The woods are performing extraordinary feats of weirdness lately. It’s beautiful to watch, to witness, to walk out into and dawdle in. The understory of the forest is burning away in the cold nights and hot days of September revealing everything I never noticed during the fat lush green of the summer months. Each morning, I like to walk out on the road that runs East of the Little Cabin In The Woods. Apparently there are plots of purchased land there where someday someone may eventually build cabins. I am thankful such a thing hasn’t happened yet. I like to be on the end of the road, tucked away and secret. This road of mine leading East from the cabin is a road that is being reclaimed by the forest. In point of fact, it’s more of a path now in many places, two track absorbed by grasses, shrubs and toadstools. To make my way down the road, I scramble over and under fallen douglas fir, scoot under widow makers, scamper through thick alder, scrape my way through wild rose. It’s a jumbly, tumbly, fresh way to begin my morning. I call it “heading out to the Tabernacle” (I’ve always loved the sound of that word) where the trees rise like the graceful arches in ancient cathedrals and I bow my head and shut my eyes when I feel the Holy descend on my shoulders like doves.
There is much to see in the morning light and oh! The morning light! The way it falls and filters silver and gold through the timber, like someone far away in the sky is playing a glockenspiel and I see only a glimmer of the glinting tune falling through clear sky to land softly on pine and fir duff. It’s exquisite. It rained this morning and the world is wet with bright contrast. The colors are divine, water droplets on leaf faces refract light. The trees are dripping. The moss is especially springy, rising up, plump on rainfall, merry little sprockets.
With all the rain we’ve had tumble to earth lately, there has been a mushroom explosion. I thought to myself this morning, “If the earth laughs in flowers, it burps in mushrooms.” Mushrooms are a sign of earth well watered. They’re heaving up through the forest floor, lumpy and bumpy, mushy and crushy. They’re such surreal little things. Where the forest floor was once settled and relatively smooth, it’s now mumpy with mushrooms. I bend over and inspect each one. Some are larger than my head. Some make minute paths like fairy trails through the mosses. Some are grotesque. Some are darling.
Some are so magical they emit rainbow auras!
I love it here right now. Transition is in the atmosphere. The forest is diligent about changing daily (hourly) and I keep attempting to notice it all. If I only had a thousand eyes, a million noses, a trillion ears, an infinity of touch, I could notice it all and not miss a thing. I could watch the turn and fall of every single leaf, the mottled and burned yellow of the aspen, the festering scent of must and mold, the elegance of the rose hips, the depths of the gills of every mushroom, the dorky antics of the ruffed grouse, the sound of a single leaf releasing the final silken fiber that connects it to the tree corporeal.
I love that you love it so. During a long hike yesterday, it amazed and saddened me to think how many people just don’t *notice* the beauty that surrounds them. How can so many not be awed by their natural surroundings?!
How could I not?!!!
I think people get out of practice…and I think we’re too plugged in.
🙂
the smells of the forest, these are the things that lift my mood so high as I ride the windy quiet highways…
🙂 I know.
I hope you smelled some beautiful things on your ride home.
X
Just so beautiful
X
All of it- gorgeous! I’ve been noticing and revelling in similar changes here in Ohio, although on a smaller scale in the parks around our home. In a couple weeks, we get to head out to the forest to worship for a few days and I am counting the minutes. Thanks, as always, for sharing the beauty in your world.
OH! You are going to have a magnificent time. I think summer camping is overrated! Right now, there aren’t any mosquitoes and it’s blessedly cool at night. Have a grand old camping trip! X
We saw some crazy mushies on our trip through the Redwoods, and just a touch of the change of seasons in the air. There’s nothing quite like that lovely earthy dirty smell in the forest, so different than out here, and every time I go back and smell that smell, it makes me smile. I bet the earth out by your cabin smells amazing!!!
I bet you did!
The forest around the cabin is a wonderful sensory experience. Wish you could visit, sweet lady! X
so much to love in this post…
your ability to describe sensory experiences in such vivid detail has me standing in your forest alongside you, filling my lungs with the damp earthy air and marveling at the rapidly changing sights!
got your letter– it quickened my step on the path to healing!
xx
GOOD.
I live to transport others.
Glad it arrived! I think of you daily!
X
have you read a most sweet & poetically innocent book called: the singing creek where the willows grow by opal whitely?? http://www.amazon.com/Singing-Creek-Where-Willows-Grow/dp/0140237208 it’s written by a young girl in the woods in oregon. i read it once a year or more. she goes to her cathedral in the woods, and brings her pet mice with her. childishly written, but the most beautiful thing i’ve ever read.
I actually have! And it IS so sweet and poetic.
I agree.
If you like that, you’ll LOVE Gene Stratton Porter’s “Girl of the Limberlost” as well as “Freckles”.
Those books of hers were written for dreamers who see tabernacles in the trees…
“Transition is in the atmosphere”.
Yes!!
🙂
Thanks for being here, Karen!
HAHha! burping-earth mushrooms! there’s some really crazy-beautiful ones, here in the hinterlands, pushing their way forth from the deep forest floor….
love all these colours and thoughts and sentiments.
you bring it all home for me….you truly do….
xx
I bet you have some real beauties there! How cold is it getting at night where you are?
X
Oh Jillian, every time I see your delightful, photo-laden posts it reminds me of how much discovering *I* need to do. I love how you can appreciate the grandness of the largest trees, with her arms spread wide open to the sun and the smallest bits growing, lurking out from the forest floor. Thank you for these little visual jaunts into the wilderness. It’s just what this City Girl needs.
xoxo
My pleasure, my absolute pleasure.
XX
Being in the woods is my favorite place to be. It’s my church. I love your appreciation of all things wild. Your “burps in mushrooms” quote is perfect! xo
I love to be on the great northern plains too, and up in the high deserts…I love everything that is wild and outside.
Glad to hear you love some of those spaces too.
X
Jillian, you must have amazing parents. I love your descriptions of nature that surely teach others new appreciations, but your work ethic in your art, gardens, and kitchens is just as profound to me. Love you for sharing so much goodness with so many. Cherie
My parents? My parents are wonderful and very crazy…do we all say that about our parents…right before we become them??? HA HA HA!!!
You are very kind. Thank you. Thank you for being here and for scooping up what I have to offer. I love you for that.
XX
just gorgeous – you write so evocatively about the forest. & how wonderful nature is when we take the time to appreciate it 🙂
I try to take the time as often as possible. 🙂
Thanks for being here, sweets. X