It’s September, so I’m no longer much concerned about ticks. Time to return to Griffy Lake trail, ten minutes north of Bloomington, InDiana.

I put the orange vest on him, not to warn hunters (they aren’t here yet), but because his hair looks so much like tree bark, that if he’s off trail at all, I can’t see him.

So, here we go, starting at about 8:30 AM

Up the hill, then down again to the other side, for a glimpse of standing water in the stream bed.

I could have called this post ENTANGLEMENT, because that’s what my eye was drawn to, all along. especially entanglement of tree roots . . .

But first, a large fallen tree: it’s been lying there, across the original trail for a couple of years — so that now there’s a well worn trail around it.

(How many trails in our lives are created to avoid an obstacle? How many patterns, habits, addictions in our lives, are attempts to avoid facing our fears? I know these two sentences aren’t necessarily parallel, but they are, to me, today.)

This fallen tree’s formerly exposed root structure has now sprouted new grassy growth.

A year or so ago, I was walking this trail with our former housemate Dan, when he got up on that fallen tree and walked along it . . . Memories . . . how they preoccupy me as I grow older . . . last night I was speaking with Dick, my high school boyfriend, and later, briefly, my second husband —  life spreads into richer and richer entanglements of memory as I grow older . . .

More . . .

Tell me, oh you straight tall, not very large tree in dry stream bed, how do you manage to maintain your stature during spring runoff? What, how, and where are the forces within and upon you entangled to provide this seemingly tipsy service?

Then there’s this root structure, in the dry stream bed, of a much larger tree, as obvious by how it dwarfs little Shadow.

And one more . .  .

 

Glorious, the way Nature knows how to do everything necessary to preserve stability and foster growth, simultaneously! Would that humans could learn from her . . .

I’ve been reading (or I should say, attempting to at least become familiar with) Walter Russell (1871-1963), via a book that uses Russells figures, sketches, and paintings to explore the universal principles he absorbed from his internal and external entanglements.

And yet, says Russell:  “All dimension is an illusion, an appearance, due to rising potential, which must disappear into its inevitable sequence oof lowering potential, and again appear in endless cycles of appearance, disappearance and re-appearance . . .”

On Griffy Lake trail today, as waves of early Fall sunlight flirted with leaves, bark, twigs, birds, a kaleidoscopic array of appearing and disappearing . . .

Autumn leaves are indeed drifting down. The season of nostalgia is already here. Time to begin to glean meaning from this strange, tumultuous year that has entangled we humans, as usual, in Mystery.

I search for meaning now, the way I searched for geodes in the Griffy Lake stream bed, with son Colin and grandkids Kiera and Drew, four summers ago. Or was it five? Time smears, shades, fades . . .