West 2

Here amongst the trees and spiders and streams and leaves and grasses and squirrels and all of the invisible little things that go on about me lightly moving with but the faintest noise through the trees, I feel very very small. As I walk on, the trail becoming ever harder to see beneath my feet, I begin to lose myself to my surroundings as if I were no more substantial than the light breeze that drifts down to me through the limbs of pecan and post oak.
What a glorious thing, that breeze. Such a thing that comes slowly winding along the edge of the stream seeking only to move, unrestrained, unrelenting, never pausing - in passing, kisses moist skin, cooling, soothing. Oh that breeze...you can hear it coming if you listen for it, hear it whispering, smell it, all those things that the animals do. And then it's upon you and it is barely there and yet so substantial, so real. That wind is more real than you or I or anyone else could ever be in this forest, amongst these trees, walking beside this creek. I am glad to meet it.
I walk on, over a gentle rise in the land only to slowly descend again down the other side and into a dry creek bed lined with the fallen leaves of last winter - the sickly sweet smell of rotting leaves floods my senses. I am content.
I walk on, down along this creek bed, stopping occasionally to observe a spider weaving it's intricate web round and round and round or to watch as a small fly struggles to escape, not knowing his doom, only the desire to fly and eat and mate and buzz buzz buzz.... or maybe this little fly knows such terror.....such terror. In this, a land in which I am both stranger and native son, I cannot afford to make such assumptions, to be so rash as to think that with my big brain I must surely know the inner workings of the cluster of nerves - so small - contained within the head of the little fly which already now is being wound tight into a silk coffin. Such things are far too substantial for anything but the most uneducated guess to be made about them, I will leave them at that.
I walk on down past the stream bed and past the little pond into which it dumps its precious cargo of minnows and tadpoles and various little insect larvae in a myriad of shapes and forms, a celebration of life in all its glory....so fragile. It is in this pond that they will grow and eat and breathe - some water, some air - until they become bass or catfish or bullfrogs or mosquitoes or any other number of animals far more at home in this forest than me. They belong here, I do not. But it is early yet. A night has not fallen in which I have shared the sounds and the fear with all the small things that go about under the leaves as they hear me approach. Nor have I known the brooding calm with which the bobcat goes about the forest floor, silent on his big wide padded feet, stealthily seeking out those fearful creatures on which it feeds. To know such things is to live and die and breathe and eat and all those things as they do, to know none but yourself and to sleep in peace, made whole with the knowledge that you are nothing and that there is nothing to be lost. But I am not there yet. We are not there yet. There is still so far to go.
As the sun climbs higher amongst the branches and the temperature soars and the birds begin to quiet their songs, whether due to exhaustion from the morning's outburst or out of a reverence for the heat that now bears down on the humid floor of this land I do not know, I step lightly atop the stones beneath, wanting desperately to make not a noise or rustle, to be silent as those around me. In this I fail. But it is still so early. It is still so soon.