Prologue
There are not only stately pines, but fragile flowers, like the
orchids commonly described as too delicate for cultivation,
which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass of peat.
These remind us that, not only for strength, but for beauty,
the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and
the Indian's trail, to drink at some new and more bracing
fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness.
Henry David Thoreau
It is a little before eight in the morning and already warm in the forest, especially in the higher reaches where the branches are bathed in full sun. Here, on a well-traveled pathway, an old gray squirrel makes her way to the end of a limb. Gripping the thin wood with her powerful rear paws, she raises herself upright and patiently studies the familiar route and the gap she must cross to reach a branch in a neighboring tree. She is more than forty feet above the forest floor. A few moments later, head lowered, body coiled, tail twitching in anticipation, she is fully prepared to leap when a strange sound from somewhere below catches her attention. Her body instantly stills.
Peering downward through the spiny needles of the ancient white pine she detects movement and then catches sight of a boy running the old logging path, the rhythmic thump of his sneakers on turf and his steady, breathy grunts growing louder as he nears.
The boy has both arms held out like wings. As he runs, his slim fingers sporadically brush through the softened tips of new spruce or silently slip across the pale green faces of young birch trees. He is grinning as only a nine-year-old boy can from the thrill of being in the woods alone for the first time! All his previous ventures into the forest have been in the company of the old woman. She has shown him the way, leading, teaching him about the intricacies and many of the secrets of this wooded world that she owns. For the old squirrel the threat diminishes, but she patiently remains still—undiscovered—watching as the boy passes below.
Less than a minute later, the boy half-circles a large rock and runs straight into a thicket of young fir trees. He bends his arms at right angles, holding them up in front of his face as he squeezes through and emerges into a small clearing. At the center of the opening stands a Christmas tree-shaped blue spruce. Beyond is what he has come for: one of his most private, special places in the entire forest.
With a girth the width of a back and covered by a thick coating of moss, a long-dead cedar trunk projects horizontally into the clearing. Flopping onto the tree with his arms and legs slung to either side, the boy lowers his face onto the pungent soft surface and closes his eyes. He relaxes into the moment, gripped by an unexpected, tingling sensation that reaches the core of his thin body. The sensual and certainly pleasurable feeling is something he has felt before but still can't explain.
While momentarily affected by the sensation, in the fashion of most nine year olds he quickly gives in to an eruption of lethargy. He can only think, "I could stay like this for ...what ... forever? Well, maybe not. But this sure feels good right now. I just love it out here."
My realization from Paul's story is, "The woods offer sensory details to be felt by those who've never rambled there but who may feel their immediacy from these childhood memories."
* Henry D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods.
* Paul Sherburne, One Tree at a Time (Seattle, WA: Wilson Duke Press, 2011) vi–viii; see www.aboutpaulsherburne.com.