On Break: Lost in a Swamp

I had a short break before some professional development work at school today and I decided to take a walk in the woods. Off trail and just over a tiny creek, I noticed some deciduous trees and,wondering if they might be maples, decided to have a closer look. It was swampy and I had to hop on tufts of grass, but I made it to the trees, and then decided to wiggle my way through some rose bushes to see what was beyond the swampy area. I was hoping to stumble on some morel mushrooms but instead I hiked into a deeper swamp. Too far out to turn back and not wanting to go through the thorny shrubs again, I planned to circle around towards the school but this only led into deeper water. I tried walking on dead logs and more tufts of grass but a log snapped and my foot plunged into the cold water, and I just gave up and waded through the calf-high water and bushwhacked through a thicket, arriving back at the school sopping wet and with no socks (l had wrung them out and placed them in my car window to dry) and just in time to talk with my colleagues about literature.

A Walk in the Woods after Hearing of the Death of an Old Friend

I had walked onto spongy earth. Cattails and other straw-colored reeds had been matted flat onto the ground, maybe by a flood from a nearby creek, which was slightly swollen. It was early and the sun was a deep red. Behind me, the school where I teach was filling with students and in a few minutes the morning bell would ring and I'd begin teaching for the day. But, right now, I stood by the creek, recalling a time many years earlier in the Adirondacks when I sat beside a mountain stream straining to hear something; I wanted a sign that there was something greater than the water flowing quickly over slippery stones and down the mountainside. I was alone, having driven up to the mountain spot from my home on Long Island, where I lived with my mom and three sisters. I became angry and frustrated with the creek and the mountain and the woods when all I heard was silence, everything seemed so pointless, and I walked away suffering my defeat. Now I stood by another creek. The night before I received news that a friend of mine from high school had died. He was a year younger than I, and he had two children the same age as mine. I thought about the nights we spent together with friends in the woods, at house-parties, behind the medical center, smoking and drinking, laughing, telling our stories. I imagined standing beside him and telling him that in 25 years he would be gone, taken from the earth.  I told him that he would have children and they would lose their father. I thought about his response and I felt sad and I yielded to all the things we cannot see. I returned to the swollen creek, looking down into the clear water which was making an oily swirl around a smooth gray branch. I could hear birdsong in the bare oaks and green pines. The air felt cold and no breeze blew. I smelled the wet, decaying earth. I didn't strain for anything beyond this. I turned a few times, looking around at it all, and then returned to school.

In the Woods, Past, Present and Future

March 8

I took a walk this morning in the woods next to the school where I teach, and I imagined I was in the same woods I roamed when I was a boy on Long Island, although I’m now 42 and live in the hills of western Massachusetts. I imagined these were the same pines I smelled, the same sharp air I breathed, and the same birdsong I followed, often barefoot down sandy paths. And, as I walked, I looked ahead to when I'll be an old man passing under the same bare oaks my children will someday pass under when they are old and their children will pass under when they are old, and I am gone. At some point, I noticed a coyote track, a single pawmark in the mud in the middle of the trail. The mud was soft and wet and the print was fresh. I can see the coyote leaping from the dark on one side of the trail, making a brief landing here, and then disappearing into the brush on the other side.