“There is nothing like the silence and loneliness of night to bring dark shadows over the brightest mind.” ~ Washington Irving
It’s strange and perhaps slightly psychotic to seek out thrills and dangers when we were raised to avoid such insanity at all costs as children. To dabble in the dark arts and tease the demons of the world is playing with a sort of fantastical fire that feels fine to the touch but may leave a nasty scar. My pursuits remain mostly on the outskirts of such questionable activity, preferring to watch from a very safe distance the paranormal goings-on or haunted scenarios that abound on a night such as Halloween. But when it comes to the forest, that’s a gamble and a dare I’ll always take, because for every moment of doubt there’s a place of beauty, and that will always be worth a risk.
Leaving the little brook to its gibberish, I returned along the path I had come, rising with the incline and ascending from the shadowy depths just as the sun would render such a change almost imperceptible. We balanced one another, and in that reassurance I could slow my pace again – a pace that had slightly increased when I was down in the deep.
Pausing to examine the leaves, I was once again struck, like every fall, by the infinite gorgeousness of this variety of colors and forms that nature so generously bestows upon those of us who take the time to notice. If there were ghosts about now, they were of the friendly sort, and I bowed my head in their direction, and they left me alone.
The light was just slightly different from when I began this short walk, but it was a difference that hinted at more, at a haunting of the woods I had narrowly escaped, or might have simply passed me by without concern. Grateful for that, I let the forest close behind me without saying goodbye.
