Midstokke: Getting lost in the balm of the forest

It’s been awhile since I’ve been on a real adventure and I’m starting to wonder if I’ve lost the gift or the gumption or both.

Though unlikely, I could just be getting smarter and better at reading maps. I cannot recall the last time I thought I was lost – which is less than when others think I’m lost and that’s less than I actually am lost.

The trick is to move in a serpentine so your companions don’t notice you’re crossing your old tracks.

Running in the sleepy morning air today, I wondered if it is an age thing. Am I just buried in the current tasks of life or are those days behind me? How do we know when we’re doing something for the last time?

There are instances when that is the hope. I have run my last marathon at least a half-dozen times, each one with a promise that, should I survive, I would never inflict such suffering upon myself again.

In November, I received a last letter. It was lovely, as they all were. I threw it away after I read it, like I always do. Now the author is gone and I cannot remember what the last letter said, only that when I read her words, I heard her voice. In her handwriting was the evidence of our 30-year friendship: Her script remained forever that of the teenager I met so long ago.

I don’t know how to get that back, but I do know I won’t be throwing letters away anymore.

It feels too early in my life to be staring into the voids of space left by the departed. At this rate, my life will be a vacuum in no time, a black hole where the only memories of me are the ones I haven’t forgotten. Or letters someone kept, dusty in a shoe box at the back of an abandoned closet.

In the forest this morning and every morning, we meet both the fragility of the world and its resilience. We see what is completing its cycle and what is just beginning. We’re acutely aware that all this will remain for much of our lifetime, but maybe not for those to come. Like falling in love, it’s a bittersweet joy. To appreciate something means to be aware of its inevitable loss.

I curse the rumble and whoosh of cars from the distant highway, how the noise vibrates its way up the canyon to my ears when all my eyes can see is wilderness. It invades the space invisibly, crowds my idea of solitude.

It’s not the hum of morning traffic that scares the small herd of white-tailed deer, rather it’s my almost silent patter down the path. The brown dog picks up her ears and follows their bright plumage with her eyes without breaking stride. She’s not feeling well today, which I attribute to the amount of “sticks” she’s been gnawing on after snatching them from under the chop saw.

The run was intended as medicine for us both. Sequestered to a job site and covered in a perpetual coat of fine saw dust, our outdoor time has primarily been in transition between my car and wherever I’m buying my pastries. Pastries, I have decided, are the food of construction projects. I eat every one as if it may be my last one.

The trees sway in a warm wind that drowns out the trucks from time to time. I watch Freya’s pace and mood with a measure of anxiety. Someday, we’ll go on our last run. I don’t know if it will be hers or mine, but it will be our last one together. When people ask me how old she is, I say, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

The Buddhists would point out that our suffering is the result of attachment. My problem is that I am attached to attachment. If in doubt, ask me how I feel about my espresso machine. I started shopping for one the minute I lived in a house where a 1,500 watt pull for a double-shot wouldn’t dim the lights. I go into nature to remember that whatever I am attached to, I also belong to. Sometimes the immersion works and I succumb to contentment.

If only I could approach life like my dog. The only thing that matters to her is this very moment. She always stops to smell with canine fascination the scented messages of other dogs. Even this morning her joy is apparent in her wag, which sends her own scented evidence of nutritional debauchery my way and nearly knocks me over. I can’t help but laugh, even as my eyebrows are singed off.

The chortle gag from behind alerts her, and my trusty service dog comes bounding back to me with a mix of enthusiasm and concern.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I say. But I’m not. Freya tucks in next to me because she knows when I’m lying.

Loss feels palpable right now, as if the skin of reason has been abraded from me, exposing to the elements these raw and excoriated emotions. Grief leads me on its winding path of surprise vistas – the kind where you think you’re fine and then a memory or realization has you weeping against a damp tree.

Please, I think to myself, let me find one letter, tucked away, somewhere.

Maybe in my own dusty boxes of forgotten correspondence, I’ll find her.

We leap over the thawing, marshy land from squishy grass mound to squishy grass mound. It feels like wandering a different planet. We stray from the trail because it’s too wet and muddy. Then we wander a little farther because the edge of the creek is inviting and the moving water makes the sound of renewal. The early retreat of winter leaves terrestrial wonders to be discovered.

When I look up from the ground, I realize the trail is gone. I almost sigh with relief.

With any luck, we’ll still be getting lost for a while.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com.