The path curves through the forest, right now leading me steeply down and to the right, curving around a rise that would have been too difficult to attack directly. It's clear this path isn't used often - it's barely worn, just enough to suggest a general direction. Random patches of weeds and grass snake across it, threatening to, at least eventually, pull the trail back into obscurity. And even though I've walked this way many times before, my feet haven't learned from the experience. They're never sure what to expect - a new jumble of roots, sticks and pebbles appears under each step.
Far above my head, the foliage has tangled itself into a dense web of green and brown. Sturdy trunks rise up to support the mass, lifting the covering into the air. This is the kind of scenery that moves by slowly. Patterns appear, then, moments later, reappear, only slightly modified.
I've been looking forward to a peaceful stroll through the woods for some time now. Goodness knows, I've needed it. The load at work was slowly wearing me down. The irritations that come from disagreements and conflicting desires were building up. My attention was becoming overwhelmed with traffic, bills, chores, errands. The world, it seemed, was scraping me raw, like an absent-minded carpenter sanding a poor, dumb piece of furniture while his thoughts were somewhere else.
So I left the house this morning with high expectations, sure that the gentle breezes, bird songs, and friendly beauty of the forest would work their magic, smooth the prickly bristles back down and help me return to a state of mind I'd enjoyed several times in the past, a state where I feel not just rested, not merely prepared to make my way through the next effort thrown at me me by the world, but fully rested, the peace of soul a good king might feel, sitting quietly on his throne after a full day of wise decisions.
But even kings have bad days. I've been walking for some time now and have witnessed a good share of richly colored vistas, heard plenty of bird songs. A mockingbird, throwing out an apparently endless string of copied warblings dazzles me through the sheer effort of his overlapping feats of memorization and performance.
But while I can certainly appreciate the technical brilliance of the bird's performance - I can barely believe that such a tiny being can hold such encyclopedic knowledge - in the deeper recesses of my heart, in the place where thoughts, like water slipping into vapor, turn into a kind of soft bedrock, I still feel weak and withered, as if I had foolishly wandered out into a desert, and haven't had anything to eat or drink for days.
I look up, and, expecting to find nourishment, I find only leaves.
And not just leaves, but something less than leaves, mere objects, things that have just happened along and, apart from any reason, have decided to alight here, bringing along only a physical presence and nothing more than that. The beautiful forest has gone dull, flat and blank, has become a tangle lacking even an evil purpose, existing, but not caring whether it trips me up or not.
But it cared the last time I was here, didn't it? I remember, clearly, the peace I felt, not so much hiking the path, but floating down it. My thighs always sting with the strain of a long outdoors stroll, but there are times when that strain seems not to weigh me down but to spur me on, brings on a confidence that things that would normally limit me, don't at the moment, that I can find the wherewithal to move on, even enjoying the burden of carrying my body across the frustrating, uneven surface of the earth.
But not today. Today my muscles have resisted every impulse to move forward and my heart is finding it difficult to understand why it's being asked to beat so hard. My body needs constant convincing, and, as much as I might hope to the contrary, I seem to have lost track of the point, too. It's flown away, pushing off a branch like a wild bird that's been eyeing the over-confident hunter all along.
This realization brings me to a halt. I stop, standing awkwardly in the middle of the trail, hearing breezes swirl in the treetops above me. The force of the wind pushes through the leaves, making them crackle for a moment. The sound is distant, like it's coming from a seperate world, one that I've only heard of in stories. The gust passes and the sound stops, leaving everything silent as if the surrounding oxygen had suddenly been sucked away.
Discouraged, I wander off the trail, distractedly kicking my way through ankle deep brush. I try, half-heartedly, to figure things out, but nothing occurs to me - I have to give up finding my own way through the woods. The only thoughts that remain are the leftovers of previous mental efforts. Bits and pieces lay scattered across my brain, like the floor of a child's room. I can see the phrases of a Psalm I was thinking through this morning, taken apart and rearranged in an attempt to make the syntax more clear.
"But You, O Lord...are my glory..."
That grafted together phrase didn't make sense this morning as I thought through its individual pieces - What is glory? I wondered. Astonishing beauty, perhaps. Furthermore, it says that the Lord is the source of any beauty I might possess. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't see anything deeper than the words themselves - they comprised a couple of facts, listed one after the other, nothing more than that.
But now, surrounded by the rubble of other, failed beauties, my earlier expectations ruined, I'm beginning to see where the source of true beauty lies.
I turn around and slowly make my way back to the trail, continuing my train of thought. Unnoticed, somehow, the woods around me have begun to revive themselves, are working their way back to being beautiful again.
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