the music

Came back from town with just enough light to take a power walk up the mountain before it got dark. I put on my hiking shoes and charged on up. My goal was to exercise my ass, which had been sitting too much. Hadn't been up there for a long time, since all the leaves were fully out, I guess, because it looked unrecognizable - or maybe, unseeable. I couldn't see into the woods what was there. Under my feet moose tracks were all over. I feared looking out into the trees, what I might see, but couldn't even see because of all those damn leaves and the gathering gloam. Breathing hard, heart beating, teeth numbing, I still charged on up - up - up - the slope. I reached the first level place, crossed the ridge where there were more and more moose tracks. A real stomping ground for moose, in big mud splotches - how lately had they been there? On up - vaguely ominous downed tree across my path - to big rock face where I can usually look out at the view across the whole valley - but now, nothing. Not even a hint beyond. Leaves, leaves, leaves, millions of saplings and teenage trees and middle aged trees and ancient trees, taking up all the seeing.

I started down, and starting saying things - little nonsense words and syllables, silly sentences - so that the moose about to jump out at me would know I was a human, a crazy human, and just let me go. Then I started singing Stevie Nick's Leather and Lace.

That was it - that was the key. I began to feel more calm. I slowed down. I enjoyed being in the woods, seeing what I could see, and being looked at, and heard. And appreciated - this is really it. It seemed an appropriate gesture to give the woods, as if the woods would recognize - as if the woods has known for centuries untold - that THIS is what humans are good for. This is, in fact, why we put up with them, the trees and the ferns and the moose say - they SING to us! As if I suddenly made sense and had a function in this world. Ah, I get it, I understand! My job is to sing - and dance -and do all the joymaking capacities which I have been granted as part of my species. Leather and Lace dropped me into my rightful place, my proper notch, in this woods. And when I finished ("take from me my lace, take from me my lace, take from me my lace"), the silence followed - and I felt received, at peace.