I spent some time in the timber today, and at one point was in an area choked with honeysuckle and littered with downed trees. What should have been a clear and easy walk required climbing and crawling. The logical, expected way was blocked with dead trees in various stages of decay. Some trees snapped in the wind, some were victim to falling trees — collateral damage in the woods, and others had lived long tree lives. However the trees had come down, there were many.
When I was a child, this area of the timber was an easy walk, free of frustration. When my own children were young, we clambered up and down these same hills, unimpeded by honeysuckle or briars. Nothing stood in our way. A fallen tree was a natural balance beam across a ditch, a bucking bronco to be tamed, or a good place to take a break. A fallen tree was part of the fun. A fallen tree was just another way to get to the next spot.
Now, a fallen tree is an obstacle to be navigated. Over? Under? Around? Through? And the timber is full of fallen trees, honeysuckle, and briars. There is no easy path. I will be scratched. I will stumble and fall. Embedded thorns will fester. Now, the timber is messy. Unfriendly.
It’s easy to glance around in search of a path, but see only obstacles — huge trees with last summer’s leaves dry and curled on brittle branches, long-dead trees lying bare, their bark in a heap on the ground. An ancient redbud, gnarled and mostly dead, tangled in fallen limbs. Each one blocking our way.
My life feels loaded with obstacles; no path seems an easy path. And unlike the climbing games of youth, over, under, and around aren’t options; I must go through. I must go through teary days and days underscored by the ache that lives behind my breastbone — the ache that continues to elicit unwanted, unbidden whimpers when certain thoughts or images enter my mind. I must go through; I have no option.
Many days, the obstacles threaten to defeat me, making truly good — 100% positive — days a memory and a goal, but also a current impossibility. I haven’t figured out how to, without guilt or sorrow, turn away from my reality of my forest litter and search out good. My mind hasn’t navigated this twisty-turny, tree-littered tangle of my life.
The obstacles often dominate my thoughts. Certain tasks are terribly difficult now; thinking and processing, problem solving and creating, have become challenges.
The broken, fallen trees are great in number; I can’t walk the timber without constantly adjusting my path. Damage and death are everywhere.
But today, in an eye-high snarl of vines and limbs and detritus, I saw a flash of pink. Something in that pile of dead and dying timber was a redbud. The main part of the tree bore no buds, but a few shoots had pushed their way into the light and brought buds to the brush pile.
Somehow, in that mess of dead redbud, unwanted honeysuckle, and broken tree, new life drove through the obstacles, found the light, and bloomed.
I want to notice those sprigs of redbud — of life — working their way through obstacles and into light. Maybe I want to be them. And I’m trying. Trying to notice the good, trying to be the good. Still, I cannot turn my back and walk away from the fallen trees; those obstacles are my sadness and guilt and broken heart. Those obstacles are my love. I can’t turn away from my love, but I can appreciate wayward beauty in a desolate pyre of loss.
Woods Writes 