02/06/2020
I clabber down the old tote road
Towards the red pine forest
Leaning on my staff
And skirting boulder strewn ruts
Carved out by two days of rain.
It is only a mile or so from my cabin,
Still my wife makes me wear a pouch
With an iPhone and an epi-pen.
(I once poked a yellow jacket nest
With the stub of my staff
And had to run like an enraged bear
Through the mad tangles
Of this New Hampshire forest.
I am wiser now.)
I don’t know why I am drawn
To this daily amble.
There is nothing special here:
Miles of old stone walls grown over,
Edging fields overtaken
By massive white pine and white ash,
red oaks and sugar maples;
The floor is an impenetrable bramble
Of gnarly bush, ferns and bog.
Here and there are old foundations,
Small and square,
Yet somehow hardy, cursing men
Lived in the small cabins
And wrestled massive stones
To set the lines between them.
My epi-pen and phone
Hang on me like effete sophistry.
I do not even recognize what bird
Is calling whom... certainly not me—
This morning intruder.
I stop by the great swamp
And scan the shores for moose;
I know they are there,
Along with black bear, bobcats and deer,
Fisher cats, skunks and raccoons.
It is a fool’s errand to think
They would reveal what they know
Or where they lie at daybreak.
They, too, must have their walls.
The deer flies attack me
Like I am their last supper,
But I learned long ago to dress
For a summer hike
As if it is mid-winter:
Heavy boots, gloves, denim
And a shroud of mosquito mesh
Covering my head,
tucked deliberately
Into my sweaty breast.
They do not bother me, I suppose,
Incessant as they are,
Any more than any other
Swatch of flesh, breathing slowly
In this still morning air,
Lingering with low fog.
If not for these flies
I would have to share this trail
With gobs of humanity
Bent on an easy, pleasure-filled hike.
They will come in the fall
When the weather is cool
And mad dashes of color are ripped
From the trees
And soften the trail.
And fill the lenses.
I only once met another hiker—
An old woman with a willow basket
And an old camp saw.
She seemed unnerved to see me
Clothed in my normality.
“I am here to find some black birch
To make my tea.”
I offered her some extra mesh,
But, “They do not bother me,”
Was all she said.
A few steps later I looked back,
And she was gone.
The mystic in me saw
Some ancient Tamlin
Searching for her illicit lover—
But she probably just strode
Faster than flies can fly.
I’ve never seen her again.
At a certain point the tote road splits:
To the left it cleaves around
The massive swamp into which
Empties inumerous freshets,
Springs and small brooks.
The springs of water
Fill Black Pond—
Black as tea,
For it is steeped in a broth
Of New England's best leaf.
To the right it arcs
Into a smaller trail
That runs many miles inland
Into forgotten land.
Another small trail wends
Three more miles to Trout Pond.
Every day I remind myself
To someday bushwhack
That overgrown path
Just so I can be one of the recent few
Who say, “I have been there.”
But it is the Red Pine Forest
That calls me.
The vague entrance is marked
By a mossy boulder.
I duck under arches of young beech,
Saplings that will never grow old
In this forbidden place.
The red pines an odd anomaly,
Planted in straight lines
By someone dreaming of a fortune
In telephone poles.
Hundred of piercingly straight spires
Interlaced by an even number
Of deadened timber,
Leaning, ominous widow-makers
Ravaged by wind and storms.
I get there as the sun is rising,
And like the immigrant red pines
I feel strangely out of place,
As if I am equally not welcome;
But I am like Narcissus staring
Into his vain pool of water
Drawn and entranced
By corporeal beauty.
I am, however, not trapped here
Like the red pines.
I watch the streams of light
Bolt in geometric entropy
And feel a murmur of wind
Urging me quickly
To leave.
And so I clabber back home
Along the old tote road
Coddled by flies,
Swarmed by mosquitoes,
Kindred to the moose
And wily forefathers of these woods,
Accepting there are things
I may never know.
-Fitz
