FOREST, FIELD AND OTHER

How grand and marvellous are the fields. To leave the regular set of cities and infrastructure and be amidst nature and her artifacts. There is a tree, impossibly tall; trying to mix itself with the clouds and doing a fine enough job of it. Old tractors, rusted, and the feral grasses grow through the wheels. Some black bird comes by in the corner of it and dips down, down, then up and up and turns away into the sky. It had rained, and thousands of drops stayed on the small and large leaves yellow, green, and brown. Those circular water droplets stay for a long time.

What was the night like? Did the coyote and other watch the storms from their dens? Does the hawk or owl put their nose inside the feathered wings? - do they do that? Did even the spectres, the phantoms, - back off, and recede down by the trees deep in the belly of the valley? What of it? Does the spirit say, for instance, to the other spirit, something akin to?

 

There is not even anyone to haunt. There is not a soul to guide. There is nothing to watch. We should rest…we, - the restless ones, and gather our strength to ‘go’ again in the morning.

There was something far in the distance, - a wild turkey? – A coyote? - But it disappeared as if by magic when the sight line changed and the small summit or wave-crest of the flaxen hill blocked the view. In any event, there was a great wind and it blew the leaves off the trees, - raining leaves. The canines ran, played, jumped, wrestled, sniffed, roamed, rested, watched, were content and joyful, and knew actual happiness and ease, curiosity, well-being, health that was mental, physical, and above all spiritual. Then the wind stopped and we went along. A snake was atop a sand pit. The snake probably thought,- 

Really? All the way out here I can’t catch a break and go for a slither in the sun? What are you doing here, in the middle of nowhere? 

I walk around where he is, look at him, see him, and observe his movements and then his stillness. He is caught in the opening between two sets of chaparral. Yellow makings against a black base, - medium sized for his brand, genre,-. I soon walk away and continue on. Let him be. Then there is the wind again, and the sun breaks a way through between some clouds.

Nobody around. The paths wait, and the rocks and berries, the strange small bamboo sticks or stalks, and the rest is all around. I walk through a series of paths. They walk and run, - I just walk. We are heading up and up, as if to a landing sight, as if to an Amerindian plateau, as if to something shamanistic or sacrosanct. But really there is nothing save for more trees, leaves, old logs, mushrooms, branches. 

And near bouts the top some birds break free of the tree lines, - tree lines taller than the valley below. We watch them fly off and away and they disappear into the infinite space of the sky.

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