Wise Woods

The other day I had new mad craving for the fresh air, so I wandered straight into the woods at a particularly deep looking spot off one regular path I walk to class. Soggy leaves and fallen trees everywhere, trees fallen all over other trees; I walked up and jumped down each one I came across. Five trees and five thuds later was a road I pass literally every day by bus or car and realized at that moment that I’d never crossed to the other side on foot, and the woods over there are pretty vast. It was decided and off I went.

There were many more leaning column-trunks on this side of the plain and I shimmied up each one in order to know its intricacies and discern whether it was the Path or just another path. I rose and descended probably twenty-seven times, and such is life, all ups and downs and always something new, and on the twenty-seventh landing I shot snow sparks into the air with a little more oomph than the previous twenty-six and even though I displaced a large amount of snow I looked down and smack in the middle of my feet was a deer print, clear as day. The tracks wandered up over the horizon to uncharted mysterious landscapes and I followed into the void to get lost, which is only a good idea if it’s completely intentional.

Right off the bat I spotted the perfect walking stick which I would have paid real money for and gotten a deal – about my height, thick and sturdy but not hard to wrap my hand around, smooth and devoid of jagged splinter shards. I had really found companionship and balance in one scrap of forest, a new friend whom I assured could do the leaning on me whenever he got tired but he never did. I had forgotten about the sounds of cars because I hadn’t been able to see any and now they began to return to my consciousness, whoosh-tossing spray dirt mist into my clean tasty air and I was still way back in the woods but I could taste it from there. I saw the distant strobing lights through a web of foliage and they looked foreign and ominous, glowing and dodging around trunks and branches.

It was here that the single set of tracks became five, seven, ten sets as I had a vision of deer hordes at marathon parties for days and dancing mad to the strange rhythm of the cars and dramatic lights. Past the dance floor seemed to be bedrooms, if deer have bedrooms then this is what they would look like, little mats of patted grass bare of snow and too close to the loud bright road for my liking. I squatted hearing the city whisper from my dry warm bed patch, a scraggle tree canopying over me with five spindle fingers and I wondered how anyone could ever sleep here it was so loud. The rushing wheels made me anxious and I wanted to leave when there must have been two red lights simultaneously on either side of my sanctuary and everything went quiet and still for exactly three seconds before the whoosh resumed and everything began moving again and I saw it all crouched amidst dull pink snow in my bare leaf spot. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the sense that I had overstayed my welcome being part of that sharp metal world which felt so cold from out here, colder than the night air which was really more wet than anything and I had truly forgotten about my soaking feet. I began to fear that the deer whose bed this was would smell me on it and never want to sleep there again, the way it’s truly difficult to feel comfortable in a house that’s been broken into. I tried to give off friendly smells and vibes. I took it as a sign and returned to the depths of the forest.

Next thing I knew the ground was all steep underneath me and I was descending a hill, which I would have fallen down if it weren’t for how fast I went all whooping feather joy in strides like running down sand dunes and this time cleared into a field with reeds and a frozen silent pond. On the other side of the pond stood a deer, my deer and trailblazer with bilingual instincts. I bowed as I passed directly opposite from him, giving thanks for showing me the way and the bed and the twisting trees and glowing pond and path home.