“We have lived; our moments are important. This is why it is better to be a writer: to be a carrier of the details that make up history.”
Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg
I am in a golden wood. Literally – the mix of yellow and orange and red and green – each color in many different shades – make it feel ethereal: golden. I never like being in the woods in autumn because the paranoid half of me is thinking of stray bullets from hunter’s guns. Even though most hunters I know are more careful than that – so much so that I would trust them out there with Eli’s little red head – yet, there are always a few lunatics. Always a few.
So even though it has rained for approximately thirty hours so far, and counting, being in this golden wood has been lovely. The cell phones are shut off. We didn’t bring a clock. There are no bells to toll breakfast, lunch, dinner. We simply wake when we open our eyes and eat when we’re hungry and sleep when we’re tired.
Phil put up a tarp. It’s wonderful. We can all fit around the picnic table underneath it; we can sit in our camp chairs and have a fire of applewood. The borrowed camper has an awning – thank God – but not enough room for a picnic table and six. So we were ready for the visitors we invited last night, but the rain must have frightened them away.
Oh, the adventures we never take when we have clocks and cell phones and bells tolling.
We rode our bikes yesterday, Eli in tow, in the rain. Just around the campground loops. We passed a chromium yellow yurt hidden back in the farthest campsites, a real yurt with a little stovepipe sticking out the top, belching friendly smoke. Someone was home. Or, away from home. Eli had hot chocolate in a lidded coffee house cup, a blanket of blue flannel, and his warm green barn jacket in his trailer. But we neglected to strap him in. So he turned around and hung out the back, waving at me and sending images through my mind of Phil hitting a slippery spot and flipping over, trailer and un-strapped three year old and all.
But it was still fun, and no one flipped. The rain has come in intermittent drizzles. When it stops, I can open my squinted eyes and see the golden wood. Trails lead off in every direction; they beckon like a giant finger inviting me to come this way on my rusty red Trek bicycle. I have been waiting for the rain to stop.
So I have decided that in autumn when hunters lurk in the woods, the best place to come is here. Generally, people that pack up and leave the city to spend a weekend (possibly in the rain) in a tent or a yurt or a camper, are pretty decent people. Generally. People who are tired of cell phones. People who want to spend time watching their children or getting away with their sweethearts and dogs. People who love the golden wood and want to be in it. There is just nothing better than a cup of steaming coffee in the morning in front of a campfire.
Camping also reminds me of just how much I like my family. Family camp is wonderful, but we don’t see our kids much. They’re off with their friends all day. A quick meal together, and they’re off again. We spend time with wonderful people that we love, but it isn’t like this. We need to do this at least once a season. So we can remember who we are, where we are going, what is important. So we can remember that “I live” and that “my moments are important.” So we can go back and teach others the same. So we have inner strength to “feed the hungry, break the yoke of oppression; to do away with the pointing finger and malicious talk.” So we can remember how to live from our hearts.
All this from one weekend in the woods.
