When the summer heat finally lifts, offering some respite and relief from its relentless glory, I find myself itching to get into the woods. It’s a need that goes back to my childhood, when I’d get home from school and hastily run in to the little stretch of forest behind our childhood home while the light was still golden. In that uncharted space, I had my own paths and knew the way by various markers – a large rock placed by God as a remarkable accent piece, an unconventional evergreen with weeping limbs, the fallen trunk of a tree beautifully mottled by moss and lichens – this was how I navigated that space.
These days I prefer a well-trodden path, or any path for that matter – just some bit of structure and order from which I might find my way back. Such was my frame of mind as I made my way along the Burden Pond Preserve in Troy the other weekend. Betsy had told me about it, saying there were waterfalls there – and who doesn’t love a waterfall? There were also whispers of suicides, lending the place a haunted aspect that aligns with this point in the year.
I decided to make my visit early in the day rather than later – I didn’t want to run the risk of getting caught near dusk when the light always falls quicker than you think it will. That’s happened in forests before and it still strikes terror in me when I recount the mad dash to beat the night.
Water birds were present – ducks and geese and a crane of some sort – I seemed to be the only disturbance in their sunny morning of peaceful swimming and/or standing. Walking along the water’s edge on a worn path, I was the first person to make this trek that morning, at least judging by the plentiful spider-webs that tickled my face and arms.
The notion of wandering alone in the woods, during daylight, has never frightened me, but as I made my way further along the path, and the woods closed in behind me, I had the typical moment of wonder and worry as to what I might do if someone intending harm came my way. It was during this time of heightened guard that I sensed something large to my right, moving swiftly but in impossibly quiet fashion.
A thick back of brownish gray fur moved sleekly through the reeds rising through the water. It was enormous, and gone before I could get a good look at it. Reason and history told me it had to be a deer, but it felt more ominous, and other-wordly; the way it traversed the water and reeds so stealthily, almost without movement, and so quickly. It felt like an admonishment of danger, or something larger looming, not only larger physically, but larger in the immensity of shadow and doubt and terrifying uncertainty.
An uneasiness had crept upon this sunny morning, the trees seeming to rise higher, the shadows elongating and deepening, and suddenly this peaceful moment was imbued with a definitive dread. I was already deeper than I’d intended to be, and a little panic surfaced, the way silent fish sometimes rose to the plane where water met air, just eliciting the slightest ripple.
The uneasiness stayed with me until I decided to turn around and head back the way I came. Possibly poisonous fruit was strewn about the pathway now in various stages of decay and decomposition. I would not venture further, or tempt fate to turn on me in any way.
Must be the season of the witch…
