Anti-Aircraft Peak Loop — Friday, Jan. 15, 2021

“Thk thk thk.”

I called to a small woodland creature rummaging among the sticks and leaves just beyond the trail. The forest was thick with brush. Felled trees. Shrubberies. The trunks of young, thin saplings stretching upward, vying for a place among their cousins. The dense vegetation, tangled and impenetrable, resembled some kind of Visigoth barricade.

I continued a few more paces down Lost Beagle Trail, then decided to take momentary respite beside a decaying tree trunk.

I had a drink of water from my canteen and pulled a bit of biscuit from my rucksack. I broke off some small crumbs and tossed them to the ground a few feet from where I sat.

“Care for lunch?” I asked aloud, hoping to steal a glance of the little chipmunk foraging among the briers.

The clouds moved swiftly overhead. Nebulous shapes merging and splitting, crashing into one another like waves, small wisps of cloud dissolving like sea spray. But the drama overhead belied the serenity of the forest floor. There was no breeze to speak of. The spindly, leafless branches of the alder stands stood eerily silent, their trunks a fixed patchwork of lichens white, gray, and green.

I turned around to look at the massive tree stump behind me, a towering shard that seemed to force its way up out of the ground. The stump sat rotting, splinters of wood crumbled at its base. It had become a home for mites and a hidden pantry of stashed twigs and tree cones.

Is a decaying tree trunk a paradigm of obstination? Do its roots stubbornly cling to rock and soil in defiance of Nature’s unforgiving elements? Or has the tree trunk long since relented, finding gentle peace in the slow moldering of its own person? The idle ponderings of an old man, no doubt.

The distant chitterings of my hungry rodent friend had faded. The forest stood quiet. I waited. What for, I cannot say. When communing with nature waiting is axiomatic.