Most days, of course, can be vastly improved by a walk in the woods. Especially during a presidential election year when certain words and phrases become inescapable and ultimately meaningless (maverick, Main Street, Wall Street, Joe Six Pack, crisis) and especially when it's October and the Chicago Cubs are still playing baseball. That scenario - the Cubs in the playoffs - is begining to remind me of the small town you drive through, blink, oops, you missed it. But there's no blinking away a presidential campaign. Except maybe in the woods, alongside the Ontonagon River, just north of the falls, where the fish aren't biting, at least not today.
Walking may take you farther into the woods and further away from cacophony, but sitting transports you. You don't have to move. You don't have to think. As a matter of fact, it may be better if once in a while you don't. At first it seems still; what is there? There's nothing. A leaf drifting past. A river flowing past. A rock being smoothed by water. Bubbles forming and popping in little eddies. A seed pod nodding on the end of a dried stalk. A current of air pushing along a scent of damp leaves, mud, cool water. The sound of a partridge lifting itself off the ground. A soft rustle of leaves; leaves that are turning and drying but leaves that are not yet ready to let go.
Each tree is becoming distinct, shedding its mask of green, beginning to show its true color. Is it yellow? Red? Orange? Gold? Rust? Umber? Brown? Green? Why is it they turn different colors at different times? The young maples and birches seem to go first; the old oaks last.
There are layers of fallen trees, decaying trees, one on top of the other, and from them grow new trees and mosses and mushrooms and ferns, straight up from the dead. There are stones and pebbles and ripples in the sand. A fishing line flashes through the air and lands with a soft plop, a worm on a hook disappearing. The river moves slow, fast, in one direction, then another, moving around and over rocks and boulders and logs, always finding a way and always talking about it in gurgles and splashes, even going around in circles, still moving forward because it's impossible not to.
I watch the man fishing and wonder what he will find.
Walking may take you farther into the woods and further away from cacophony, but sitting transports you. You don't have to move. You don't have to think. As a matter of fact, it may be better if once in a while you don't. At first it seems still; what is there? There's nothing. A leaf drifting past. A river flowing past. A rock being smoothed by water. Bubbles forming and popping in little eddies. A seed pod nodding on the end of a dried stalk. A current of air pushing along a scent of damp leaves, mud, cool water. The sound of a partridge lifting itself off the ground. A soft rustle of leaves; leaves that are turning and drying but leaves that are not yet ready to let go.
Each tree is becoming distinct, shedding its mask of green, beginning to show its true color. Is it yellow? Red? Orange? Gold? Rust? Umber? Brown? Green? Why is it they turn different colors at different times? The young maples and birches seem to go first; the old oaks last.
There are layers of fallen trees, decaying trees, one on top of the other, and from them grow new trees and mosses and mushrooms and ferns, straight up from the dead. There are stones and pebbles and ripples in the sand. A fishing line flashes through the air and lands with a soft plop, a worm on a hook disappearing. The river moves slow, fast, in one direction, then another, moving around and over rocks and boulders and logs, always finding a way and always talking about it in gurgles and splashes, even going around in circles, still moving forward because it's impossible not to.
I watch the man fishing and wonder what he will find.