Woods

I like walking in the woods.

I’m often struck by how messy the woods can be and how little that fact is talked about in books or portrayed in painting, movies, or television.

An artist will capture one perfect scene from a forest and that is what ends up frozen in time. Filmmakers have teams of folks who scout out the perfect location and then it is made to look just right for whatever scene they are filming. Writers tend to talk about forest floors covered in delicate little fern fronds and sparkling water tumbling over moss covered rocks.

There are ferns and moss and streams in the woods, yes. But there are also bugs, and weeds, and clinging vines, and small stumps that catch your feet, and rotting mushrooms, and upturned dirt and odd smells and spider webs that stick to your hair. Everything is decidedly NOT picture perfect when you walk through a forest. Don’t get me wrong, there are perfect little scenes scattered here and there, and that is part of the reason why I like walking in the woods. But there is all of this odd and untidy stuff, too. Sometimes I like that just as much as the perfection.

On a recent walk, it struck me that I complain about traveling because there is so much touristy stuff around all of the grand sites. Or a wonderful bit of architecture is buried in a crowded city scape. And it hit me that maybe we have to work through a lot of mess and oddness to find all the good stuff in life. Even in our daily lives, it’s the wee small moments in the midst of all the chaos that mean so much.

Anyway, I like walking in the woods.