In the dark

I still wanted to spend more time with the tree and her incipient grove. So, that night after we had eaten and Gary and Elise had gone to bed, I walked out into the field and climbed onto one of the branches that rests on the ground.

I switched off the torch and waited.

With my feet and body off the ground, I was quiet and less obtrusive.

At times, I could hear rustling in the leaf-litter. It could have been anything from a mouse to a deer.

I sat. I listened. I looked into almost blackness. I felt myself still. I felt myself quiet.

Just the ghost of movement. Though the branch stretched to the ground, my weight pushed it closer and it was still bouncing slightly. The elasticity of it seemed... astonishing... as I was sure I could feel it respond to my breathing or my heartbeat... as though the tree moved with me in the night.

One thought: how different to be here in this nature-empoverished land. Were I in North America, there could be bears, wolves, cougars, coyotes, wolverines, snakes. But here... a badger or a fox! And Gary and Elise say they have seen neither in years.

All that inhabited this one-day grove were once-upon-a-time animals...

Were bats flittering above me? Did mice and voles and shrews move without sound beneath my hanging feet?

I don't know how long I sat there, suspended between realms, as the high clouds parted to reveal the brilliant stars above a countryside unspoiled by light pollution. As the noise of the distant roads and closer lanes intruded on the peace. As the world turned and my mind emptied.

In the previous few days, I had been looking into wildlife watching tours. One in Montenegro where you can join a group of researchers and hike for ten days tracking lynx, wolf, brown bear. You need to be a group, not a single person. But really. That money. An experience, for sure, even if you saw no charismatic predators and how wonderful if you did.

Or you can sit in the dark, for free, with a tree, and fill your soul and know in your heart all that is lost and all that maybe can be. The good and the bad of the future. It will all come. It will all come.