Knowing each other.

I have walked the same entry road into Rutland State Park, nearly every morning for a couple of years now. I feel like I might be crossing over into some sort of more primitive way of thinking. Objects are taking on more significant meaning. This is the Welcoming Tree. I sits right at the entrance to RSP. Its huge and old and beautiful and I realized a while ago... maybe a year ago... that I felt better when I saw it. I am sure that that had something to do with the peace that comes from these walks. Still, I feel... welcomed. So I started calling it the Welcoming Tree. Then I started quickly laying a hand on it as I

passed, to kind of say "thanks for welcoming me." I now do exactly that, just about every time I go into the park. It has become a kind of mantra for me. I know that when I pass the tree, it is time to let things go, to gain perspective, to breathe the clean morning air. The Welcoming Tree.

There are other places and things in the park that hold meaning for me as well. There is a particular rock that I like to sit at, in the big open fields in the park. There is a bend of the river that Chaucer likes to jump in at. Actually, this place has taken meaning for him too. As we get near to it, he starts to get all jumpy and stir crazy in anticipation. There is, about five miles out into the woods, a hill where the trees thin and there is the remnant of what must have been a seriously beautiful farmhouse. Way out there... where very few other people know about. That is my place now. I lay claim to it. It

takes over an hour of walking to get there. I saw a the largest toad I have ever seen in a little open area there. Sound lame... sure.. but if you could have seen the size of that thing you would have a much different opinion. It must have been the size of Shiatsu . That little clearing is "Toad Clearing." There is a particular tree that looks like and elephant head. There is a stone wall that I was looking at once that had a moose laying down behind it. It got up not ten feet away from me... towering over me... and walked into the woods like I didn't exist. There is one particular place where the spotted salamanders

line up and cross the road on route from there vernal pool to the river below. There is an old foundation with a deep, deep, open well. A place where the red-winged black birds gather. A grove of birch trees where you can find pheasants if you are quiet. These are all my places. They are all bits of my relationship with this place. I know this place... or maybe we know each other, I think.

db