I went to the woods to...

Left: Walden Pond

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
-- Henry David Thoreau

It snowed a few inches the other night and I just had to get out into the woods and "live deliberately," if only for an hour. I wasn't exactly in a dense woods; civilization was only a quarter of a mile away. But, I got to thinking: Oh shit, what if I have a heart attack out here? I sat down on a fallen tree and wrote this:

Alone
Winter blackness
When the wind
Turns from the north
The falling snow
Gently touches me
As if to announce its presence
Without startling
My Memory

Looking forward
A virgin path into the woods
Inviting me to leave a moment
And live this moment
On my journey
Looking back
The snow fills
The void of
My memory

Each step
Satiated by drifting
Snow
The next day's sun melting
All evidence of my odyssey:
When I make my final footprint
On this earth
Will anybody even know
My Memory?

(After a hike in the Wesselman's Woods after dartk. 1/17/08)

I love and admire their spirit, but I honestly don't know how Thoreau, Boone, Kenton or the other great woods-knights did it.

Sir Bowie of Greenbriar