On the things we leave behind

There are some places on the land that we visit so often that I am certain they carry our DNA. Places we are, become like us. This forest has been cared for by our family for well over a hundred years now. My son walks paths that I walked at his age, that my father walked at my age, that my father’s mother walked at my father’s age. My great grandfather and his father before him. Caretakers. 

We walk along the pine, growing impossibly straight, past another, wider than all five of us put together. A true Mother Tree. She knows us. She has been there so long she has seen generations of us grow up around her - my father, me, my son. Easily a centenarian. I stroke her rough bark with the love I offer my son when I rub his back, and gaze at her crown. Orange evergreen needles soften our footfalls and cushion our soles. 

It is late fall now. You can tell because the birch trees and most of the poplars are bare. The junipers come in yellow only once the other colours have dropped. It’s clever, really. They don’t have to compete with the deciduous trees. Our day is yellow, grey, green, and hints of blue sky here and there. 

This is the last of these days for this year. This will be the last 20 degree day in October. The last 20 degree day in 2023, I’m willing to bet. I’m still wearing a linen shirt and my son and husband are both in shorts. These days of warm autumn are my favourite. I could live in October forever. Even the grey rainy days. 

We spend a lot of time at the brook. My son plays in the water, soaking his sneakers, socks, and his shorts. He doesn’t need the small bridge my uncle put in. He’s fine making his own way. Charlie splashes in and out of the water, soaking himself through, while Odie does wormies in the sand. Small rapids less terrifying than waves, Clover manages to get her feet wet. 

I try to move ahead of this chaos. I try to take it all in before it gets traipsed and trampled. I spot a single deer track in the sand. A thrill. Soon is it joined with our footprints and a myriad of dog prints. We have covered the sand and mud in prints of ourselves. 

Eventually my son tires of playing in the water. He is hungry. It’s nearly two. We go back the way we came, protected under the canopy of the trees. I go around mud puddles, while my son goes through them. Two of the dogs race along around us, the sticks they carry hitting me in the  legs as they go. The sun’s dappled lights coming through the canopy. Clover runs off after a stick my father hasn’t yet thrown. Charlie finds a small log he carried with him on the way in. Odie walks along with us, his white face glowing amid the shadows. Three generations under generation upon generation of trees. 

N xx