Voices in the Woods

It is a mid winter day and I'm walking along a trail in the woods. The temperature is just peeking it's head above freezing. The sun is stretching it's long arms down through the pine boughs in front on me. Powdered snow drifts from the trees over head like sand sifting through fingers.

The air smells that special kind of wet. The wet that comes during a thaw. When you pull the air into your nose, like water on a parched throat, and suddenly you remember what things smell like when they don't smell like snow.

I don't know what I am doing here.

I've been looking for something but I'm not sure what it is.

For the past three weeks I've been setting aside a day to go for a walk in the woods. I've got my camera with me. A film camera. Loaded with film I bought twenty years ago. The camera is new. The film is not.

My boots crunch into the snow underfoot. I tuck my nose down into my scarf and listen to the battle being fought inside me.

What am I doing here? I should be working. Maybe I can sell these pictures?

But I know what will happen if I let those thoughts gain too much ground. I won't take any pictures.

I know this for certain because twenty years ago I walked down this same path. I was in college, I was working two jobs, and I was about to graduate with a degree in photography. I was spending a precious half morning off, walking this trail, hoping to take pictures that I could assign value to. Something for a grade. Something to sell. Something I could find to prove I wasn't wasting my time.

Twenty years ago I walked this path on a cold day like today. Then I went home and put my camera away. Put my leftover film in a box. And I didn't pick them up again. Because I didn't think I was going to find what I was looking for.

There is this other voice inside me. I hear it’s echos from inside storage boxes, old film canisters rolling around the bottom. It calls to me from battered folios to page though my old work, and try on the eyes of the different person I was.

It is calling to me now. Walking me down this path. It's telling me I don't have to find something. I just have to look for it.

Yet still there is the battle. The path is plowed. I'm not going to find what I'm looking for on a path that's plowed. The sun is wrong. I won't find anything worth keeping when the sun is like this.

I head deeper into the woods. A smaller trail. Narrow and deep. The edges of the footprints I'm following are rounded with the previous night's snowfall.

Still that voice persists.

Maybe down by the water? I've walked this trail before. It doesn't go anywhere good. Just more trees. Too many trees. They aren't interesting.

I hear a knock to my right. Distant. A hammer maybe? The pop of a nailgun?

Even out here I can't get away from the sounds of modern life. I won't find what I'm looking for out here listening to construction noises. I should head back. How far is it back to the car?

Another knock. A hollow tock that rolls down the hills like snow melt. Gravity pulling it into the shallow valleys between the roots and shale.

It's closer now. To my left and ahead of me. I stop and listen waiting for the rush of wind through the dry branches to quiet. Silence.

A bird? A woodpecker maybe. Looking for frozen bugs under frozen bark. But just one knock?

I stand quiet. The voice that brought me here is quiet. The voice telling me to turn back is quiet. We stand there in the quiet and off in the distance I can hear the edge of a breeze stirring the tops of the trees.

It works it's way down towards me and I can hear it eddy through the hills around me. Reaching down from the tips of branches and washing among the roots and then...

tock.

It's behind me now. On a hill above me. I turn scanning the tree line and then there is another. Far away. Then a series of them high up the incline from me. A rapid staccato.

tock tock tock tock.

I'm following them now. Further up into the wooded hills along a footpath. The snow is getting deeper and I'm starting to wonder if this is a good idea.

I can hear them more now. All around me. It's like they are talking to each other. It's haunting.

I'm still walking but now I'm thinking about things in the woods. I'm remembering the name miners had for the mysterious knocks they'd hear down in the mines. Tommyknockers. Imps. Ghosts of dead miners calling a warning or an invitation. I imagine little gnarled faces turning as I pass, skin the color of the tree bark they cling to.

I come out into a clearing, sure that I've wandered too far, and find a picnic table.

It's like a spell is broken. Who would put a picnic table out here? I must not be as far as I thought.

The wind dies and quiets. I quiet. The air feels empty absent the hollow knocks.

A crow takes wing. Followed by others. Their disdainful caws breaking the stillness.

What am I doing here? It's a long walk back to the car. I haven't taken any good pictures.

Up ahead the path bends away to the left. Standing there on the corner is a tree. Halfway up, its trunk branches in two forming a tight V. Two narrow trunks sticking up in the air like the legs of a diver plunging below the loam into the deeper earth.

The wind kicks up and this tree groans a timber groan and suddenly I'm trying to figure out which way the tree is going to fall and I'm thinking about how far it is back to the car and how I don't even know how to tell anyone where I am. Then the wind stops and the tree doesn't fall. It settles back into its roots and I hear it.

Tock.

The trunks, swaying as they settle. The two dry and ice covered trunks meet, stick together for a breath, and then separate with a clear hollow tock.

I stand there looking up at this tree. The wind wraps around us and I can see it happen. A chorus of knocks. It like the tree is celebrating. Yes. Yes, you found me.

I grab my phone and I start to record. The wind blows and the tree stands there silent. Stubborn. The crows crow. Their laughter filling the air.

I stand there for minutes, my phone clutched in my numbing fingers, recording, and waiting for the next breeze. The tree stays silent.

Thwarted I put my phone away. I stand there for another moment. The blue sky is broken by streaming clouds rushing along in the wind. The crows flit among the branches above. The sun is angling lower but I can still feel it's parting warmth on the exposed skin of my face. The trees remain silent and I remain silent too. Quiet.

Then I decide it really is time to head back. I turn and walk out of the clearing, back down hill, following my backward footprints that led me here.

From behind me as I go I hear one single departing knock.