It Isn’t Walden’s Pond Essay by B. Lynne Zika

 

It Isn’t Walden’s Pond

Essay by B. Lynne Zika

A rare walk in the woods this afternoon. I could blame that rarity on age and the fact that my disks have given up even dreaming of cushioning, but the real culprit is La Tique, seed tick in these parts. I live alone, which means no neck, back, or hairline check when I get home. If I manage to be a host (hostess?) to Charlie, we might be stuck together awhile before I become aware of our partnership. He wouldn’t even have the courtesy to ask if he could join me.

The trees were too glorious to resist today, though. Milder weather (yes, global warming is real, Mr. ex-President) means a later explosion of color—all the reds, pinks, pines, junipers, mosses, oranges and, there and there and there, the sunlit yellows. My dog Jack and I stepped over our usual rotting log and through the doorway of Alabama woodland. Forgive me if I wax poetic. It’s that kind of place.

The trees in uncut forests are tall. I’ve spent much time walking the woods of Alabama in the last fifty years, and I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen a fat tree here. They grow thin and tall when no one weeds them. Do you weed trees? Well, Mr. Trump believed in sweeping the forest floor. Perhaps I could ask him whether woods are weeded. He’s probably busy with lawsuits and undercover campaigns. I suppose I should leave him alone. At any rate, I enjoy the neck craning, but the things that really delight me about Bama woods (we don’t say “forest” here, just as we don’t say “stream”) are all the loops and circles and curlicues.

One branch resembles an upside-down fishhook, designed to catch a cardinal or a finch, softly though. Another is a question mark. I’m not sure if it’s asking something specific (“How long’s winter this year?”) or existential (“Think you that you will ever see a poem lovely as a tree?” or “When will they ever learn?” ). One lovely creature sweeps in an arc all the way to the ground, bowing to its own beauty.

The woods were too littered with the detritus of autumn today (I’m waxing poetic again) for me to find my usual path to the pond. I wandered along what appeared to be a trail, and then I backed up and tried again. And again. About the time I should have been spotting the sheen of water through the trees, I saw the sun shining on the trusty silver. Hm … Not water. It was a woodland mobile home, stretched out with patchwork sheets of tin. Exactly the sort of place where meth is made. This was not good. I turned around. Getting the hell out of there took priority over finding the pond. I walked as quietly as a forest floor of crunching leaves would allow, hoping I wouldn’t be hearing a shotgun blast behind me.

Actually, I did hear one, fortunately off in the distance. Some man shooting deer. I hoped he was only trying to shoot a deer and that his aim was as skewed as a discarded Slinky.

I can understand men’s primitive impulse to hunt, but I’m a woman. I go for creating, not killing; growing things, not gathering trophies. I tend to think if you love something, you take care of it, often above your own needs or well-being, possibly even over your own life, metaphorically or literally. I once believed men felt the same way. I was wrong.

I fell in love with a fellow who lived on and owned the prettiest piece of land in Alabama. You needn’t take my word for it. It’s where the first cabin of European settlers coming to Alabama was built, not to mention the site of a Native American settlement before The Trail of Tears. I fell in love with—I’ll call him Luke—the land Luke owned as much as I fell in love with him. Walking those woods, every cell in my body proclaimed my identity externalized in the land around me. More than my identity. My very self.

However, as happens in a quirky life, the fellow was not up to the dance. The details are immaterial. Suffice it to say the thing fell apart. I thought I might fall apart in having to leave that exceptional land. When the gentleman in question told me he intended to bequeath the place to his sister if he died before she did, I wanted to yell . She doesn’t understand this place! She has no idea of its magic! She’ll sell it to a developer so she can take a trip to Europe, and it will be gone forever! At least leave it to someone who will preserve it! Yes, I admit I was also thinking, “Like me.” I moved on. I heard a few years later he’d died of a heart attack, alone on his land. I don’t know what his sister did with it.

I know what I did with it all, though. I wrote a poem. It’s a paltry thing in comparison to that place—to the enormity of its beauty. It doesn’t begin to address that enormity. A poem is small.

I pass it along, though, with my hard-won appreciation that such places are and that I got to be with it for a while. The poem:

The Courage of Your Conviction

How beautiful we were—

feasts for the dragon,

our arms and legs braided

as a loaf of glazed bread

gleaming on an autumn table.

A soft wind arranged my hair

into tiny fishes darting among streams,

your muscled arms gathering me for harvest.

She rose from her riverbed voracious,

a queen collecting her due.

I thought love meant giving all,

throat bared,

everything exposed; you whispered,

“Yes, my darling,”

and stripped me wordless.

How beautiful we were in the moonlight

as you lay me on glistening sand,

arranging my limbs in a perfect attitude of love,

and called to the dragon

and ran for all you were worth.