Walk in the Woods - A Spiritual-esque journey

You'd really have to be there.

The walk was about 90 minutes, which would equate to about 7.8 gigabytes of low res video, had I attempted to capture the entire experience for you all. But even this would barely touch the value of the trip, which was seen and heard in the panoramic ultra high definition of the eyes and ears.

Not to mention . . .

The tart burst-and-splash of wild raspberries in the mouth

       

The gentle immersion of forest humidity.

The microscopic tug on my skin from spider strands spanning the trail

The waves of oxygen-infused, temperate forest scents, interrupted once with an errant burst of citrus.

The dull poke of rocks beneath my shoes, expressed in the hard packed dirt.


It's a sensory overload, but nothing like a sweaty arcade or amusement park.  The forest doesn't come at you all at once. There are long moments where everything blends together. No acute observation comes, even for a botanist, for most of the plants are common, most of the trees look like the others, the bird calls are familiar, and the trail feels the same.

But this is okay. This homogeneity seeps into you over the span of your journey to paint a grand collage in your soul, leaving you invigorated by the end.

And there's something about the forest that pulls a man out of the illusion that he maintains full control over his existence. There are thousands of trip hazards, a thunderstorm forecast that could swell up and strike early, not to mention this three lobed rascal, hugging almost the entire trail:

I could break an ankle, catch a rash, be attacked by a swarm of Africanized bees, or more likely a swarm of mosquitoes. The forest could fold me into its life cycle and not blink. After all, it fells its own great hardwoods, and covers them in fungi until they disintegrate into the soil, and become food for the ground cover.

But it doesn't. Two mosquito bites in an hour and a half, and persistent gnats drawn toward my eyes. It's a small price to pay. That does not break my reverence, nor make me believe myself invincible. I stick to the well worn trails, and would not have even taken this one, if it hadn't shown up on Google Maps:

I've made that mistake before, on the proximate mountainside trails of my college days. A promising path would draw me away, then abandon me on the side of cliff.  That's another story of another life.

This one today was a homage to the millions of individual stories of the plants growing and dying, the insects scampering, the raptors gliding, and the squirrels gathering.  It's a reminder of my insignificance. A celebration of the wild, untamed, organic, beautiful.