Ohio
It is become freezing cold but the sky is still a bright blue and the sun isn’t yet cutting through the canopy at such an angle. The leaves are gold in the light and I can just barely see my breath while huffing up the edge of the ravine, my fingers digging into the ground as I climb along, the feeling of dirt filling in under my nails. I haven’t felt that in a long time.
The dog ran off a while ago but I catch a flash of her, soft yellow-almost white, to my left and that is fine. She needs her time alone in the woods, and I need my time alone in the woods, and I am happy to oblige us both.
These woods are old. The trees are all maple and oak and they grow tall and thick. Vines of underbrush grow up with them and connect them together and there are parts of the ravine that are holier looking than cathedrals. The creek goes through sometimes high, sometimes low, winding and splitting and coming back together with an inevitable indifference, creating slivers of islands that catch fallen branches or rotted out birches and make bridges out of them. I’ll take the bridges I’m given and cross to the islands and if the ground’s not too wet I’ll cross my legs and sit and watch the water flow past me and bend to the right around an old beaver dam that’s half gone now, until it flows out of sight. The ground the dam clings to is red with leaves and the ground just beyond it is still green with resilient grass, ankle length and hopeful. The earth it grows out of is black and cold but soft.
The creek cuts through and on either side the earth rises so sharp and so high that dirt tumbles from the top and collects along the base and looks like piles of leaves raked up by themselves. Trees at the top have roots that have grown close to the bottom, poking out and going back in and hanging on, hoping the wall won’t erode any more than it has. They are steps to lock my feet onto when I scale up. They are home to ants and sometimes potato bugs, and they remind me that one time the creek was way up there, twenty and thirty feet above where it is now, back when the roots could grow under the water and catch the minerals the stones on the floor of the stream blocked and dragged into the earth.
There are thickets on the other side of the ravine, thickets that are home to deer and that catch snow to create igloos for them in the winter. I’ve seen them: Lines of six and eight or ten walking slow and single filed from tree to tree and then ducking out of sight underneath an archway of thorned overgrowth. So slow and so careful I could only hear the snow landing on branches, causing them to sag and snap in winter breeze so cold it could hardly move itself. So slow the sun slides to the edge of the earth faster than they step forward. So careful they look more like the shadows of trees realigning with the purpling of the sky. I have watched them until dark, and I have chased them as if playing on a schoolyard. The dog leaves them alone now. I laugh at myself thinking that they are friends with the dog like I am friends with the dog, that we are all friends of each other. I gave them names when I was little but stopped that practice when I saw Lucky dead on the side of the road that cuts through the land, hit by a red mini van driven by a woman preoccupied with her Christmas to-do list. Now I close my eyes when I see them, and I concentrate on recreating the image of them walking home-so familiar to me-in my mind.
There are so many birds all the time. Cardinals and blue birds in the winter, spots of color alive and dipping and hopping against the black and white. Blue jays in March darting from one tree to another, diving onto the cold ground somewhere between grey and green to find a seed or anything, really, and robins hurrying to make a nest in which to lay their eggs. Sometimes there’s an oriole among the rest of them in May. Scarlet tanagers and gold finches in June, but I only ever see them when they fly into a clearing or sit on the edge of the woods-by now the canopy’s so thick with bright layers of green, and it hides so much. In August, purple martins fly higher and more daring than the rest, and little brown towhees surprise me when they take to the air because they move along the ground like chipmunks. Evening grosbeaks appear momentarily in September, and then it starts all over. Woodpeckers and owls and hawks and crows and one spring two years ago there was a bald eagle.
At night in the summer the coyotes keep me awake, and in the mornings in the fall the turkeys wake me up. But now there’s only the sound of the creek over the smooth surfaces of moss-covered rocks, and the leaves that float down to the floor of the woods like big brown snowflakes. It gets sometimes so that my breathing becomes the only thing I hear, loud as a waterfall, even when I just sit there and look at it all around. The rocks, the roots, the ants and the potato bugs-they don’t make any sounds. The squirrels are all so fat and cold they hardly move if they can help it; they don’t make any sounds leaping from branch to branch. And the deer are always quiet.
I stand and pat the dirt off my butt and then wipe my palms on the thighs of my jeans… and… can I make it or not? But I jump anyway, across the other leg of the creek that hasn’t been given its own bridge. I land right foot first and my heel gets a little sunk in mud but my shoe stays on my foot and I don’t even lose my stride. The dog appears from down stream and she wades in water just bellow her belly, some seeds washing off her coat, some more stubborn than that. She smiles at me and I smile back.
The ground dries up a few steps from the creek. It is hard and well tread by the weather. It rolls up quickly with the side of the ravine, and my fingers dig in and collect the earth under their nails. The dog follows, slower than before because she is an old dog, now, and she troubles herself to get up when she’s been lying for a time. Her joints are stiff and fragile. She limps to her water bowl sometimes, now, just because. But she can make it to the top of the ravine after wading through the creek. She can run under the briars faster than I can maneuver around them. On good days, she still chases the chipmunks she happens upon.
She is like my dad. My dad, who plays with her every evening, when he comes home, up the stairs from the garage in the basement, and she stands at the top landing, her head bouncing up and down as her legs move one at a time she’s so excited she can’t contain herself, it is time to have some fun tonight. He drops his head and nudges her shoulder with the top of his, and she jumps back and he leans forward again, taunting her and barking along with her.
My dad, who won’t be bothered to think twice before sharing the crust of his morning toast with her. A pot of coffee and the bathrobe my brother and I bought him some Christmases ago. A cold Christmas, and jackets and coats and bathrobes were the order of the season. The tree, impressive and fat, lopped from the middle of a pine forest up the hill we ride over, beyond fields of corn and cattle and sheep, maybe, and dragging it back to the truck, we catch a glimpse of a hawk gliding along the tips of evergreen and into the maze of deciduous branches, grey and naked, but thick and wild. The dog comes out with us to get the tree, but not always. Some times she prefers to spend the day lying beside the wood-burning stove in the dining area of our kitchen. The oils from her coat have treated the wood floor she stretches her old body over.
We are too far out to see the house, but I know now that as the blue sky gets richer and fuller in color, as it begins sharing itself to shades of green and violet, wisps of clouds thousands of feet up, pink or sometimes red, the windows of the old barn house are bright like marigolds, alive and warm. Inside, Tom Rush says goodbye to his old house; and decides to leave some of his things in his old bedroom. Joni Mitchell sings about spots on apples and tree museums. Miles Davis prays a fever out of Bess; his trumpet boasts Porgy’s riches at the end of act three.
At the top of an ancient tree-stand, left behind from one hunter or another, I spot the dog coming out a patch of sun or frost bleached tall grass. I see her stuff her snout in a pile of leaves; a few feet over, she finds a rotted out trunk with the leftover smells of something from the woods. I call her and climb down the side of the tree, my weight spread gingerly across the weathered chunks of two-by-fours grown into the bark, held steady by long nails brown with rust, having taken in more winters than me. I call her again and she follows me back toward the creek, back along the ravine, toward the clearing that starts the path back. And we head home for dinner.
The dog ran off a while ago but I catch a flash of her, soft yellow-almost white, to my left and that is fine. She needs her time alone in the woods, and I need my time alone in the woods, and I am happy to oblige us both.
These woods are old. The trees are all maple and oak and they grow tall and thick. Vines of underbrush grow up with them and connect them together and there are parts of the ravine that are holier looking than cathedrals. The creek goes through sometimes high, sometimes low, winding and splitting and coming back together with an inevitable indifference, creating slivers of islands that catch fallen branches or rotted out birches and make bridges out of them. I’ll take the bridges I’m given and cross to the islands and if the ground’s not too wet I’ll cross my legs and sit and watch the water flow past me and bend to the right around an old beaver dam that’s half gone now, until it flows out of sight. The ground the dam clings to is red with leaves and the ground just beyond it is still green with resilient grass, ankle length and hopeful. The earth it grows out of is black and cold but soft.
The creek cuts through and on either side the earth rises so sharp and so high that dirt tumbles from the top and collects along the base and looks like piles of leaves raked up by themselves. Trees at the top have roots that have grown close to the bottom, poking out and going back in and hanging on, hoping the wall won’t erode any more than it has. They are steps to lock my feet onto when I scale up. They are home to ants and sometimes potato bugs, and they remind me that one time the creek was way up there, twenty and thirty feet above where it is now, back when the roots could grow under the water and catch the minerals the stones on the floor of the stream blocked and dragged into the earth.
There are thickets on the other side of the ravine, thickets that are home to deer and that catch snow to create igloos for them in the winter. I’ve seen them: Lines of six and eight or ten walking slow and single filed from tree to tree and then ducking out of sight underneath an archway of thorned overgrowth. So slow and so careful I could only hear the snow landing on branches, causing them to sag and snap in winter breeze so cold it could hardly move itself. So slow the sun slides to the edge of the earth faster than they step forward. So careful they look more like the shadows of trees realigning with the purpling of the sky. I have watched them until dark, and I have chased them as if playing on a schoolyard. The dog leaves them alone now. I laugh at myself thinking that they are friends with the dog like I am friends with the dog, that we are all friends of each other. I gave them names when I was little but stopped that practice when I saw Lucky dead on the side of the road that cuts through the land, hit by a red mini van driven by a woman preoccupied with her Christmas to-do list. Now I close my eyes when I see them, and I concentrate on recreating the image of them walking home-so familiar to me-in my mind.
There are so many birds all the time. Cardinals and blue birds in the winter, spots of color alive and dipping and hopping against the black and white. Blue jays in March darting from one tree to another, diving onto the cold ground somewhere between grey and green to find a seed or anything, really, and robins hurrying to make a nest in which to lay their eggs. Sometimes there’s an oriole among the rest of them in May. Scarlet tanagers and gold finches in June, but I only ever see them when they fly into a clearing or sit on the edge of the woods-by now the canopy’s so thick with bright layers of green, and it hides so much. In August, purple martins fly higher and more daring than the rest, and little brown towhees surprise me when they take to the air because they move along the ground like chipmunks. Evening grosbeaks appear momentarily in September, and then it starts all over. Woodpeckers and owls and hawks and crows and one spring two years ago there was a bald eagle.
At night in the summer the coyotes keep me awake, and in the mornings in the fall the turkeys wake me up. But now there’s only the sound of the creek over the smooth surfaces of moss-covered rocks, and the leaves that float down to the floor of the woods like big brown snowflakes. It gets sometimes so that my breathing becomes the only thing I hear, loud as a waterfall, even when I just sit there and look at it all around. The rocks, the roots, the ants and the potato bugs-they don’t make any sounds. The squirrels are all so fat and cold they hardly move if they can help it; they don’t make any sounds leaping from branch to branch. And the deer are always quiet.
I stand and pat the dirt off my butt and then wipe my palms on the thighs of my jeans… and… can I make it or not? But I jump anyway, across the other leg of the creek that hasn’t been given its own bridge. I land right foot first and my heel gets a little sunk in mud but my shoe stays on my foot and I don’t even lose my stride. The dog appears from down stream and she wades in water just bellow her belly, some seeds washing off her coat, some more stubborn than that. She smiles at me and I smile back.
The ground dries up a few steps from the creek. It is hard and well tread by the weather. It rolls up quickly with the side of the ravine, and my fingers dig in and collect the earth under their nails. The dog follows, slower than before because she is an old dog, now, and she troubles herself to get up when she’s been lying for a time. Her joints are stiff and fragile. She limps to her water bowl sometimes, now, just because. But she can make it to the top of the ravine after wading through the creek. She can run under the briars faster than I can maneuver around them. On good days, she still chases the chipmunks she happens upon.
She is like my dad. My dad, who plays with her every evening, when he comes home, up the stairs from the garage in the basement, and she stands at the top landing, her head bouncing up and down as her legs move one at a time she’s so excited she can’t contain herself, it is time to have some fun tonight. He drops his head and nudges her shoulder with the top of his, and she jumps back and he leans forward again, taunting her and barking along with her.
My dad, who won’t be bothered to think twice before sharing the crust of his morning toast with her. A pot of coffee and the bathrobe my brother and I bought him some Christmases ago. A cold Christmas, and jackets and coats and bathrobes were the order of the season. The tree, impressive and fat, lopped from the middle of a pine forest up the hill we ride over, beyond fields of corn and cattle and sheep, maybe, and dragging it back to the truck, we catch a glimpse of a hawk gliding along the tips of evergreen and into the maze of deciduous branches, grey and naked, but thick and wild. The dog comes out with us to get the tree, but not always. Some times she prefers to spend the day lying beside the wood-burning stove in the dining area of our kitchen. The oils from her coat have treated the wood floor she stretches her old body over.
We are too far out to see the house, but I know now that as the blue sky gets richer and fuller in color, as it begins sharing itself to shades of green and violet, wisps of clouds thousands of feet up, pink or sometimes red, the windows of the old barn house are bright like marigolds, alive and warm. Inside, Tom Rush says goodbye to his old house; and decides to leave some of his things in his old bedroom. Joni Mitchell sings about spots on apples and tree museums. Miles Davis prays a fever out of Bess; his trumpet boasts Porgy’s riches at the end of act three.
At the top of an ancient tree-stand, left behind from one hunter or another, I spot the dog coming out a patch of sun or frost bleached tall grass. I see her stuff her snout in a pile of leaves; a few feet over, she finds a rotted out trunk with the leftover smells of something from the woods. I call her and climb down the side of the tree, my weight spread gingerly across the weathered chunks of two-by-fours grown into the bark, held steady by long nails brown with rust, having taken in more winters than me. I call her again and she follows me back toward the creek, back along the ravine, toward the clearing that starts the path back. And we head home for dinner.