Old Haunts

The leaves on the ground are still light enough in color, and still resting on the surface of the soil before mingling with it, so that they seem to glow in this evening light. The pale ground-cover is illuminated, and illuminates by reflection the stark grey trunks of the trees that stand against a soft darkening sky.  The stone-floored creek bank is a black gash through the fallen leaves.  I'm back in the woods at home. It feels a cathedral of sorts, here in these woods where my thoughts have lived, and I am off on a thoughtful walk down old and familiar paths. 
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​There is a pleasure in the pathless woods...

- Childe Harold, Lord Byron

​Only last week the end of the garden's tomatoes and peppers came in before the first hard frost.  It seems rather miraculous -  fresh produce on Thanksgiving! But today the air is brisk and almost sharp. Winter has ceased its hesitation on the doorstep of the year, it has blown wide the door in a chilly blast, and is ready to take up residence in earnest. ​​
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​The rose bushes, adorned with bright red hips, are taller than me, and they catch in my hair as I scramble up the long steep bank, towards a pasture just tinged with evening light. The cow paths are narrow but well-traveled and clear. A little turtle shell is on the edge of one of them, almost disappearing as it blends into the fallen leaves. A rabbit scurries out of my path, its tail a flash of bright white in the greys and browns of this wintery evening.  
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​There's a gust of cold, clear, earth-scented air at the top of the hill, but the cows are grazing nonchalantly, unconcerned by the racket I've made in the crunching leaves.  The clouds in the barely lit sky run like streaks of paint across a textured wall of grey, their undersides all soaked in gold.  The sun is setting quickly and the light is all in the sky, the earth in peaceful dimness.
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I must get out to the woods again, to the whispering trees and the birds awing,
Away from the haunts of pale-faced men, to the spaces wide where strength is king;
I must get out where the skies are blue and the air is clean and the rest is sweet,
Out where there’s never a task to do or a goal to reach or a foe to meet. ​

I must get out on the trails once more that wind through shadowy haunts and cool,
Away from the presence of wall and door, and see myself in a crystal pool;
I must get out with the silent things, where neither laughter nor hate is heard,
Where malice never the humblest stings and no one is hurt by a spoken word. 

 - The Call of the Woods, Edgar Guest

​Now to traipse down again, a gentler slope this time, pocked with armadillo holes and tangled in low-growing blackberry shrubs.  Down under the giant, dying tulip poplar that has seen more life than I ever will. Down over the low boggy patch where the underground spring peers out at the surface world. Tumbling down the spongy grass, carefully down the cascading gravel, down to a ledge where you can pause a moment. It's perfectly flat, and there's a tree that you can lean on to look down to the cluster of buildings below. The windows of the house are bright, an outside light twinkles, welcoming and homely. As I get closer I smell wood smoke, and the dark air almost seems warmer, because it smells warm.  The sun has well and truly set now, the world is dark, and the friendly windows glow.  
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​​Yet, if you enter the woods... 
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.......
But there is no road through the woods.

- The Road Through the Woods, Rudyard Kipling