In Which Ashley Quests For Her
Thotful Spot
The highly anticipated return to her forest was long over-due. She had attempted entry the week before during a run--and then had the added delight of snowdrift hurdles and soggy, cold feet (truly a runner's dream). Thanks to the sudden pseudo heat wave, she could at last venture for a lasting excursion.
With all of the anticipation she had built up inside (with visions of luscious green trees and dark, obscured corridors) it should surprise no one she was disappointed with her usually mystical haunt. The tall grasses upon the river's bank had been sheared, and the weight of snow had flattened the usually rich underbrush with in the forest. She sought the forest to satisfy the desire to disappear; and instead felt bare and exposed in the hollow remnant.
Something had to change.
After she had walked the full length into the forest and out the other side, stopping only briefly to lament the loss of formerly precious nooks, she felt her resignation shot through with mischievous hope: the Forbidden Paths. That was it. She would go down the rotted, broken, elevated causeway and finally see where it led.
Though not her safest or most responsible decision, she was then determined to find where "her" forest had gone. The shell that she had been walking through couldn't be all that was left. She didn't feel lost on it's barren path. And so while maintaining the mental poise of at once a masterfully graceful assassin and a forest-born spirit, she carefully and swiftly placed foot after foot on the remaining boards of the
root-cracked and decomposing forest highway.
Further up and further in. Deeper and darker to where she'd never been before.
The trees thinned and
an abandoned pavilion slowly emerged. Three benches were all but covered in the overgrowth. A waterfall from a drainage pipe had been diverted to either side by the (natural or nest-building) accumulation of mast. It's creek tumbling over rocks and under a bridge with only the outer supports left. Even the boards across the platform were pocked with pitfalls and sporadic soft-spots threatening to cave at the slightest pressure.
It was perfect.
She climbed up to the stage and danced across to the bridge (she can be light-footed if she puts her mind to it). Hopping across the flaking timber, she settled herself in the layer of autumn leaves buried only a week before in snow. With her book in one hand and thermos full of tea in the other, she sank into her
Thotful Spot.
(Edit: The next time I went out there, I heard a slight noise from across the bridge as I was reading. When I looked up, I saw an adult fox trotting down the platform from the waterfall's direction! It stopped and observed me, then continued trotting on as if unconcerned with my presence. I left my apple core near the end it had come from when I began to leave, myself. Hopefully it'll spread the word that I am a fox-friend!!)
Eventually, the sun began to droop in drowsiness, and our discoverer decided it was as good a cue as any to begin back. Shocks of warm color silhouetting the bare wooden stalks swiftly shifted to cooler tones as the temperature followed suit. With lingering feelings of nostalgia and triumph, and silent promises to return, she stepped out of the awakening forest.
