Presence Joy

With the red of the maples and most of the other leaves gone, the green doors of summer open into the valley behind the house I grew up in. In the bewitching hour before sunset, I walk through the doors into a vast cathedral lit by the warm glow of  the yellow and gold leaves that remain.

I roamed these hills and got lost here before I even went to grade school. I damned the stream and the caught a trout with a bright red leaf in this valley. I made my first fire, cooked my first meal, and slept on the ground for the first time in these woods. This is where I began becoming who I am.

Before they were mine, these woods were farm fields. They have continued to become forest in the 35 years I’ve been gone. The irritating thorn trees and sticker bushes of my youth have been replaced with miles of impenetrable multi-flora rose strung through the understory like barbed wire along the front lines of war. The old dirt road has been a muddy mess since city sewage lines were buried beneath it. I find only traces of the web of trails etched in my mind like a map of Middle Earth.

Ten minutes into my foray, I’m ripping my clothes as I bull through rose vines and curse the construction crew that plowed sewage lines through the valley with no thought of the land.

Meanwhile the sky is so transparently blue I'm looking straight into the Milky Way. I’m looking for the woods of my youth, and they're not here. With that realization, my world changes.

I relax, turn towards home, and discover myself again in this place. With deliberate steps, I walk around and through the rose bushes, gently untangling myself and the roses when we caress. I see where I can walk, and the quiet sunset in the deep crimson of leaves on some bush I don’t know. Turkey scratches are scattered beneath the oaks. The startling white tail of a big doe bounds away as I crest a small rise.

The sky darkens and the glow of the sun turns scattered leaves left on the oak and beech trees  into glowing embers. As I work my way back home, I realize I'm meandering along a deer trail, a trail that leads straight to my back door.