The woods were lovely, dark and deep....'til we arrived

“The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep,” I said to myself as I looked out the bedroom window across the berm and into the trails of the state park while getting ready for work this morning.

Except that unlike Robert Frost’s woods on a snowy evening, the woods weren’t dark, because it was only 10 a.m. Just lovely and deep.

And the only promise I had to keep at the moment was the one to be at the office in another three hours, since I was working a half-day.

The woods are lovely and deep, I said to myself, retrofitting the poem to my own circumstances, and the promise I have to keep is the one that I would try to be more direct in pursuing the things I want, rather than expecting them to fall into my lap. It was the closest thing I had to a New Year’s resolution for 2014, and two days before the first of the New Year, it hung over my head as I looked out at the bare trees and snowy ground cover.

It’s a perfect day for a walk in the woods, I told myself, contradicting the sentiment of the Frost poem that had come to me so easily. Because we’ve gone more than a week without fresh snow, the trails in the state park are temporarily closed to skiers, which means walkers and even dogs are welcome there. The temperature was a comfortable mid-30s, with predictions of colder weather to come, along with more snow, which would mean the trails would be restricted to skiers once again.

If ever there was a winter morning for walking in the snowy woods, I told myself, this is it.

But it wasn’t just me. I wanted the kids to come along also. And they are not generally winter hiking enthusiasts.

I pitched it to them the same way I had ultimately pitched it to myself. Limited opportunities for using the trails in the winter. Nothing else on the schedule. Not too cold.

And then I pleaded a little bit. “I really really really want to do this,” I told them. “It would be a big favor to me.”

But it turned out I might not have had to work quite that hard, because they shrugged and said once they were done with breakfast, they’d go.

Just as I’d imagined from the bedroom window, it was a beautiful day to be in the woods. The snow was packed and crunchy underfoot, the air crisp but not too cold.

Nonetheless, it wasn’t quite the walk I imagined. Not the walk I would have taken by myself, anyway. I imagined trekking quietly through the snow, immersing ourselves in the beauty of winter, but that’s not how my kids roll. Or rather, that’s not how my kids hike. There were piggy backs and horseplay; deliberate slipping and sliding and innocuous collisions. There were shouts of “Oh no, wolves!” delivered in falsettos of mock horror. There was much hilarity over the challenge of fastening the dog’s new winter coat around her torso and not letting her shake it off.

Their style of hiking is different from mine. Ideally I probably would have had it both ways: their company, but also the meditative silence and observance of nature with which I like to tromp through the woods.

Instead, I got their company, the walk I wanted, and a good deal of shrieking, shoving, laughing and chasing.

Which was fine also. To any other abutters of the state park, looking out their own bedroom windows and contemplating a winter walk, the woods may have seemed a little less lovely, dark and deep with the three of us plus the dog flailing and cavorting our way through.

But it was a good walk nonetheless. Because the woods really are lovely, dark and deep. And I felt very lucky to be making my way through them, along with two kids and a dog, this morning.

The woods are calling

It was a productive Sunday afternoon. I’d just finished dusting and was about to sort two baskets of laundry when I glanced out the window. With so many leaves off the trees now, the view from the kitchen to the state park hiking trail that runs behind our back yard was unobstructed. Words floated into my head: “I cannot bear the fact that I am not walking in the woods right now.”

I thought for a moment about all the reasons someone might look out this window and say those words. Because they were too ill or injured to leave the house and reach the walking trail. Because they were taking care of someone else – someone ill, injured or simply too young to be left alone -- who needed their presence. Because there was an impending hurricane or tornado that would make woods-walking too dangerous. Because night had fallen and there was a risk of getting lost in the dark.

But none of those was the case. I was experiencing a physical yearning to be out walking in the woods, and instead I was…dusting and doing laundry. In short, nothing that really needed to be done.

And at that moment, the decision I’d made earlier in the day to focus on housework and my To Do list reversed itself. I put on boots and retrieved the dog’s leash. The dog herself needed no summoning; she was at my heels as soon as she saw the leash in my hand. We headed out.

I told myself it would be just a short walk, the easy twenty-minute loop from our yard down to the brook, across the esker and back. But once I was heading down the trail with the house behind me, dusting and laundry seemed a lot less important than they had ten minutes earlier. It was warm out, and despite last weekend’s time change, there was still plenty of light in the sky. An owl somewhere overhead hooted repeatedly. I’ve learned since moving to this house near the state park that I was wrong all my life in believing owls were solely nocturnal; we hear them throughout the day.

There was something so compelling about the urge to get out into the woods as I looked out the window to the trail. Maybe my sense of urgency had to do with the awareness that this option is temporary – we’re renters with less than a year left on our lease, and might not be able to walk through our back yard and into the state park much longer – and, of course, on the larger scale, any number of twists of fate could end my ability to go walking in the woods of Great Brook Farm State Park. Or maybe it was because I’ve been reading a lot of Thoreau lately and noticing, time and again, that Thoreau and I have in common a passion for walking equal to (in his case) or much greater than (in mine) our interest in nature itself. Thoreau had no family at home to take care of; he didn’t worry much about dusting and laundry. But he’s not here anymore to walk through the woods of New England, as far as I know (though I concede I could be wrong about that). I felt like I needed to do it for him as well as for myself.

Robert Frost said that the woods are lovely, dark and deep; my feeling yesterday was that the woods are also unconditionally welcoming. They didn’t make me feel guilty for not visiting them sooner, or for considering briefly that something else – housework – might be more important. They didn’t make demands or ask questions. They just welcomed me.

And after forty-five minutes, I was back home, free to dust and sort laundry for the rest of the afternoon, just as I’d wanted. Except I wasn’t even sure why I’d wanted that anymore, when the woods provided so much more solace than the housework.

 

The emerald woods of June

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.”

I know Robert Frost was referring to the winter woods when he wrote this; in the same poem he refers to those woods “filling up with snow.” But I keep thinking of those words this month, as I gaze into the lovely, dark and deep woods just behind my house.

Earlier in the spring we were in a drought, but since then we’ve had plenty of nourishing rainfall, interspersed with warm sunny days: perfect growing weather. My father and the other farmers in town have already done their first hay cutting, but the cows look like hay is the farthest thing from their minds right now, with all the thick green grass to graze upon in their pastures.

At my house, though, the view is of woods, not pastures, and it looks like a rainforest around here this month. The leaves on the oak, elm and maple trees are lush and emerald, almost blocking out the sunlight so that the forest floor is dark. The trails I walk on are swathed with fern fronds and moss. It’s as if a brilliant green haze has suffused from the tops of the trees down to the ground.

And it’s not only the leaves and grasses and shrubs that make the forest seem so lush right now. Birds tweet all day long; owls hoot at night and sometimes in the afternoon as well. (Since moving to this house by the woods, I’ve been surprised to hear owls at all times of day. Was I wrong to think they were strictly nocturnal?) Peepers and bullfrogs call from the ponds. Yesterday I saw a small but very furry fox trot across our lawn. Turtles of many sizes cross the roadway near streams, and last week I spotted a hummingbird near the kitchen window.

Other wildlife is less present in this weather, which is in its own way a sign of the abundance of this growing season. The deer we usually see at the edge of the driveway have been absent lately, indicating that they’re finding enough food in the forest not to venture so close to the house. And it’s been a while since I’ve heard coyotes at night, a normal sound all throughout the winter.

Insects abound in the moist warm air of June as well: butterflies and dragonflies, but also ticks and mosquitoes. Sleeping with the windows open means putting up with gnats, tiny enough to infiltrate the screens, in the bedroom.

It’s a beautiful time of year, full of birdsongs and the fragrance of flower blossoms as well as grass that grows faster than we can keep it mowed and weeds that need to be yanked from the herb garden almost daily. The woods are indeed lovely, dark and deep – with growth, in this case, rather than with snow. June is in full bloom, and the rich dank warm air beckons me to get outside and breathe it all in before the season changes yet again.

Take a hike

A few days ago, in the middle of our week in Colorado, the kids and I set out on a hike with my aunt Pat. Taking the kids for a hike was a big deal to me, as they would be the first to tell you. It seems since April or early May, I’ve been nagging them about it: I know you never want to do this at home, but you promise me you’ll try hiking when we’re in Colorado this summer, right? Promise? You’ll try? A short hike?

I know plenty of kids who love hiking. Mine are not among them. I don’t know why, but it’s the proverbial pulling teeth to get them to go for any kind of walk in the wilderness, and when the topic comes up at home, it almost always requires an ice cream bribe to ensure that the event actually takes place. So I didn’t have high hopes for them following through on their word.

But it mattered a lot to me to believe that they would. First of all, it’s just a great activity for kids to discover, but also, it’s one of my favorite leisure time activities, and it became symbolic to me of the idea that this vacation wasn’t going to be all about them. They’ve been to Aspen before, and they can reel off the list of their favorite Aspen options: swimming at the condo pool, playing at the enormous indoor water park in the Aspen Recreation Center, walking to the candy store, riding the gondola up to the top of the mountain for bungee jumping. And all of those options are fine with me, too. It’s not like I was afraid they’d want to watch cable TV all day. But I was apprehensive that the vacation would turn into a catalog of their favorites and none of mine. I was determined that they would give a little time and effort to a couple of things on my Top Ten list.

We set out just before noon. The hike I wanted to do was a fairly level out-and-back beginning from the East Maroon Portal. It winds through groves and meadows and doesn’t have any particular destination; when you’ve had enough, you can turn back, which I thought would give it a distinct advantage over an uphill climb to an apex. Also, the East Maroon Portal can be reached at this time of year only by public transportation, and I suspected that the cachet of taking the bus to the trailhead would please Tim and Holly as well.

We set out, Holly and me slow and falling behind, Tim and Pat faster and chatting as they strode. Within five minutes, Holly started asking when we could stop for our picnic, but this was to be expected. I’d packed a good lunch for them; I wanted them to associate hiking with being well-nourished, not with a sense of fatigue and hunger. So after just twenty minutes, we found a grove with a big flat rock on which to set up our lunch.

And then after we ate, we hiked for another hour. To my surprise, I heard no complaints at all. Nor did I hear any raves about the views of Maroon Bells or the exhilaration of being out exercising in the fresh mountain air. The kids simply walked along, each at their own pace, as if this was what they’d planned to do all along.

I didn’t mind when they asked to turn back, although I could have gone on for hours more. It’s an easy, level trail, but I was surprised by the sense of absorption it gave me. As soon as we started hiking, I felt as if I had been given a pass from everything that was preoccupying me even during this vacation week: work deadlines I’d brought along with me, a big household project awaiting us at home, health concerns within my family. Walking is usually for me a quiet, meditative time to reflect on ongoing concerns, but this wasn’t like that. It was as if walking in the mountains was job enough; no one expected me to be hiking through these meadows and also mulling over my cares and troubles. I could have walked for hours, only because it felt like such an escape. I was…untethered. Electronically, yes – no cell phone signal in the Maroon Creek Valley – but mentally as well. Pleased with how the kids threw themselves into the hike, nothing more was on my mind as we walked.

If you hiked every day, I wondered, would your worries always stay a few steps behind you? Or would you eventually learn to worry and hike at the same time? Surely there must be people who throw themselves too wholeheartedly into hiking or running or some other kind of exertion precisely because of this escape factor, believing if they can preoccupy themselves enough with the challenge of a brisk uphill high-altitude walk, they’ll be immune from ordinary cares indefinitely.

That day, I felt a little like that myself, but soon I began thinking instead of the Robert Frost lines, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.” I would have been happy to walk and walk and walk, if only to see how long it took before the mental realities of real life caught up with me.

But I couldn’t, because after an hour the kids were ready to turn back. And so we did. They didn’t rave about the experience, but they were happy to tell Rick about it when we returned to town, and they enjoyed seeing the photos of them that my aunt took along the trail. I’m hoping they liked it enough to do it again one of these days. I could use another hour or two of mental escape already myself.