitors who are everywhere at night in back, you see in winter all the prints…deer, raccoons, foxes, the fisher who has knocked off most of the neighborhood cats. I see a cute little tabby prowling around these days, and hemakes me nervous. I like the ascent in dead leaves, I like looking down at the flat land by the stream which in summer is verdant, lovely and green. I like the plateau where the chanterelles grow, poking out from the carpet of leaves. My walk will be loud, the leaves crackling under my feet. I will look up at the sky glimpsed through tree canopies and see azure, and the feathery clouds. And I will be alone in all this, because children no longer wander through woods, no longer hide and shriek, as even I did, growing up in Providence. In seventeen years here, I’ve seen children hike through these woods only a handful of times. So I will have to be the child, attend to the woods that exist only to live. I will have to be the one who is surprised. And today I will be, for this mile or so of woods is beautifully discombobulating; a few hundred feet from a back door, one looks around and barely sees houses, only ridges that go off into the distance, more streams, and more hills. When I am ready to return to my desk, I will turn around and suddenly find the entire landscape of the street different. The houses themselves will be altered, appearing huge and precarious, like something on the west coast, the kind of optimistic structures, built on slopes that disappear in mudslides. Seeming solid and strong from the street, my neighbors’ houses will be unfamiliar when viewed from the rear, their angles confusing, like dream houses in another life. I never know where I am in these woods. It’s very strange because I have a good sense of direction. But there I am relieved of direction, of the endless locating of myself, thinking of what I should do, how I must appear. I am not frightened; I find the confusion the woods bring to me liberating, exhilarating. I will clutch a basket of chanterelles. I will miss Barney, who used to guide me home—or rather, be visible by the door, since he was impatient and morally flawed. Not at all the kind of dog to trot protectively by my side. Instead I will look for a marker, Betula papyrifera, the fallen birch cantilevered across the stream. Then slosh across skipping stones, papery bark for a January fire held in my other hand.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2024
Categories |