It had been bright and sunny, Indian Summer, all day. After work I went to Waterloo Park to meditate. In the far northwest corner, at the end of the soccer field, Laurel Creek makes a 90 degree turn, and here I sat on a dirt ledge held together by common buckthorn and ashleaf maple roots. The earth was slippery and damp. I watched chickadees flitting in the bushes, while leaves fell into the cloudy stream, the water lit up from within by the sun's angle.
When I became too cold sitting in this shade, I walked with my bike down the length of the stream, east, and sat in the sun under a young maple, beside the gravel path. I wrote, I leaned my head back and rested, I watched a group of four children have their photographs taken while they chased yellow moths and threw sticks into the stream.
After a while, I crossed the bridge and locked my bike to a tree in the woods on the far side of the river. Between the path that connects the University parking lot and the Park, and the east soccer fields, there is a stretch of woods which has always been mysterious to me. Signs warn of poison ivy. Hundreds of crows gather at dusk and cry in the high branches on windy winter evenings. Fallen branches and low bushes fill up the spaces between trees creating a gloom even in the morning. A friend told me last spring that she was in there and found a homeless person's shelter, and a chin up bar set, right out there in the middle of the pathless gloom, a remnant from an athletic past. I had meant all summer to see if I could find this strangely located structure.
A few moments in and I was on relatively familiar ground - two years ago, I sat on this fallen tree with friends at the end of the day at the Medieval Faire, which takes place in the west end of the park. Past this tree I turned left into the thickest part of the woods, away from the stream, and was surprised by how much light there was, and how much green still on the forest floor. I asked myself, are these woods really strange and haunted? I asked myself to open my senses to what was really here. Sunlight, fluttering of leaves, smell of earth, sounds of the stream and of traffic beyond, tall, straight trunks, and every so often, piles of branches, some arranged into teepees with pop and water bottles littered by them. It was an airy, warm place, though still unknown and thus strange.
Going further north into the thicket, I began to feel afraid of getting lost. Is it possible to get lost when you can hear traffic? Still, the fear warmed my belly and tightened my chest. I wanted to see further into the forest, discover what lay just down the path, but I was becoming agitated and kept turning to see if I could recognize that way back, or if it would be a scene like in movies, where all the trees begin to look alike and the camera starts shaking back and forth.
I turned back, and after a few moments took a right turn into another section of woods. I could still see the tree where I had sat with friends, and I tried to memorize the landscape. I could practically see the University parking lot ahead of me, but still, there was that possibility where I would suddenly lose familiarity and stop recognizing anything, and become lost, and turn in circles for hours, or, have to crash through the underbrush towards the traffic sounds, getting attacked by poison ivy, scratched and bruised, mentally crazed and inevitably, upon emerging, scaring and at the same time embarassing myself in front of a soccer mom or a group of University boys.
And then I saw it - the chin up bar set! Three sets, two wooden posts with a metal bar connecting them at the top, all different heights, formed in a triangle. It shone in a patch of sunlight like an absurd Arthurian castle. I felt I had discovered a remnant of an ancient civilization. Very like Arthur, whose adventures all took place within mysterious wooded areas moments from his home, my sense of the meaning and importance of mysterious places is immense. Very unlike him, I am not yet brave enough to actually approach the structure. I turned back towards the stream.
I will go back one day soon, or maybe in the spring, to examine it more closely.
Leaving the woods, I went out to the parking lot and followed the line of the forest where it meets the lot. Sure enough, after a few peeks into the woods, I came across the structure from the other side. I looked through the leaves at the mysterious landscape. I continued on.
In a few moments I came across a sunny green path that went up a hill where a tall conifer grew, and the ground was warm and brown with needles. Delighted that I had never, in 11 years here, 8 spent at the University, having gone by here literally hundreds of times, seen this path before, I followed it while the sun and a fresh autumn wind followed me. Up the hill I went, on the exact border between the woods and a patch of more cultivated greenery, and then down, and then on, with the wind at my back.
