“There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.” ~ Washington Irving
By the time I reached the bottom of the little valley, and the place where a stream wound its way around the leaf-littered ground, I was entirely under the enchantment of the woods and whatever spirits and denizens oversaw its inner-workings. A certain reverence and respect is due to the forest, and I never underestimated its scope or power. There were trees and stones that were there long before I was born and that would remain there long after I was gone. The forest held a permanence and perpetuity of which humans could only dream and craft potions of youth that would never quite work.
Its mysteries were as tantalizing as they were frustrating, ever out of reach, ever out of sight, the way certain whispers sounded in the way the wind rustled the trees or the water gurgled as it jumped from stone to stone. Even in its open spaces, where the trees parted for a moment or the land leveled off, there were secrets and solemn silence, where no explanations were ever uttered or even hinted at, where there was no room for anything other than stillness and contemplation.
There I would become suspicious, as if I had been given a pretty dose of poison that suddenly wore off, and coming to a new awareness doubted everything that had once been beautiful. The perfume of the forest is always partly composed of decay and rot.
Remembering the proximity to Halloween, the day when the veil between our physical world and the inhabitants of the spiritual world is at its thinnest and most frayed, I felt a familiar jolt of fear. When I was a kid, I’d often explore the little stretch of woods behind our house after a day at school, and if I wasn’t careful I’d get caught a little further from home than I wanted as the sun went down. When that happened, I’d have to hasten my pace, and there were days nearer the approach of winter when I was running by the time I got back home, certain that some beast or manifestation of evil was right behind me, chomping at my heels and so close I didn’t dare turn around to slow my flight.
On this day, however, the fear felt distant, and there was still light and magic. Fallen logs pointed me further along the path, framing the journey in such picaresque fashion that it was impossible to worry. Beauty is treacherous that way.
And when the sight of such prettiness wasn’t enough, the sound of a little waterfall erased any minor concern in the quietness that so many of us modern-day humans seem to find uncomfortable.
Who would dare to worry about anything when faced with such beauty? Who would fret about the changing light of day to dusk, or the way the air seemed to suddenly drop a few degrees? What ghosts would have the impropriety to assemble near such peaceable waters? The brazen boldness of my heart cried out for them to reveal themselves while the remnants of my good sense impelled me along the path.
This was the turn that would bring me back from the bottom, and if I missed it or wandered too far, I might head the wrong way, moving deeper into unknown passages. I strayed a bit, but as soon as I sensed a loss in bearings, returned the way I had come, rejoining the trail and resuming the loop out of the valley, away from the stream, away from the darkening heart of that forest…
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