Earthscape artwork by Andres Amador
Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve
Loss has a wider choice of directions
Than the other thing. —"The Nails," W. S. Merwin
The first time you found it, it was
by accident. You left a man's condo wanting
to walk for an hour and never really left
the conjoined parking lots, heading for
the wall of trees that are always visible
from his balcony, still mostly green at
the beginning of October, and there it was:
a trail marker that simply said "Begin."
You go back with him a second time
on a day at the end of November, and it's
not fall but it's not winter, and there is a new
sign by the trail marker that says the park
is closed between sunset and sunrise from
November to March for deer maintenance.
And he doesn't know what that means at first,
but you do because your family is from
Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and you tell
him that it's more humane to kill the deer
so they don't starve, and really it is, but
you can't equate the wonder that you feel
when a doe aims herself like an arrow over
the road with the idea of "lethal removal"
that you read about on the DuPage Deer and
Ecosystem Management website. You're
quiet with him that day and that's partially
because you're tracking the sun's weak
fire through the trees and partially because
you don't know what to say. That first time
on the trail in early fall you felt alone with
the trees because you were, felt too that
the world you knew might be gone when
you emerged back to suburban parking lots,
condos and apartments, that years might
have passed as you looked at leaves just
going gold, no one you know in those rooms
you just left when you let yourself back in.
