Woods

A picture of the Clinton Lake trails, taken in April, some years back. I'm stealing it from a race website, so I don't know the photo's genesis, nor who took it. But it's pleasing, isn't it? We're nearing that burst of vibrant green, those moments of life's epiphany.

It will be novel, a sight unseen - since last year, at least. It will, not long after that, become old, of course, as things do, then pass on to the next season, then the next, until the wheel spins back around. There will be beauty along the way, each season offering testimony to our aesthetic sensibilities.

These are things you know. Things people have known for as long as there have been people, and it was true before that. The woods, though, instruct in ways that even such collective knowledge fails to. Trudge in the snow, dance in the mud, suffer in the humidity, crunch through the leaves. You know these things and then you know them again, anew. You discover forever.

There is more to be said about this than I could ever write, and I do not pretend at profundity or comprehensiveness. Indeed, I've deleted much more than appears here, spent an hour more staring at a blinking cursor.

Because I want to say more than that I ran around some woods this weekend, then again today, and that I enjoyed those experiences. That I will do so again and again, in an evolving tableau. I want to tell you that that means something, and what it means.

But you know already, even if you can't find the words either.