THE WOODLANDS, MUSKOKA, AND THE GREAT ESCAPE

It is not a frivolous romantic notion, to think of this mist-laden woodland, as a healing place. When I walk this soft pathway to the interior, here at Birch Hollow, it's as if the land buffers around me, as if to offer the most basic shelter for the anxious soul…..the pensive heart. That despite what the world offers in harsh daily news, here it is irrelevant for these quiet, gentle moments of contemplation. As if nothing is more important, at that precise moment, than celebrating the strange, pervasive kindred spirit, pulling us toward an understanding of life and death…..the seasons, the realities of late autumn, these falling leaves all around me, and the horizon winter, soon to hit with gale-force upon this lakeland forest. What I watched this morning, on the television news, is no more than the final burst of electronic light, when the set is shut-off, and your eyes still show the light intensity, with blotches of shadow that seem so contradictory to what had just occurred. It is brightest before the end. It is the nature of the body and the environs that proves more commanding than electronic intrusions. This woodland trail is well packed down from my footfall over these many years. So many ventures when the monitor screen seemed overpowering, and illogical to the creative process. It has all regained sensibility and proportion, when after only a few steps, and a pause or two to enjoy the view, that the realization seeps back into the soul, this is, despite its realities of life and death, a healing place for the kindred spirit. A respite from the rigors of news-watching and a reality obsession, I acquired from my years as a reporter. I have that fear and trembling of knowing things I honestly wish I didn't, because of being solution driven……..knowing there's so much, one can only watch in transition, the carnage in its wake, simply unavoidable even to the keenest, unflinching mortal. As I worry about altering a life here, by destroying habitat while I walk, it is all part of the etching of time, as evolution, changing nature by necessity of survival.

Nature has its brutal side. But it is this gentle side, I witness on these daily walks, that appeals to the weary soul; this salvation-seeking watcher-in-the-woods, who would rather encamp here amidst this natural evolution, where like the fallen leaf, I will be part of the soil that feeds, in perpetuity, the welfare of these guardian pines, venerable maples, and leaning birches……and all the myriad creatures interacting beneath my gaze.

I willingly surrender to the Muskoka woodlands this morning. They are alluring and haunted. There is the roar of a new wind, rising in bursts over the bay below, and the intrusive, yet comforting sound of old leaves, gently hitting the forest floor. Their wafting, spiraling decline back to earth, isn't unsettling, or depressing, as the watcher celebrated the change of seasons since childhood…….cherishing the arrival of winter and its boundless opportunities. There is a calmness in this death of the season. This harbinger of change, is hued golden by nostalgia, and harkened to attention by the romantic heart, recalling the sojourns of the early autumn, and the August vigils on the point above The Bog, to watch the late summer rain, advance the harvest. The reminiscences of the spring regeneration I felt in my heart, as renewal and rebirth of expectation. As I fondly recall the visit of yesterday morning, I equally celebrate the discoveries of this morning, and the expectations yet, of tomorrow and the day after. It is as poetic as any justice administered. I'm not asked for my permission, to herald these changes. I am but mortal, and as much a part of this vista of nature, as every leaf that began its tenure as a tight green bud on a barren branch. As I have walked this pathway toward The Bog each day, this year, I feel myself, as one of these still-clinging leaves, awaiting the right moment to be relieved of my hold onto existence, and life, to be rewarded with this magical fall to earth where I shall fertilize the roots of all the trees and ferns, wildflowers and weeds, that thrive here in the spring……nurturing life while being a part of it…..shading what ground, and life forms, that require shading to survive.

What great enterprise this nature affords our grand and intricate existence, and our part in the intriguing cycle of life.

I might enter this path with a profound sadness, about the disasters on the planet. Yet I have never once, lasted in this sanctuary more than a few moments, before I am pleasantly, and so subtly removed to its kindly spirit, where one loses fear of the inevitable, and settles to the intricate evolution of life through its stages. There can be no sadness in this enlightenment, of our time of life, our long or short stay within this mortal coil, and what we must learn of the seasons that etch upon, soul to soul, with the alluring revelation, that it is, despite its fiercest demands, a glorious existence of adventure and discovery. As if standing by my own childhood, and teenage-hood, adult and mid-life, and feeling quite contented, all has been celebrated despite the perception, and realities, it hasn't been, by mortal estimation, a perfect or even near-perfect story of acquired maturity.

There is a wafting, patch-work mist, passing over the lowland, at this moment, and a silvery drizzle quietly coating the hinterland. There are few sounds here today, except the occasional rub of a leaf hitting off the evergreens, and then settling upon the soggy, colored ground. I listen for the sound of any footfall, or stirring of the bushes, anticipating, as I always do, that I'm not alone in these haunted woods. On occasion, a neighbor might decide to walk their dog a short distance down this path, or a child might wander close, to pick-up some of these red and yellow leaves for a school project. I have already seen deer tracks impressed down into the mud, and there's evidence a bear has been digging at a bug-infested log some time earlier. Despite the fact this is a quiet place now, it is always an active acreage with wildlife, and the general life and times of all forests through time. Yet despite what I perceive as a busy place, it is, in human terms, an important solitude from the intrusive, hammering of human environs; be that of home and town, and travel between the stations of the day, the hour, the moment, from heartbeat to heartbeat, the raw, savage pursuit of normal existence. Pay cheque to pay cheque. The dwellers of the modern world. It is little wonder this pathway into solitude, is so well travelled and packed down. I could not survive this mortal pursuit, without the partnership with this wild place……the forgiving, nonjudgmental woodlands, that allow the voyeur to freely explore the universe, without having to leave the earth.

I will soon arrive home, to jot down notes, about the discovery of this morning, in the haunted place, The Bog. What haunts me most, is the reality we all nearly lost this healing place, when our hometown decided there was more to be gained by developing the acreage for housing, and infilling the lowlands to facilitate new buildings, and parking lots where the bullrushes today, are painted silver with rain, and blow back and forth in the wind, as a poem line by line. There is always that persistent fear, a bulldozer and chainsaw might come down this same path, where I wander and ponder life and times, and strip this enchanted place to its bare bones…….in pursuit of that mortal folly, believing man to be superior to its maker.

To my last hike down this trail, I will never abandon this tiny urban oasis, or the creatures that habitat beneath the outstretched evergreens and occupy the earth, below the blanket of leaves from the centuries. Protecting nature, protects ourselves.

Having sat here now for a few moments, to warm myself from the chill outdoors, and having an old dog resting against my feet, a cat having jumped onto my lap, I can hear the rattle of that new wind, hitting the hillside of The Bog, bringing with it that profound sense of impending transition, as winter unfurls its intent of occupation. As unsettling as it may be, to part with a cherished season, I feel the excitement of change, none the less, that with one season's decline, an enchanted re-generation of an old friend is about to manifest……..a friend of this writer…….the winter of my life.