woodcall

It was one of those misty rainy mornings where, as I sped over the highway late for work, I looked over the rolling hills, the vineyards and fields, the woods blowing silver in the wind, and thought, If I could only stand in one place for long enough, I might see one of the fey folk looking at me with bottomless eyes, straight and silent from the shelter of a tree. It was a morning gray with the promise of mystery, of secrets, if one were only patient enough to sit wet and still and wait for some hushed unveiling.

I experienced a sudden moment of brutal temptation to keep driving, to turn toward the woods, leap out of the car and plunge among the soaking ferns. Of course, if I were to yield to such a whim, I would probably wander around lost and hungry, and be listed months later in the papers as "missing and presumed dead." So I aimed my car for the city and came to the office; but I couldn't help wondering if such a disappearance would be a death in fact, or a subsummation into an otherworld that at times borders our own.

When I was a girl, I loved the woods. I spent every second in them that I could, which was only periodically in the summers. Last weekend as I crossed into PA from Ohio, I peered into the Pennsylvania woods lining the interstate and realized with a thunderclap of horror that it's been years -- yes, years -- since I hiked through them -- not just in PA, but anywhere.

This must change imminently. Mom calls me her dryad. I love the trees, love the things they whisper to each other when you're alone with them and listening, love the creaks and pops of their living and dying, love the furtive bursts of motion in the deadfall where hidden creatures pursue their business away from hungry eyes.

Thank God for weekends off. A pilgrimage to my sacred temple is long overdue.