The Way

If I should reverse the usual, — go forth and saunter in the fields all the forenoon, then sit down in my chamber in the afternoon, which it is so unusual for me to do, — it would be like a new season to me, and the novelty of it would inspire me. Thoreau, Journal, 7/23/51, 8 A.M.

I try to work out how the porcupine perched to gnaw the upper left corner of this trail-sign. It seems likely, s/he was upside down, as the tooth-grooves trend up slightly to the left. And I wonder at the wood’s appeal – did it have still a trace of salt-sweat from the trail-worker who picked the 2” X 6” slat from a pack, picked too a nail, and, with 4 practiced strokes, hammered home the marker?

“TRAIL,” is says, simply. This way on. And even now, early in this little tale, you are seeing me as scofflaw: “What’s he doing with that sign?” forms in your mind, followed by images of walkers straying from the point where the sign once was. “Only a real J would take a sign meant to show others the way.”

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Here’s quick defense: I took this sign from a woodland no one could wander any more. Mechanized loggers with their huge capture-claws had been there recently, and, what was once a trail, or TRAIL, simply wasn’t. There was the familiar sign tacked to a thin, remaining tree amid piles of slash washed by unfamiliar sunlight. The relocated trail was higher on the ridge, ambling along its crest, and its signage, while similar, was newly stenciled and tacked to trees also. I was conducting a post-mortem on a trail I knew better than most, one I’d walked for 30 years, until the land had changed hands invisibly, and the machines had showed up…most visibly.

So, my sign’s a symbol…of what was…and, in its new place, a reminder that I’d best remember the best way into the world is a foot path that unfolds at a few miles per hour, the speed of perception.

Yesterday, on the amply-trod Commons trails near home, I was slow-footing along when I heard a chewing sound. I looked right, and, as I did, two heads rose from a berry bush ten feet away. The two fawns puzzled over the two-legger before them; I made eye contact and stayed still. We took each other in over a minute. Finally, one snorted and, turning easily in air, bounded off, white flag of tail raised; the other followed, exactly, down to the snort. Gradually, the space where they had been filled with air.

Just so on a morning trail.

My sign, I think, is really a reminder, a command – TRAIL! Here’s to yours.

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