What is it about the woods that makes a man's soul smile? Is it the unknown calling to be known? Is it a passing thought, wondering if any foot since the beginning of time has touched the place yours is planted? Is it the knowledge that as you enter the woods you could choose to get as lost and independent as you wanted...and for the time you spend wandering them you are, well...free.
I don't need to know the answers I suppose, as long as the woods make my soul stir and glancing into them makes me content. I am simple that way, as content for me is sometimes only imagining what might be standing just inside the shade and out of view, looking back at me. With that in mind I'm certain of one thing...many more critters have seen me than I have seen them. I'd say I have seen many more elk ars's than I have seen eyes, and eyes count as two. Truth be told a campfire wouldn't be a campfire if there weren't many more of you out there with like stories. Stories of the almost, the just about, and the big one that managed the great escape...and stories of the the trip of a lifetime with proof hanging on the wall back home.
That's all part of it I guess, the part where none of all those memories exist without the woods. Those untamed places that let us stretch our imaginations and legs to the point of exhaustion. The places where a warm fire forges lifetime friendships that transcend time...I bet I'm not the only one with good, or better said, GREAT friends I haven't seen since last September or even the September before. Those people are part of who I am, mostly because of time we have spent with dirt under our feet and packs biting into our shoulders...talking of things that we are just to busy to talk about the rest of the year...important things.
I think all of this because I caught myself smiling today at the bud on an alder tree in my neighbors yard. It's a regular tree in a regular yard on a regular street in regular old suburbia, but I found myself smiling none the less. It made me smile because I know there are trees that are anything but regular beginning to bud as well. Trees that will form the woods that will create the stories that will bond the friendships that will enrich our lives. Woods where some of us will kneel this fall beside the elk of our dreams, hands wrapped around massive horns. Woods where some of us will kneel with our child and their very first animal, feeling the pride of tradition being passed down and smiling, knowing with that tradition a fire has been sparked that will burn year after year and become part of who they grow to be. Woods where some will be for the very last time before hanging it up as old age causes countlesss memories to fade. Thank God for those memories...hold on to them, share them, pass them on and look forward to their renewal...spring is good.
