This bear and her cub have, however, given us a gift. In this time of social distance, our mutual delight in the bears is bringing our neighborhood together.
This is the state we find ourselves in now: a liminal state, where, in the absence of certainty in our present and future lives, we look for what we can count on for stability outside of ourselves.
Yet at the present moment, as in the forest, we are learning that all of us live in equipoise between life and death, albeit some with more protections than others.
Then we realized that the sound came from below, from the pond, and there they were: hundreds of frogs floating and darting on the surface of the water, croaking their hearts out.
Yet March brings the cruelty of delayed anticipation, of yearning for signs of new beginnings, of suspension between the end of one thing and the beginning of the next.
To read the previous chapters of ‘Illuminating the Hidden Forest,’ click here.
During the winter, the forest is spare. We can look through the trees at...
We haven’t been in the woods for many days, Lily and I. I soon saw the wisdom of that absence in the downed limbs and needled branches littering the fresh snow.
For me, winter in the Berkshires involves quite a bit of curling up on a window seat in my snug den, maybe with a book in hand, my dog lying on my tummy, looking forward to an afternoon nap and an early bedtime.
