why I follow coyotes

You went to a library. It was a new one, but a very old one, in the middle of some old New England town. It was made of brick, or of stone. It was weathered and you touched the outside walls by instinct, just to see if they would crumble a bit in your hand. The doors creaked when you walked in and the Librarian, who was old, hunched, wearing those glasses with the little chains attached to the sides so they wouldn't fall too far if they were to suicidally attempt to jump off of her face, looked up at you slightly annoyed, leaving you with that pleasant feeling of slight intrusion. You walked past her and past the new part of the library that was sadly made of metal and bolts and wandered up the stairs that were railed with thick wooden rails. The steps curved their way upward toward the older part of the library. There were long-unused fireplaces threateningly placed precariously close to the old, dented wooden shelves that held the low-traffic books about things like the history of various neighboring towns and about the architectural significance of a selection of buildings in Boston. You could smell these books. You walked down an aisle that was a little too close to your shoulders and found a green, high-backed seat, sitted crookedly across from another fireplace that had forgotten its purpose a hundred years ago and you sat, because honestly, who could resist it? The chair felt good and a little hard in spots. In front of you rested a smaller shelf of books that was inset in the wall, hidden behind a little sliding glass door. One book was a history of the library itself, and because the aisle completely hid you from view, you reached out and tried to slide the little glass door aside. And it slid. You waited a second, glanced up and around you, because that what burglers do on TV and you picked up the book. 

A small click sounded somewhere behind you. You felt it more than heard it as it resonated through the wooden frame of the green high-backed chair. You noticed now, that the book was previously resting on a small platform that had raised ever so slightly when you picked up the book. You turned to try to look behind you and noticed that one of the wooden panels in the wall, about three feet high, sat slightly ajar. 

"Oh God," you thought as a feeling that was born of every Hardy Boy novel and Scooby Doo episode you ever saw welled up in your chest. 

And you went in.

This is why I follow coyote trails. They lead places, places that only the coyotes know about, and I want to

go there too. I walked this morning with Chauc, down roads that I have jogged on and walked well over hundreds of times. The winter illuminates things that are hidden in the leaves of the other seasons. Snow collects in the spaces and is tramped down by things that travel during the cold months. I have passed by this trail innumerable times, but I noticed it today. So I went in, because honestly, who could resist it? After it's initial opening in the brush, the trial wound its way,through a dense little pine forest that carpeted the floor with brown needles that must somehow generate their own heat, they always seem to be void of snow, and then through closely grouped pillars of young birch trees. The snow here had faded away from the path, but the coyotes had travelled here a lot and the snow had packed down to a white-emblazoned trail that cut clearly through the woods. I didn't walk far, maybe a quarter of a mile, and the path crossed over an old stone wall. The woods opened up and out to the wetlands and a promontory made entirely of discarded rocks left there by a farmer that had run out of land to line them up into walls on. The rock-island was probably no larger than fifteen feet across and was tucked into a small bay in the wetland. To the left, past a beaver hut that met all three of the real-estate "L's", the way opened up to a view of blowing grass and ice, to the right the way was completely enclosed in massive looming Hemlocks. I was alone and in a place of beauty.

I know where this is, and apart from the coyotes and an occasional deer, I think I may be the only one who does. 

Tolkien knew this feeling well, in his Lothlorians, and Lewis, and Thoreau. There is beauty hidden just out of sight, and it remains the property of those who seek it out. 

db