Wooden Heart

Near the top of the hill is a clearing strewn with plastic buckets, tractor tires, a rusted swing set, a wooden doghouse with a corrugated roof. For a time, maybe thirty or forty years ago, someone used this spot as a base camp for logging the whole hillside. The felled trees lie here, waiting, bigger around than pretty much anything left standing. Surprisingly, I can see that, just like me, someone has left their heart behind in these woods.

Frogs Eggs

They are easy to see in the clear water of the pond, attached to the stems of last year’s cattails. There are hundreds of them, if not thousands. I walk the perimeter of this small pond. As far as I can tell, this multitude of potential offspring were produced by only three frogs.

Old Fence

Two trees have grown up inside a roll of rusted sheep fence. This woodland was once a pasture; cows and sheep stomped their feet and flicked their tails here at the emerging black flies. This abandoned fencing a sign of uncharacteristic waste—I wonder what dire emergency called the farmer from the field, and prevented his return.

Dog Violets

It is both easy and difficult to find the wildflowers. Difficult because the blooms are tiny, and often grow in singles or small clumps of two or three plants. Difficult because our impulse in the woods is to look up at the treetops against the sky or to take the long view along the pathways. When we finally look down: Easy because the colours—purple, white, yellow—jump out against the fresh green paint brush of spring.

Robin’s Egg Blue

Delicate egg fragments lie on the path. The colour catches my eye when I am still many steps away and I don’t immediately know what I am seeing. When I realise, I look up, but there are no trees overhead, no nests for little birds to fledge from. A theft then, by another bird or some small climbing mammal. I look up once again, but I don’t think the sky is ever this blue.

On Clearings

In a month this growth will be knee-high, and in two months waist-high, but at the moment it looks like someone brought a mower deep into the woods and made a lawn of new leaves in a clearing. Coming into the light, the dog and I blink at the sky, feel the air move soundlessly around the trees, and notice the woods: ladder branches, shadows, and old man’s beard.

Whale Bones

The forest is a beach, the hill a shoreline, this fallen tree a whale. The current has carried the whale’s remains to this sheltered spot, where the wind rattles the dry, bleached bones. When I step into its belly, sharp ends of broken ribs scratch at my legs.

Forty Days and Forty Nights

After two hundred and four pages, I begin to lose track of things a little. I draw character maps, list names, complete a chronology. This inspires a day of organizational mania. I count words; I count chapters; I add and divide pages per day. I look at the calendar, decide when I’d like the first draft, and, omitting Sundays, count the days remaining: exactly 40. My wilderness.

Moss, Spruce, Rain

The air is warm, but other than that it’s harder to tell here that spring is in full bloom. There are no blossoms in the moss, no birds in these branches. The rain does not collect in tinkling brooks. It’s like the Wood between the Worlds. Thoughts are slow and movement is silent.

On Tools

People tell me I’ll want a chainsaw, and one day that may be true. But so far, I’ve been cutting with hand tools. When I am working, I can hear the dog running through the woods chasing smells. I can hear the wind sweep up from the valley floor and rattle last year’s leaves. I can hear the sparrows and chickadees singing about spring.