elaby | Sentinel

I guess it's a lesson that things change, and it can be sad when they do, but sometimes the change makes room for loveliness. I haven't walked down to where my forest used to be, near where I work, since I discovered that it was torn down. Instead, I went looking for the rumored path around the pond behind my office building, and I found a new kind of forest - different, but still beautiful.

There's a dirt service road near my parking lot, and halfway down that, a gate into the woods. This is no towering, shady, cathedral forest. It's open and light - full of vines and fluttering leaves instead of sheltering pine boughs and violets. I've seen a pretty brown butterfly several of the days I've walked there, and today it didn't avoid me, but flew close and settled on the ground for a while to let me watch it. Through these woods is a field, stretching from the barely-tree-masked highway to the brambly edge of the lake. The wheel-tracked, overgrown road climbs over the crest of a hill and winds down behind the lake, where it disappears into another airy wood. Today I went on an adventure down to the lakeside, away from the road, where there were patches of tiny purple flowers that smelled amazing, like basil or oregano.

Monday, when I went walking there, I passed by a tree in the woods that looked like none of the others. This is a young forest, with tall, slender trees, and in the midst of all of them is a thick and blasted trunk, broken off forty feet in the air, with dry white-gold wood showing through where the bark has been stripped away. It's imposing; it commands respect. Another smaller but similarly scarred and broken trunk stands by it, and several dried logs lay near its feet. Among the wispy young trees, it looks like an ancient warrior. I call it the Sentinel.

On the way into the woods Monday I picked up a rock from the road, a shimmery gray piece of stone that had the same sheen as charcoal. I thought I'd bring it back and put it on my desk, but when I left the woods and walked back toward the main road, I knew with blinding certainty that I needed to give it to the Sentinel. I turned around, went back through the gate, and picked my way through the woods until I stood beneath it. There was a rock there, in the sunlight, and I spotted it from a way off and decided to place my rock there. When I got up close, I saw that a perfect O of lichen was growing on its surface. I left the stone in the center.

It was still there, today. I wonder how long it'll stay there.