November 1, 2008

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  Years ago, I fell in love with a poem called “The Marshes of Glynn”
  by Sidney Lanier, an 19th-century musician and poet from Georgia, and
  I've tucked away lovely bits of it in a mental apron pocket.
     In his
  lyrical verses about the salt marshes that divide the Sea Islands of
  Glynn County, Georgia, from the mainland, Lanier celebrates the island
  forests, as well. He describes their “beautiful glooms, soft dusks in
  the noon-day fire ...”
  

  
  

  His description of the woods, especially of
  the interplay of light and dark, has stayed with me, and I think of his
  words often when I'm walking through our own Ozarks woods that remind
  me of the poet's “braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine
  ...”
  

  
  

     Lanier loved the forests of coastal Georgia  — his “dim, sweet woods ... the dear, dark woods” — like I love ours.
  Doyle
  and I went back to the Schermerhorn Trail near Compton for a leisurely
  hike on Sunday — a cool, breezy, shiny-golden October day. I don't
  think I've ever been on a prettier walk. The buttery sunshine poured
  through the woods canopy, making the leaves glow like stained glass in
  every shade of green, gold, yellow, orange and red. The wind was just
  shifting around to the north as it prepared to blow a cold front
  through, so the leaves were trembling in the breeze and letting go of
  their twigs to flutter down like soft, jewel-toned rain.
  

  
  

     Through the
  forest's shade — Lanier's “emerald twilights” — slanting sunbeams
  darted through here and there, spotlighting and transforming a branch
  of yellow leaves to melted gold, turning a fallen red leaf to a glowing
  ember.
  

  
  

  For my husband and me, walking through our own “dim, sweet
  woods” is the ideal way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and this time of
  year, the hiking is close to perfect. The air is cool and fresh, the
  bugs are just about gone, and even the poison ivy is fading away. And
  best of all, the fall leaves turn the woods into a colorful
  kaleidoscope.
  

  
  

     When I'm walking in the woods, my worries fall away,
  my problems evaporate and my priorities seem to shift back into their
  proper order.
     I believe Sundays are supposed to be special days,
  days when we don’t work, days when we honor the God who made us, and
  rest, and refresh our spirits, and spend time with those we love.
  Walking in the woods is a way for me to do all of those things.
  

  
  

     When
  we're hiking, Doyle and I don't talk much — we just walk, and think,
  and try to absorb our surroundings. I stop often to shoot photos, and
  he waits patiently while I kneel down to shoot a close-up of a red
  leaf, or zoom in on a spiderweb shining in a late-afternoon sunbeam.
  

  
  

     At
  one point in our walk Sunday, my husband wanted to venture off the
  trail and go up a hill to the top of a ridge we could see through the
  trees. He led the way, and I followed along, picking my way over fallen
  limbs, crunching through dried leaves, using a springy branch for a
  walking stick.
     When we got to the top, we discovered it wasn't a
  bluff, as we'd thought, but just the crest of a hill that fell off
  steeply on the other side. The view was lovely. Far away, across the
  wooded valley, blue hills faded into the distance.
     On the hilltop, I
  found myself standing under a little maple tree whose leaves were
  painted in Christmas colors — bright greens and Santa-Claus reds. The
  wind was shifting to the north, and the cheerful leaves were trembling
  as they were blown upward like an old-fashioned lady's skirts.
  

  
  

  Under that maple tree, I made a conscious effort to just feel, to soak in the experience.
     The
  wind was fresh, almost cold. The late-afternoon sunshine was glowing
  through the leaf canopy. The bright leaves were dancing over my head as
  I looked up. The smell of the woods was of drying leaves, of north
  wind, of both living wood and dying. All I could hear was rustling
  leaves and the whoosh of the wind through a million trees. Red and gold
  leaves let go of their twigs and floated free, like tiny kites released
  by cheering children.
     We made our way back down the hill and found
  the trail again. As we headed back to our car, the sun was low in the
  sky, slanting through the woods, silhouetting the trees’ trunks and
  branches as we looked to the west, and setting the leaves on fire.
  

  
  

  “But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
  And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
  And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
  Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream ...”
  That Georgia poet would’ve loved our Ozarks woods.

  By Celia DeWoody
  Copyright 2008 Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times
  Published Oct. 29, 2008
  
  
  

  • 10:03 pm
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