A misty cold fog, hanging just above the point of freezing, grips the woods tightly. The sounds of life are swallowed up in the dreary cold, making it as silent as the grave. The woods, damp and cold, clings stoically to the earth as the fog and damp envelope it’s soul.
In all my years, it’s a familiar place. Like another world which visits once a cycle. Waking on a day like this is similar to crossing a threshold into a realm which exists forever in a parallel with life that we only get to experience in small annual doses. This journey into the woods fills my heart with a bittersweet welcome. Like a reunion with the earlier part of my life, never changing and assuring of life’s permanence amongst its ever changing facade. Foreboding and endearing at the same time, it makes me want to remember how many times I have experienced this, and at the same time worrying me with the question of how many times do I have left.
Sitting on a moss covered old stump deep within the woods, as the memories flood . The good times and the sad, and the sweet and the bitter. My wonderment at the limbs and trunks and mosses as a child. Reeling in the mystical feel of the woods and her earthy spirit within, with fog closing off the rest of the real world with its mist. Watching the water collect and drip from the bare winter branches…. reminded as child how it symbolized the fertile possibilities of life. Like an ever flowing nourishment to be stored in the fiber of the woods awaiting the growth of spring and the warm days of summer. Special and surreal, the woods was a wondrous place as a child….. when the mist and fog made it into such a mystical wonder.. I never once really remember being too cold on days like this. Nor do I remember the humid heat in the same place during a rainy hot summer.
But today I am no longer young and full of endless excitement for tomorrow. Today I am tired and old. Today I am full of endearing memories and the deep feeling that I am closer to “the other side” than ever before. The spirit of the place and time seems like an old friend sitting beside me while the spiritual world seems just a few feet away through the mist. Its here at this time, if I just let it happen…. I could drift into a realm far different than mortal life. If I just let go, I could hear the voices of my childhood and feel the touch of the loving hands that once held me. The warmth of my mothers soft hands and the strength of my fathers arms. It’s as if it would take so little effort to give my sanity over the foggy woods and let myself pass through divide between this world and another.
Surely deep in these woods is a small clearing with a fire burning warmly above a bed of glowing coals. There, around it would sit all my family who is no longer alive, waiting, softly talking and laughing. They who knew me as a child, innocent, trusting and oblivious to pains and misfortunes life would hold. Sitting there in their old worn cotton clothes of yesterday, calm and peaceful, free from the burdens of this life finally at last.
No longer worrying, working and trying for some temporary goal they are sitting in a way of being alive we mortals have never fully known.
I know the clearing must be there, I can almost see a path disappearing in the fog leading there. I cannot move or stand up. Its not possible for me to go there without letting so many things go. Somehow I know I could, and it would be no problem to come back. Oh but would I want to come back? I have let go before and drifted to a world of spirit. It’s a gift I have always had. In those days, I could let go just enough to see and hear things and to gain understanding at times. But as the years went buy it got harder and more dangerous. I would eventually sense if I let go too much or for too long I may not come back. It’s never been clear if that was the ultimate insanity, or if it was the awesome power of such a world and I was afraid I would not be smart enough to survive in it.
Now its all a fear of time. I am a lot older now….the wall between me and the afterlife is growing thinner. I know that world is over there too with the one I have seen and the one in that clearing.
Hearing a sound, my mind returns to my eyes to look around. Nothing but a red Cardinal I see, in the cedar tree just a few feet away. Looking at me, he turns his head as if trying to understand. Another sound is made by a small rabbit working his way along the trail. He turns and gently hops his way up the path to the clearing and disappears in the fog. About that time the Cardinal takes wing, skillfully flying through the branches till he too turns and fades into the fog up the trail. Oh , how I want to follow….. but I am so afraid.
Is it just a temporary journey for me, or is it the trail to the place of passing over?
If I just let go….., If I would just let go……
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