SILENT STORIES

I journeyed into my northern woods this late April morning seeking Spring.  Having departed to downstate a month earlier surrounded by heavy white drifts and swirling snow I hoped spring had finally crept into the forest, if not spring in its full magnificence, at least signs of spring.  Not so, not yet.  A few brave green shoots poked through the brown oak leaves.  My beloved sugar maple did display tiny buds and of course the soft white pine whispered, “See I never deserted you all winter, I am still here.  Green and glorious.”

But my disappointment was short lived  when I buried my anticipation. I stuck my hopes for trillium and morels in my pocket and I just looked.  As Wendell Berry says in his poem, “The Thought of Something Else,” (Selected Poems, p. 23)
              “or a man can be
                safely without thought
                --see the day begin
                and lean back,
                a simple wakefulness filling
                perfect
                the spaces among the leaves."

I looked up at a broken tree with a wondrous woodpecker hole.   I stared down at monster fungus with multiple eyes staring back.  I jumped slightly when I witnessed another face, this one in a tree stump, laughing at me.  I almost felt sad I couldn’t share these pictures with a group of fifth graders.  What delightful stories they could have fantasized.

 At one point I was angered all over again at the uninvited, pirate wood choppers who ventured into our woods and chopped fireplace logs out of the grandchildren’s “balance beam,”   a fallen tree situated just perfectly for “tightrope” walking and flying off.   But I put anger in my pocket next to anticipation when I observed that the pirates had left the stump with its intricate design which I am positive spelled, “Leave me be.”

Sticking to my agenda, all these natural noticings I would have missed.  Spring is late this year, but the silent stories nature gives us are not.