Yesterday I took my first walk out into the woods, a familiar path that starts across the paved road from our house here in Sisters and within fifteen minutes intersects with a dirt road that winds back around to the pavement again. Just as I reached the dirt road a blue bird flew by me. I don’t know if it was a “bluebird” or a bird that was blue, but I had to follow it. I had my camera and I wanted a picture to take back and try to identify it in my bird book. The bird wasn’t co-operating, however, and just when I would have the camera set up to take a shot, would flit off another twenty feet further into the forest. I followed it, kept my eyes up to keep track of its whereabouts, so camouflaged against the smokey sky. After a few more minutes the bird disappeared and I sat down on a large log to get my bearings and to just be there quietly for a few minutes.

The snag was right in front of me, just a few yards away. The only dead tree still standing in the area. The beauty of it caught be off guard. After all, there were all the majestic living pines all around it. Maybe it was because it was the first day I felt really present and here in this place. Maybe it was because the blue bird had led me to it. It’s hard to say, but I had to come close, to walk around it, feel its rough and smooth skin, peer inside its hollowed belly, where I imagines so many creatures had bedded or foraged or hid from predators. From all angles it was stunning in the symmetry of its form, more majestic than an Olympic torch, more sacred than an altar candle. All around were the bodies of other trees, much larger trees than the live ones that grew around them. I imagined them still alive, the elders, giants of the forest, with a thousand rings in their trunks. I felt deep sorrow in that moment. I felt regret. I would have liked to have seen these aged ones. It was also a sorrow for my own ignorance–for how little I know of the forest and how it has been changed–what once was, what will never be again. In art, in poetry, in story and song is the opportunity to bring the spirit of what we can never fully replicate, what has forever passed, into a form that passes it on, gives it an afterlife. The blue bird, the graying stumps, the snag–I thank you for the moment and the blessings.

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The Snag

Splintered,
chiseled bits
list into, sift
into silt,
while it
lifts still
its kindled
spike,
its withered
tindered whirl,
to ink,
the insistent,
the invisible
firmament.

Hari Bhajan

8/19/06

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