From Our Time on the Trails this Morning

I don’t spend much time in the past. I don’t wallow in sadness, spend prolonged periods mourning or wishing things were different. On occasion, though, I find myself thinking of those who have left this life. It’s only natural. Memories float to me like the fragrances of wild flowers or the smell of late afternoon shade on a hot summer day. 

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my Aunt Marijane, who I wrote about in “Will’s Red Coat.” 

She comes to mind when I’m ruminating on something, not so much trying to figure things out, but merely digesting a turn of events, a new horizon, or a moving experience. 

We both had the gift of gab and could talk for hours several times a week, but we also knew the importance of listening to each other. It's is one of the reasons our love and friendship flourished as it did during the time we had together. 

What I miss about her is the way she listened. 

Just listened. 

She didn’t feel the need to offer an answer. She didn’t make suggestions. She was present, offering herself completely to me. 

That measure of selflessness is equal parts wisdom and heart. People who want to know what you are feeling and thinking, instead of telling you what you are feeling or thinking, or should be.

Too many listen merely to respond. Like conversation is a tennis match and you’ve served, and they must return volley. But what a gift it is to just acknowledge someone, to offer yourself without judgment, without ego, without the need to be clever.

As we walk in the woods each morning, and then again each evening, my feet move thoughtfully, like the prayers I’m uttering. That’s where my answers lay in wait. In silence, through walking meditation.

One of the attributes about having a quiet partner to share nature with is an animal's ability to be quiet. There is communion between us as we share a trail but still space for our independent thoughts. In the forest, reflections come and go, and before long we’re merely out there together striding in the natural world while filling our souls. 

Lately, I’ve noticed how Samwise has matured over the past year. This morning it was evident as we were striding along an earthen path and came around a bend only to stand face-to-face with a doe and her fawn. They tensed and readied to leap and bound off. Before they did, however, I crouched down slowly next to Samwise, who was fully alert, and I whispered, “Let them be, please. Let’s just watch, okay?”

No leash. No collar. No need for a hand or a firm voice to restrain him. 

He sat next to me; his body was as ready to spring as theirs were. Yet he stayed still, as did they. When he relaxed, so did they. Instead of bolting, they lingered before peacefully meandering on. The fawn, trailing behind her mother, looked back at us curiously as they moved through the undergrowth. The mother seemed to know we were not a threat.

These moments of growth serve as graduation days for Samwise, notches on the wall where I can see how far he’s come.

Were Marijane still alive and I told her about this she would offer no explanations or reasons or answers as to why things occurred as they did in the woods by the stream early in this morning. She would have taken it in, and we’d talk about it. What’s there to say, after all? An experience was offered and she received it.

When people ask me what changes I’ve noted about myself since returning from our trip, I tell them I’m quieter, more peaceful than I already was. Delving deeper, “I don’t feel the need for answers as much. I was already feeling that way before the trip but that sense of experiencing life without having to define it is more prevalent now.”

After Thoreau had died, Emerson memorialized him. In an essay he wrote: “He resumed his endless walks and miscellaneous studies, making every day some new acquaintance with Nature, though as yet never speaking of zoology or botany, since, though very studious of natural facts, he was incurious of technical and textual science.”

I can relate to Henry in that way. The science of being isn’t that important to me. I’d rather just be. 

In the forest, along paths that wind through communities of trees in all stages of life, death, and rebirth I feel the same way. Science is necessary, but I leave the need to know such things to others for that’s not why I come to the woods. 

Marijane hiked right up until the last decade of her life. She was fond of sharing trails with those she loved, but mostly she went into the desert with only a four-legged companion. Sometimes I see her walking that way. Sometimes I talk to her, and I know what she’d say in response to my observations. Her voice rings clear. When we sign off, she joyously offers the same closing she did in life, “Walk in beauty, Tommy.”

I do my best. 

A loving friend often asks me the best part of my day. I fear I bore her because my answers rarely change. It’s typically about our time in the forest, away from the busy world where we are embraced by the natural world.

Last week I climbed my first mountain in quite a while. It was clear that I am still rehabbing, still gaining strength because it wiped me out. It’s the up and down that messes with my blood pressure and my heart. The dizziness stirs, and I pay attention to it. After a break, it relaxes its spell and Samwise and I continue. 

Still, even knowing that climbing up is still difficult for me, I am enthralled with the forests and the streams that nourish them. Slowly I gather strength. A few months ago I couldn’t walk three miles. Now we log between six and seven a day. At the beginning of spring, I could not have crouched down as I did this morning near the doe and her fawn without getting dizzy. 

Just as Samwise matures, my balance and my cardiovascular system improve. Parts of me died last year, and as in the trees that keep us company, there is regeneration within as there is without. 

I don’t enjoy every step, as a well-wisher suggested the other day. Hiking is hard. But I do appreciate the earned ache in my hips, the way my heart beats at a healthy cadence, and how good it feels when I lay down each night with a book on my chest and a cool late summer breeze caressing me from the window above our bed.

The other day, for this first time in years, I bought some new hiking equipment – a backpack. That is a victory itself. 

As I told Marijane the other day, “I’m in the game again.”

In this contented monk-like existence, I feel abundantly alive. In spite of all I survived, I often think of Tennyson’s words at the end of Ulysses: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”