I Could Never Love you Back

A close friend’s aunt just passed away. I could tell by the way she talked about her, that she was someone very special. The funeral was this weekend.

Today, I went for a walk in the woods. Along the way I crossed a few fields, sat next to a salt marsh, crossed a small waterfall, and observed in amazement a large tree recently felled by a beaver, now leading into a river.  My walk, which started under a cloudy and misty fall sky, followed a path of rectangular blazes, recently screwed into the trunks of

pines, oaks, and aspens; first yellow, then red, a short loop of blue, white, and back to yellow again. The trails are new, just a few years old, and you can get lost pretty quick if you loose sight of the markings, like I did a year ago. After an hour into my walk, and becoming totally immersed in my surroundings, I think to myself, this is where, when that time comes, I’d like to rest for eternity, on a soft bed of yellow pine needles, with the sound of a brook cascading over glacial stones and chickadees singing and dancing from tree to tree.