When Walking Becomes Flying
Adventures in nature, imagination and the non-existent boundary that separates them.
When we stepped out of the car, cool air beckoned for our attention the way a stiff muscle does when it wants to be stretched and massaged then worked out tenderly, stimulated mindfully and returned to full function. Our way of meeting the temperature was to dive into the forest and the spirits had invited us to venture out and not return until we had chopped, stirred fried and flipped and cooked a big old omelet. We needed to saute the day on the frying pan of our imaginations and not be timid about adding salt. Walking can be a pain at first and that is why the spirits needed to be called on, they zapped our muscles into alertness so that they contracted a little bit more, putting that youthful and ever-so-welcome “pep in our step.” I’m not sure if the spirits are childlike, eternal or both. Recognizing them instinctively when their number comes up on my phone, I know how to sift them out from the robo-calls, honeytraps, catfish DM’s and offers for high interest business loans. I used to think that I was one of them (and maybe I was) although now I recognize that this muscle bound, sometimes tense and tired body of mine would be far too cumbersome a vehicle for them to take up permanent or even semi-permanent residence. A child's body may be a better conduit, if a conduit is what they’re after, due to its spontaneity and bounce, especially its bounce-backness when considering the type of mischief these arboreal spirits tend to catalyze.
We weren’t running into the forest per se but we were hurrying. It was that sort of hurrying that wasn’t about getting anywhere on time but just because that was the speed we needed to go. Nobody ever asks why Michael Jackson’s classic “Smooth Criminal” had to be 120 beats per minute but we all sort of know that if it were slower, it wouldn’t get our feet tapping and hips gyrating, robbing of us of the requisite curiosity to ask the obvious, necessary and perennial question of whether Annie actually was “OK.”
The filtered light of the quickly setting afternoon sun gave us enough visibility to confidently navigate the sometimes muddy, sometimes icy and very curvy trail. Yet the near-dusk also left just enough shadow for the spirits to pop out unexpectedly behind that spruce or this birch and give us a little show or perhaps a little hint as to the presence of some great mystery just behind the visual curtain. We bounced along the trail, vaulting over tree stumps and sliding across the patches of smooth ice that the 45 degree day and waning sun had not yet been able to transform into slush. I quickly found a truly great stick for myself. About shoulder height, still with some of its bark, still alive enough to endure some bombastic impact, yet dead enough to have become stiff and reliable. I swung it around once or twice as though I were a fighting monk preparing to dazzle a crowd of gawking onlookers in the town square. Then I decided which side of it would be the top (the thicker side) and which would be the bottom (obviously) and continued to saunter, adding the third lower appendage to my gait.
The spirits animated my companions as well who, I was wondering when you’d ask, were a seven year old boy and a 15 year old dog (who I sometimes said was 16 to impress people, a credit not to my ego but to his enduring dignity and bounce even at this advanced stage). It’s amazing how unrelated youthfulness is to age. I’ve met grumpy old men in the bodies of nine years old and yet here was a creature, purported to be over 100 in the ever-so-scientific “dog years” and who has more genuine enthusiasm than Bart Simpson skateboarding his way through Springfield to get a slurpee. Although overshadowing us both when it comes to bounce and zest was Max.
Max actually was running, zig zagging along with no regard (or perhaps regard but no concern) for the patches of ice that other, less nimble hikers, would have had to waddle across penguin style. He used the raised sides of the trail for swerving bank turns, launched off of low lying rocks and performing fancy 180’s, using the trunks of oaks and maples as launch pads. The flat trail looked like a downhill in the way that he was speeding along it, the term “launched out of a cannon” comes to mind.
After 10 or so minutes of bouncing along we arrived at the frozen pond. How thick was the ice on this warmish late winter afternoon? Well we were going to find out. Now before all of you concerned mothers out there come hounding me for recklessness, keep in mind that there are plenty of ways to test the thickness of a frozen pond in late winter without risk of bodily injury. I elected to employ the most direct one I knew, grabbed a heavy rock and tossed it onto the ice. The rock barely made a dent, a chip would be the accurate term, and it was barely even one of those. After landing the rock slid like a curling stone across the smooth surface before coming to rest conspicuously about 30 feet from the edge, a perfect shot and what’s more, confirmation that our original route required a detour.
Our destination in the center of the pond barely warrants the term “island” however I’m not aware of another term for it. If it were a planet it would, like the recently demoted pluto, be referred to as a dwarf. I’d always been curious about it, the island that is, when walking past in the warmer months. Its shape is mostly circular with some irregularities (imagine a chocolate chip cookie that was scooped onto the baking pan by a helpful toddler) and about 15 feet in diameter. Its surface featured a few small pine trees, some rocks and a scattering of snow. It wasn’t that we were expecting to find anything particularly interesting on the island, rather it was the novelty of standing somewhere generally inaccessible that had an irresistible lustre. So out we slid, each taking a small leap over the slushy border at the edge of the pond (nervous mothers please refer to the previous paragraph) and gliding out to the island. Far more wary than Max or I in his locomotion was our four legged companion who trotted cautiously, still not entirely trustworthy of the underlying frozen floor, until arriving at the more familiar dirt and rock that constituted our dwarf island. I say “ours” assuming that ne’er another soul had trespassed out to that obscure patch of land in the small pond. I, perhaps arrogantly, assume that the need to explore and adventure to this particular terrestrial tear drop would be passed by and shrugged off by anyone else. Of course there’s no knowing whether or not other similarly inspired companions had ever, in the long history of the landscape, visited its diminutive shores. What can I say, I just have the feeling that nobody had. When we got there, well, there we were. One might expect that our arrival was underwhelming when, as anticipated, there was no thing special to find. And perhaps in some ways it was, but the whole experience had a glimmer of satisfaction to it, as though the cosmic friendly farmer had looked down from his aetherial pasture and chortled, “That’ll do, pig.”
After a brief inspection of the dwarf island (maybe I should title it Pluto II or “The Isle of Pluto” feel free to weigh in in the comments section) the novelty wore off and we had thoroughly rid ourselves of the sense that the unexplored territory had been sufficiently probed. Thus feeling sated we glided (glid?) back to the shore to leap safely and easily over the slush and back onto the trail. As commonly occurs with tangential traipses during dusk, we had lost sense of the time and the previous day-like quality that we encountered on our arrival had ebbed towards the pre-dusk. Pre-dusk, that ominous liminal stage of the day when it isn’t quite shadowy enough to stimulate thoughts of returning home to cocoa, as a time it is a deceitful pre-twilight which experienced travelers such as yours truly (my young companion was blissfully ignorant of the thin turquoise blanket that was being laid down over the forest) know that the light and temperature were soon to drop as precipitously as the 2008 stock market.
So with some chortling and coaxing from yours truly, the three of us got moving and soon were bouncing along the winding trail and sliding across sheets of ice. The areas where trails retain ice into the early spring are a fascinating map of shadows, subtle differences in the grade of the trail and reservoirs created incidentally by tree roots, that form pockets of cold and moisture that would otherwise go fully unnoticed. It’s not unlike the little aches and pains that seem to disappear in the ecstasy of summer while out dancing at music festivals and shmoozing at garden parties that then, as the serious sobriety of Autumn settle in and rudely announce themselves. It’s not that these dark, damp features of the trail, my body or my psyche aren’t there in those celebratory times but I, like my young friend, get to be blissfully ignorant of them for brief and glorious seasonal oases.
The remainder of the excursion meandered by without major incident. Birds were solicited by way of amateur whistling, mud was plodded in and the outlines of bare trees danced like wistful druids awaiting the return of Danu and Branwen. When we eventually looped back to our Subaru we had completed a daring rescue mission (imaginary) and traversed over 3 winding miles (material). Tired but encouraged we piled in, all three of us a bit dirty, fully awake and even better of friends than when we left off.
