In the Shadows
It was too tempting to resist.
After nearly a week’s worth of cloud-shrouded sunrises taken on trust, a full, bright and unfettered moon gave its best face to the landscape, lengthening the trees’ shadows across field and forest floor in a stretch that even the most practiced yogi would envy. I hadn’t planned to get up yet but certain bodily systems had other ideas and pulled me downstairs in a not-quite-awake stumble. Through the bathroom window with a view to the east, a stubbly grey and sepia world crooked its finger at me and I obeyed, forsaking all the elements of my precise morning routine (save for feeding the kittens—they’re rather hard to put off at that hour). My own breakfast and fastidious commitment to a clean kitchen would have to wait. Dear reader, I have no regrets.
A thick silence enveloped me as I headed down the path to the far southeastern corner of the field toward the Grave (what we call the place where we buried what was left of the goat barn that burned to the ground in 2018). I feel like an intruder whenever I walk the land and try to keep my footsteps light, but at this rare hour, I almost tiptoed, my feet connecting with frosted-over remnants of summer’s grass and goldenrod stalks that a Christmas windstorm knocked nearly flat. Somewhere between “plenty” and “just enough” light, the moon sat comfortably on my shoulder, a gentle and glowing companion as I walked where the deer had been, the edges of their hoofprints ever so slightly distinct in the fudgy field soil. No morning commute traffic on the two-lane road a mile away, no jets overhead, no birdsong or squirrel scuffle. Just me and my thoughts, which I tried to keep quiet or at least at whisper level since it seemed I was the only one awake. Wiser living things were still abed and a-nest.
The path to and around the Grave ends in a needle’s eye loop and provides a most reassuring view of our home on the rise four acres away. Buttercream-colored siding makes it look like a boxy sort of candle, softened by the backlight of that moon and I stop for a moment, considering all the winters we’ve sheltered betwixt her wonky walls perched atop a settling foundation of hollow clay bricks. From my heart to the front door, I send her my thanks and keep stepping forward toward the sleeping garden area and the woods. A wooly patch of clouds gathers around but doesn’t cover the moon and magically, I think “respect” as the sweat lodge circle comes into view.
Turning the corner and heading into the mouth of the path’s canopied western corridor, I rely on sound rather than sight to carry me up the hill. My feet know better than my eyes where the exposed tree roots are and I don’t stumble (I have my phone with me, and a plug-in safety light from the kitchen socket by mudroom door just in case, the kind that comes on when the power goes out, keen on keeping our streak of no trips to the local emergency department solid into its second year). Wouldn’t it be lovely to just sit right in the middle of the path and become part of this scene, sinking into the sycamore leaves beneath me until I wear the face of the woods, indistinct from my own? The second temptation of the day, but I resist in the name of warmth and whatever lies ahead waiting to be discovered and gazed upon in wonder.
There are a few trees off the path and into the forest that I visit each time I walk, and I find my way to them with no trouble. Not sure If they’re surprised to see me at this moon-shadowed hour, but I keep to my ritual of standing below their magnificence, leaning into their heft and pressing my forehead against their rough-skinned bark. We share a moment of that thick silence and whatever stress I might have brought with me is now theirs to recycle and repurpose. They receive so much of what I can’t control, and I send my gratitude up their towering trunks until it disappears beyond their topmost bare and bony fingers. That felt mighty good indeed.
When I get to the place where the path empties into the north entrance of the meadow, the moon has sunk to just three hands above the tree line and I’m determined to get back to the house while it’s still dark. I skirt the banks of the creek, lowering the hood of my ratty sweatshirt and taking off the unicorn headwrap I always wear (supremely warm, and lets me carry my godchildren with me, who gave me such a luxurious and whimsical gift a few birthdays ago) to hear what the waters have to say, the first sound I register other than my crunching footsteps in the past half hour, and it’s absolutely delicious. Thanks to its curves and elbows, the shape of the creek and the moonlight play beautifully with one another, the waters shifting from inky to shimmery in a single step, a steady stream of liquid silver on its way to somewhere else that I’m sure is just as gorgeous as what I’m looking at now. Sometimes, friends, I can’t believe I get to live here, collecting days and images that knit themselves into my very bones.
In the last leg of this shadowed hike, I trudge up the steep slope to the house and ease myself onto the ribbed seat of the curb-gleaned glider nestled into the stand of young mulberry saplings off the front porch. To my left, the chickens slumber in the coop dreaming of a cracked corn breakfast and I wonder where Bumper, our fearless feline explorer, has wandered off to. The moon nods from its pale whitish throne in the west and I am filled with a complete and utter peace, having started my day with a walk bookended by the light of an orb that also tugged on the tides of shores my feet will never meet. “Connection”, I whisper to no one I can see, and long for this illusion of time paused to continue in perpetuity. A tiny thought rises up unbidden: what if I’d gone back to bed instead?
No regrets, dear readers. No regrets.
