Walked off the beaten path, today.

It was raining, but it wasn’t cold. The ground was soaked, but not too muddy for waking in old shoes.

I can’t tell you exactly where I was, this afternoon, before dinner. I wasn’t lost – the backwoods are small, and I usually have a halfway decent sense of direction. But if I told you where I’d been, then I’d be admitting to breaking the law. Technically. There may or may not have been posted signs that clearly read “NO TRESPASSING- Violators Will Be Prosecuted,” and I may or may not have seen them. So I think it’s better if I don’t tell you.

It’s probably in my best interest to tell you that I definitely did not go exploring in the woods beyond the fields, on the hill at the end of our own little lane.

Because it isn’t our lane. It doesn’t belong to us. We just walk there, like the people who lived in our big drafty farmhouse before us. We’ve walked there almost every day for twenty years, and nobody else ever does. But it isn’t our lane, and the fields aren’t our fields, and the woods are not our woods.

So unfortunately, I can’t describe to you the lovely place that I didn’t discover today because I wasn’t there.

Or anywhere.

but just say for a moment that I *had* stumbled across something

in the woods beyond the fields

in the rain, as I was

slipping down a gentle slope

with a blanket of dead leaves and tangled undergrowth

picking my way carefully between young saplings and rotting stumps and fallen trees

What if there had been something. A greener patch of ground off in the distance; pools of still water between patches of just slightly higher ground. It wasn’t, of course, but if it had been, it would have been almost like a maze. An overgrown, tricky, unpredictable labyrinth – tread carefully. Mind your step, and don’t get lost. If you can see reflections of the sky in the path ahead, jump across them.

but if you slip, it’s only water, after all

If I’d been there, in such a place, I’m sure I would have heard the peepers singing, and the low, insistent humming of the wind, the clattering of branches blown together high above.

But I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t have heard them.

I couldn’t have.

Which won’t help you to understand why my old shoes are soaked through, or why my coat and hat needed hanging up to dry, or why there are mysterious splattering of mud around the ankles of the leggings I’d pulled on that morning

An uneventful hour of walking down the lane and back again, alone, can’t quite explain the fae behind her eyes

I suppose if it was there all the time, it wouldn’t be half as special.