A walk through the woods with my daughter.
A well-marked path.
A step out of time.
Out of time.
With my daughter.
In the shadows and the cool, amongst the trees and the ferns, along the winding path . . . we walk. Sunlight filters through a million leaves and sparkles against the water that runs alongside us. We gaze across small valleys and marvel at the sunlight captured in the floating movement of pollen, of insects, of dust.
We come to a small field filled with tiny yellow flowers, impossibly glossy and brilliant in the light. My daughter picks a single tiny flower to reassure herself that there has not been some sort of trick. She brushes the petal with a fingertip and speaks breathlessly, “It’s like they have been painted with gold!”
There is a bridge, and we stand atop and stare down into the sparkling water beneath.
My daughter drops the tiny yellow flower, and we watch it float away.
She whispers, “It’s like it has a place to go.”
We continue walking, deeper into the woods.
On this well-marked path.
A step out of time.
Out of time.
With my daughter.
She runs ahead to point out a bird. She reaches to pick and taste some blackberries. She runs a gentle finger along the silky back of a giant banana slug. She squats to watch an army of ants take unheard orders and march to a different better place. She points out a mushroom, a beetle, the uncurling of new ferns, a squirrel, seeds from a tree, the footprints of a dog, the hiding place of a snake, the hooting of an owl.
My daughter is attentive to the details.
I am captivated by the larger view . . . by the steps we have taken and where we have arrived.
Out of time.
To a shimmering uncounted moment in which the sunlight is captured by the floating movement of the past and the present and the future.
Captured by the dust of time.
My daughter looks at me, “Whenever we hike in the woods, it’s like you are here and not here at the same time.”
I catch her hand and hold tight, “I am here.”
We walk a bit farther and arrive at a tree.
Or what is left of a tree.
A huge tree stump that stands about eight feet tall, its center mostly missing.
Kallan and I step off of the well-marked path.
A detour.
A step out of time.
Out of time.
And into a small circular room.
The walls of this room are covered in a rough velvet of moss and lichen. The floor is tree flesh turned to mulch. A variety of mushrooms and fungus grow from the floor and from niches in the walls.
Small curled ferns not yet ready to reveal themselves bend shyly at our feet.
A few dark beetles dance.
Slugs go about their slow business.
A millipede skitters into a crevice and is gone.
I see all of this, but I am entranced by the scent of this small round room.
It is the smell of life from death.
It is the smell of magic.
It is, to me, the smell of childbirth.
The smell of my daughters when they sleep.
I turn to my daughter, “Breathe. What do you smell?”
“Moss.”
I say, “pine needles.”
And then we take turns . . . soil, strawberries, water, shadows, electricity, cool, damp, storms, thunder, mist, fog, grass, decay . . . ghosts.
Yes.
This room smells of all those things.
Off the well-marked path.
A detour.
A step out of time.
“Time!”
I turn to my daughter, “What?”
She smiles, “This little secret round room smells like time.”
I stare at her for a moment, unable to speak.
The sun shines down and finds its way through the trees and through the leaves and into our circular hiding place.
We turn our faces to the sun.
I breathe deeply of the time I have left.
And somewhere . . . at about the same time?
In another small rounded room.
In a room with velvety textured walls.
In a room in which life begins.
In a room I imagine smells like time.
A person turns to the light for the last time.
And steps out of time.
Out of time.
