Weeding the Forest

She asked me to come by & discuss a gardening job, in case I had any ideas. We stood side by side, staring into a mass of weeds and ferns, bordering the vast forest. "She's basically asking you to weed the forest", I commented. A few healthy strawberry plants could be found amidst the bracken, if one looked hard. "What's down there?" I said, pointing to a steep embankment, fully leafed out, in all shades of green, the weepy tips of hemlock branches, obscuring any further detail. "A stream," she said. "Allis goes there every morning, to drink. We haven't followed her, but you can hear the rushing water from here". Just then, Allis raced by, chased by Merlin, a naughty but lovable golden retriever. They disappeared, on what appeared to be their third lap, around the house. "Well, shall I leave you to it?" I figured this gardening situation was first priority, and that my words had either saved her from useless work, or put her in a difficult situation with her client. "Let's take a hike," she said. We got in the truck, with Allis, and said goodbye to Merlin. He was still in the rear view mirror, growing smaller, as we wound our way down the long driveway, and back to the main dirt road. We parked in a field. "Which way?", she said. "I think it's this way" I replied, as we strode the long grass bordering a thick woods. I'd been here once, in a different season, when things were frozen. There would be a logging road, I was sure of it, and eventually, its rough opening appeared. We traipsed for a while, up the muddy track, the sound of the stream growing louder, with each step. After 15 minutes or so, the track ran into it. It was a drive-thru of sorts, for the right kind of vehicle. But with so much rain, the crossing was a bit wild. We chose to stay left of it, as her boots were not up to a full immersion. Higher still, we met with a forest building. Such meetings can be creepy, or delightful. This one, was creepy. A simple, shingled shack, without windows, with no clear purpose. I knocked tentatively at the door, unwilling to push it open, without first announcing our arrival. "Hello!" I called, into the whisper of dripping, and shade, and a faint smell of mold. I would have been unhappy, to hear a voice. And none responded. Somehow, this was not relieving, to our growing sense of dread. Finally, she took a bolder initiative, and shoved at a side door, until it creaked open. "It's a bathroom", she said. I meekly peered inside. Bumper stickers plastered the walls above the seat, mostly of the ilk: "Mad River Glen: Ski it if you can". Okay, I thought, I get it. Sort of. A windowless building, with a one-holer. No chimney stack, no sign of gentile or even seasonal habitation. "What the ..." I couldn't complete the sentence. None of it made sense. We left that scene behind, and kept walking up, and up, towards the peak, called Mt. Grant. "Sometimes landowners run these trails, just to keep up their posted signs along their boundaries", I suggested. "They don't really use them, not with any regularity". It would have been rough, even for an ATV. We were starting to feel that feeling you get, when you cross an invisible threshold, a "portal" I guess, where the deep, mossy forest begins to take on magical qualities. If it gets more and more impassable, we tend to refer to it as "Mordor". But there would be no "Mordor" without a tunnel into the light, or light between the trees, or lightening of the primeval, where it tips into fairy country. This began to happen, as we left the trail, to return to the stream bed and a possible fording. There were signs of a clearing due south, on the other side of the water. I went first, having better boots for wading, but trying to find key rocks, that one might hop onto, without falling in. Things were twinkling in the late afternoon, upon the dead fall, and across the chaos of boulders, and the spring fed cascades.We made it over, and into a dense, planted section of spruce, where every step required climbing over something downed by wind, snow or time. The crotch of my pants took a beating, as I straddled the poke of broken branches, as every other tree seemed to be horizontal rather than vertical, drawing my best leg over, an imperfect science of travel if there ever was one. Again, and again, until we made it out, to a clearing, of awkward, clear cut, proportions. Stumbling over the last hummock of bulldozed dirt, and rock refuse, we at last stood at the place I'd been, so many seasons prior. A remote hunter's camp, carved just below Grant, which was now the site of a massive operation, to remove all the trees, and open the views. We reversed our direction, to begin our descent, and met with another odd building. Being tired, and not in the mood to dilly dally anymore, or fantasize about elven kingdoms, I flung open a makeshift door, and was immediately shocked by two bodies. Or so I thought. Rather, two fake, plastic turkeys, leaning against a wall with only enough room left over, for one uncharming chair. This is the way of the woods, I thought to myself, and I could tell, she agreed. We ambled our way down the rest of the ravaged road, no longer a delicate footpath. The woods is in constant change, and we change too, for what that's worth. That phrase "there are no surprises" could not be more wrong, here. That's how it goes with "portals" evidently: there are no guarantees. One can only keep dreaming, waking, sleeping and then waking again. One can only take one step, and then one step more, until there are no more steps to be taken, in that particular direction.