At once whatever happened starts receding.
—Philip Larkin

Last night I walked the woods
lit by the final moon of the month.

Days don’t count here
beneath the centuries-old pines

where my grandmother took her solace
on hard farm days, passing up

the washboard or jam-making
for the eternal whooshing

of the forest as much serenity
as yearning.
~Dave Malone “Walk in the Woods” from Tornado Drill

Over my seventy years, I’ve had the opportunity to walk through woods in different parts of the world –
from my childhood home near Puget Sound,
to the Bay Area in California,
from central Africa above Lake Tanganyika
to the forests of Northern Ireland
and the coastline of Vancouver Island.

Here on the farm, we have some dense woods that our grandson has designated “the haunted forest” because of its many downed trees from windstorms. He is convinced BigFoot lives somewhere in the dense underbrush, and he may well be right.

During a walk in the woods, no matter where it may be, I find solace in a world where there is teeming life thriving under the ground, at eye level, and overhead. I feel a palpable vibrance with each step I take, while experiencing sounds and smells I find nowhere else.

So, I too leave behind the work of the day – the laundry, the cleaning and cooking – if only for an hour or so. And once again, I sync my own heartbeat to the pulse of the mysterious life I find, ongoing and eternal, in the woods.