Recovery

Today for the first time in six months I feel strong enough to go for a walk in the woods.  The recurring health problem I struggle with has left me with a gray succession of days, spent in exhausting pain.


Today though, there is a respite. So.  The wooded trail.  It is as I left it, muddy and silent, and golden with fall.  The leaves on one Alder tree are so bright that  for a moment I think the sun has broken through the tall trees on this rainy day.


As I climb the hill past the glowing trees, all the loss of the last year falls away; illness, the loss of my Mom, my job.  Here, the concerns of the future cannot press do not press in me as much either; money, insurance, my health and What To Do Now, all fall away with every step I go deeper into the woods.  Now there is only the trail, and the trees.


A silent mist marches through the steep forest, softening the edges of my vision.  Ahead, something brown crosses the path, visible for a fleeting moment, and is gone.  A deer, probably, though there are also cougar and bear here.


At the pass, I pause to take a picture of a tiny white and gray mushroom pushing up from under some blackberry leaves.  In a depression in the cap is a tiny puddle of rain water. Two dark pine needles float there, in the shadow of the dark green blackberry leaves.


On the way down the hill, the cares of my life re-assemble themselves.  But they come back in a little lighter than they were before the walk.