Peace & Enlightenment,
- Jon
Recollections of the Wooded Hunt
I recall that night, leaping from vision to vision, responding to the chorus deep in the soil with shouts, cooking the scent of wet pine and moss to an intoxicating brew which hovered beneath my nostrils indiscriminately, as I wondered through the woods guided by the trickling moonlight filtered through the evergreens, searching for enlightenment between every living thing around me. Creeping stealthily at moments, tersely at others, I would wander until finding a clearing within the woods where I would sit; and, reaching into my pockets grab a stale cigarette that I had bummed from an old landscaper named Henry. I would entertain his speeches on being a failed writer, in exchange for smokes, which at the time was a strange luxury. Silently, I would lay there in the dirt and overgrown grass, staring at the treetops, swirling in the breeze, the sun’s light playing hide and seek with the dusk. Solitude for me; was an escape, I did not fear the loneliness, for whatever mood the woods were in, they spoke in tones, never with words. I can not recall them screaming at me through delusions, nor did they mock my hopes, nor did they judge my soul. I would lay their breathing with the soil, as content with her as she was with me. Tentatively my hands would run along the bark of some tried trunk, and though logic now permits questioning, I could of sworn my hands grew warm, and the tree would whisper.
