common trickeries
Looking out the window in the morning to see the rain and fog, although the fog may be smoke from people who still use wood stoves for heating, or it could be from the burn piles going now to clear the deadfall before fire season. Only a few trees are budding, but the moss is transitioning from its winter dullness and has become luminous beneath the weight of the water, which gathers in beads on its surface. Some mornings have seen a layer of snow, which always seems so permanent, so unending, but always seems to melt – often before noon.
Walking through the woods, everything still looks crushed, as though still feeling the weight of the white burden of the year. One would think that nothing is happening. But the streams are full and the sap is rising. No matter which way I go, there always seems to be a raven always flying ahead, unexpectedly large, at once comforting and ominous. I am, low-key, unsettled by their presence, as though passing in the shadow of some trickster god.
On the path ahead, a coyote looks back, watches me watching, then slips through the covert of salmonberry canes. I see it slink gracefully, with uncanny elegance, along the moss-carpeted trunk of a doug fir that has long since fallen across a stream. At the tree’s now-bare roots, which seem to form a tangled gate fencing in the wilderness, coyote looks at me again. Leaps into the dark.
As I walk past, I glance towards the forest. I mark the silhouette with pointed ears watching me. I walk on. At the boundary of the path, I look back. From beyond the rocks, the shadow cannot be seen. That doesn’t mean it’s gone.