I held in my hand a small section cut from an old map, a thin black line interested me, not just because of the name, but because it was labeled as "Path" and not trail. And this path was not on the current maps, Interesting... Here I stood because I've got a decision, I'm ahead of the others, they know that I intend to take this other path thats only on my old map, and I'm at a point in the trail where it should be, but realize that now I'll have to push off into the brush, head down this steep rocky wildness in search of what used to be there. And if I wait, they will dissuade , they will add doubt, point to fears, possibilities, and my resolve will melt away. Now is the time, So I grip it and plunge fast and crazily laughing and thinking like a deer jumping over logs and leaping from rocks swinging from vines to get beyond my own point of doubt .
Now I thought that I should write down a description of the trail but you can't really imagine her (the trail). I thought that I should stop and take a picture of the her but you can't really see her anymore..
Years ago she had been probably had been beautiful weaving through the forest, and she was still on this old old map, but today, years since anybody has ever walked this way. The ground is hard packed where feet have passed time, but you really can't see the ground through the bushes and the logs and the leaves that have fallen across her decades of loneliness, the branches that cloud your view, but look around because there is still the original beautiful wildness here, and the silence is whole.
You can tell that this path was alive and was beautiful once. it had Granite blocks, man moved that kept the water from eroding her, and old rotting logs for Bridges over the small Rivits of water. Then I found a side turn out were you could step close to the edge of a precipitous drop and see the chasm of the river below, wishing to cool yourself in the swirling pool below or wondering what trout hides in those dark shadows.
but no one, no one, has been here in a long long time.
Finally the old trail turns down to cross the river, I strip down and cool my self. I know that I will soon lose the trail in the wash out, in the crush of logs that have come down from the Peaks, the flash floods of previous years have stopped me, and i am saddened. Finding a moss covered rest with the stream playing around me i lay back feet up and just watch, I finally become still and let the coolness of the afternoon calm me, call me.
On the trail, i moved fast, there was no wind, it was a silent and and endless sunny day, the leaves of all sorts in their Beauty and Grandview soaking up the sun and casting shadows that I longed to be in.
Now I am stopped.
I sit now just sit for a long period of time, and finally I noticed little things, differences. There is movement, every single leaf is moving. Some of the trees shutter, a slight slight breeze that can't be felt. And some of the leaves move up and pull back as if they don't want to give in, they want to stay hidden. They move ever-so-slightly that I wasn't noticing them moving at all when I was moving so fast.
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What is it about our lives that we move so fast it obscures the movement around us. We can't see the world because we're moving so fast but there it is! always moving! I lie there I found a very comfortable Rock to put my feet up on and one for my back to make it a moss covered reclining chair with just enough warmth of sun and just enough Breeze to keep me cool I waited I waited and waited to watch what really was happening around me everything was moving everything had an action and a reaction we can't see because we are in such a hurry it amazed me that I missed it all.
A cluster of nine leaves hit by one beam of sunshine among the others in shadow in the maple draw my attention make me catch my breath! and I watch them after while till I am drawn by the beam of sunshine on a rock in the water, Its water moves around it no longer without wonder, but now above the Rock the ripples were clear and magnify the small Pebbles on the bottom clearly, but below the rock the ripples cross-hatched in obscure patterns hiding whatever crayfish and fish lie in the refuge below. And I wonder, how much more there is, it's just an amazing thing, we are surrounded by so so much and there is so little time.
If I stop, breath, listen, watch, will clarity come to me in life as clarity comes to those pebbles that lie in the pool before the rock? I'd like to try, but will I? but will I?