Of The Past

I stomped through the white, breaking the icy crust hidden a few inches below the powdery bed. In the sparse underbrush of winter I could not find the trail. I navigated by memory – the stream tunneling below the surface like a winter vole, breaking hibernation just long enough to satisfy a sleeping hunger, runs parallel with the now invisible trail, the mid-afternoon sun stays to my left. In the hemlock grove I ignored the broken tracks deer pressed into the snow as they wandered off the mountain to tear at manicured shrubs.

I listened. It could have been the echo of my own existence, mocking the thump and crack of each step. But it was lazy deer, disturbed by my lone presence. Nearby the cold waters trickled over black rocks and gurgled as if trying to gasp a last breath of life before it succumbed to the hardness of short days and colder nights.

An old No Trespassing sign, half frosted in snow and faded by years of light that managed to filter through the needles of coniferous, clung to a pine. If I had never been here I would have wondered why the sign marked a place where ownership seemed as foreign as summer.

Progress through the woods was slow. Although it was mid-afternoon, daylight would soon rest. My navigation light would be the rising moon, if I soon didn’t find the trail. I stood still again, to listen. Four deer thundered into the depths of the hemlocks, tails flashing like lightening.

The heat from my exertion rose from layers of modern technology. I opened my outer jacket and removed my woolen cap. Steam fogged my glasses turning the woods into a dreamy blur. I paused to wipe the lenses with a dish towel taken from the kitchen before I left the house.

Across the stream a marker caught my eye. A metal can top painted yellow. Home made. I smiled. I knew the boy who left the trail, and imagined him with hammer, tacking tin to tree the fringe from his Daniel Boone vest dancing in a late autumn breeze. But the blaze did not follow the logging trail I searched for.

Tiring, I trudged on, crossed more deer paths and found their beds pawed to earth, and places where droppings and urine indiscriminately told of living beasts. More thunder crashed through the trees and melted into the distance where all things come together.

I found the old trail, a place where time had yet to grow a tree. The walking wasn’t easier, but now I knew I’d be home before the full moon rose. A deer trail merged with the path. I fell into the broken crust to find the going less tiresome.

Toward the east the mountain’s ridge dropped sharply and yielded a panorama of low mountains rising beyond the Hudson Valley. The last bits of daylight splintered over the foothills leading into Vermont. Below the base of what was once the highest mountain in the world, Hagadorn’s Mountain, laid the roof tops of familiar buildings, the old one room school house, Grey’s Barn, my father’s house. Here I waited with the memories of Mohicans, French trappers and English settlers, of Indian raids and revolutions and a little girl who dreamt of bears and badgers.

The sun light caught the tips of the trees still wearing a coat of ice. The branches glistened and looked like a thousand gossamers spread across the sky. Time to come off the mountain and leave this place behind.