I was out in the woods last night – I have gone every night this week so far.
It is peaceful – somehow quiet and yet full of noise and life.
Isolated – yet crowded with eyes and movement.
Dark – and the light reflects in every surface marking my path forward.
The river is lively and bright – musical in its bed.
I stopped to sit on a rock and listen for a long while. The air is chilly, but I’m no longer frozen to the bone as soon as I’m out the door. The cold of the rock seeped through my jeans and into the meat of my legs… setting into the muscle and fat.
The river bubbled and burbled along.
I sometimes think I hear voices in the gurgles – small musical voices singing names and circumstance into the air.
Sometimes the wind in the trees seems to sing back to the water.
Sometimes I think I’m going a little mad… a little too malleable to the fresh air wildness that makes Barbie and Paul seem a bit off.
Tonight at the river I thought I saw two figures dressed in white through the trees. They were over by the railroad tracks and one carried a lantern – I was a great enough distance away that I cannot be sure, but it’s something to keep an eye out for.
I definitely saw Bess in the woods tonight – digging around the base of some tall birch.
I came to speak with her and she said she was digging up some soap root.
She certainly had a sack of roots with her and who am I to know soap root from turnips.
She was as friendly as ever so I left her to her task and carried on my wander in the woods.