What Is Beyond These Trees?

 

In the course of a day I make two or maybe three trips to the nearby coffee shop.  To get there a follow a path that takes me through a parking lot. At the end of the lot there is a berm that is comprised of spread stone on one side, a divider of 8 foot tall scrubby trees, pine or yew or some other ornamental and then on the other side a strip of mulch. 

 You cannot see the coffee shop through the natural fence as it were.  You can however see the opening in the shrubs.

Each time I walk through that green canopy I wonder about the other times I have approached a copse of trees or a woodlot and have seen a clear path worked through the natural arches formed by the tree’s branches.  

The first time I see a path like that I wonder what lies inside the wood, what lies beyond the wood.  Maybe some people just see the path and dismiss it. Me, I am always intrigued.

I guess some of my intrigue comes from a youthful experience when I went with my parents to pick up my siblings from a church camp.  At the camp there was a stand of scrubby pine.  As a young lad I wandered off into those fragrant pines. In a clearing in the middle there was a tiny chapel hardly bigger that a tool shed.  It was painted white inside and out and had a door that was ajar.  Looking inside there in a space that was six by six there was red carpet on the floor. A small cross was nailed to the wall opposite the door and standing before it was a kneeler for prayer.  I had never seen anything like it.  It was a holy place hidden away deep in the trees. God lived in a small hut in the woods.

After that I frequently followed the trails I saw running under the verdant foliage. As the years have gone on I have found party spots with empty beer cans and used rubbers near a large puddle deep inside the trees.  I have found honest to goodness Zen gardens. I have found a path that led to the wire fence that prohibited me from wandering onto the freeway as a pedestrian.  Sometimes I have simply walked through the woods and come out the other side at the edge of green fields or flowering fields or at the back of tract housing. On one walk through the woods I came upon five waters falls.  I later learned that there are seven if I had only just kept going the extra mile or so.  

Maybe the path through the trees is a metaphor for life.  Maybe I am just looking for the mystery at the center of all that surrounds me. As long I keep walking I will keep following these paths.

  Oh and there was that one time when the bear sat blocking the path. Another metaphor for life.