Almost didn’t make today’s post happen, but I’m glad I did. I took another walk in the woods this weekend, and it was so good. I walked nearly four miles in the cool humidity (something I think only Southerners will understand), up and down hills, only stopping for particularly beautiful plants I needed to identify. There was a clearing in the middle with a large pond, and some ancient pipes held up by brick columns in the middle. There was also a golf course in there somewhere. All of the nicely wooded areas around where we live also seem to weirdly be near golf courses.
I saw a few ferns today amidst the beeches and oaks and maples, and it reminded me instantly of a hike I took by myself in October when we were visiting the Seattle area. I took our rental car outside of town by myself while B had an interview into the mountains and was completely captured by how different the forests were than the ones I was so familiar with here. The mountains seemed to rise up suddenly and out of nowhere on that highway and took your breath away. The trail was covered in pine needles and surrounded by squishy lichens and a few fall buds of flowers that were holding on despite the coming cold. It truly felt magical, even when I ran into other hikers on the trail. It was like another world.
Just like today, I wasn’t trying to prove anything to myself or to anyone else. I was just moving my body, in the woods, breathing the air and the smells of the forest, and yes, occasionally stopping to identify a particularly amazing plant. It was much cooler, I remember, and felt like maybe I hadn’t dressed warmly enough, but by the time I got into the hike it was perfect, even when I was panting to climb a particularly steep slope and feeling out of shape. It was where I wanted, and perhaps in the moment, needed, to be.
The waterfalls here are much smaller, more like little streams slowly trickling their way towards an unknown destination rather than majestic checkpoints along a steeply sloped path. In Seattle, there were no golf courses to be seen, only ferns on ferns and mosses and goodness. But the feeling was the same, and I am so grateful for the chance to get outside and do this the way that I am, particularly in a time such as this in the area where we live. (And I am grateful for the blog, to be able to process all these feeling this way on a weekend, too.)