The Woods

I thought about staying close to home today, maybe walking to the end of the road and back, but found myself driving to Webster instead. I stopped to see my new grandson and his mommy and when they got tired, I walked down the street and around the corner to "the woods."

I grew up in the house where my daughter lives. My first memories of the woods involve my mother. She took me there once when I was very small. My brother played there as a little boy. Back then a few neighborhood moms thought it should be made into a park and so a road was cleared through the trees and a sign erected, "Milton R. Case Memorial Park." As a little girl I wasn't sure whether to be dismayed or amused at our woods being a park, but as time went on and not much changed, I decided it was nothing to worry about.

For a time a pair of covered picnic tables stood at a crossroads in the trees. They were soon christened the "PS" and became a hangout for local teens smoking pot. Eventually the tables were destroyed by vandals who chopped into them and tried to set them on fire.  All that remains now are the ends of the posts and beams, hidden in the fallen leaves. Had I not been looking for a sign of the old hangout, I'd have missed them altogether
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The road we once road bikes upon was barely visible today, narrowed by time and awash in bronzed foliage. I breathed in the scent of autumn and was transported back to childhood days when the woods was full of children playing. I heard loud calls and squeals of laughter but, of course, the sound echoed only in my memory.

Today the woods were empty aside from a few squirrels and a lone woman swishing her way through dry, fallen leaves, gazing at bronzed and naked trees, and rustling through old memories.