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Woodland Traces
continued from page 1
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Now I am
traveling home. The
interstate is a fast grey river alive with the improbable energy of
numberless speeding cars and heavy diesels.
Restless, I begin to imagine the metal river of which I am a part
propelled by an unbroken chain of internal combustion engines,
stretching the unimaginable miles from coast to coast.
As I picture power and motion I feel a kind of apprehension as I
think of the vulnerable mass of all the people on this curving highway,
rushing down through the heart of the continent.
I superimpose a kinder thought: older, slower automobiles fill my
view as I force the fast traffic to give way to what I choose to see as a
less hurried group of drivers. But I have no real affinity for these imaginary motorists at
all, I think. As I wind the
reel back, I set up another transparency--the wooden boxes of
stagecoaches, or wagons, pulled by horses, mules, oxen.
This pleases me, and the predictable culmination presses into my
vision: I see now the foot travelers, edited quickly out of their pioneer
costumes as my interest lags, now dressed as Indians, then in the skins
and furs of the nomads of prehistory.
With some effort I hold the four successively superimposed levels
of my fantasy, the jarring speed and hard metal, the touring cars, the
wagons, the walkers. I feel most drawn to the walkers; somehow, in the same way
that my rural childhood was defined by the concrete and the tangible, they
too, while most remote, seem most real. Self-conscious and irritated by the
neatness of my vision, I acknowledge the truth of this concrete river, but I am bored now and the
imagery seems less clever. Then
in a glad moment I see that I have moved into juxtaposition with a
companion stream of life: it is spring, and above me the sky is traced by
winding bands of migratory birds. Their
essential color is silver grey, they too are numberless, and in this
changing season they are going home. Thoughts of returning home draw me back
in memory, and I am once again the secure child who confidently claimed
and navigated the shaded yard, the barn-lot, and beyond.
The thick lawn was subtly marked by trails, one made by my family
rounding the corner of the yard, the other, more indistinct, made by the
furred paws of our family of cats. This
trail I preferred to follow as it wound with feline economy through the
flowerbeds, under the fence, and out into the open meadow, where meals of
field mice waited. Once beyond the yard, the landscape of
the farm was filled with possibilities for treks to wonderful places.
The path to the barn, a tall structure of wood gone silver with
age, was a road of hard-packed earth leading to dusky interiors where the
huge cattle stood at milking time, exhaling heavily between mouthfuls of
grain. The way to the
henhouse was equally worn, smooth to bare feet, and was the avenue to
another shadowy enclosure where sometimes eggs could be found underneath
the warm feathers of the irritable birds. But as always, I was drawn to journey farther. The lane was waiting, and beyond it, the woods.
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