It seems I failed to notice the word count restrictions for Sue Vincent’s photo challenge, so I’ve whittled down the The Stairway, unabbreviated to 92 words. Definitely a bit more challenging.
Photo by Sue Vincent
The Green Man called beyond the door, “Come child, we are waiting.”
Nora was no child. She was old enough to be a grandmother twice over. Ah, but the words sparked deep inside of her and she felt young again. The last time she walked down those stairs was sixty years ago, but Nora would never forget what was beyond the archway. She pulled her hooded cloak from the knob and sunk her feet into heavy boots.
“I’d marry him again,” she muttered, sounding addled to the man in the living room.
Well I’ve never done a blog writing challenge, but this photo had a haunting quality I couldn’t resist. Besides, the past photo prompt responses that Sue Vincent has posted in the past have been utterly delightful. So, why not. Here is the story that came to me from this photo that she provided, called “The Stairway.”
Photo from Sue Vincent
The Green Man called to her beyond the door, “Come child, we are waiting.”
Nora was no child. She was eighty years old, old enough to be a grandmother twice over. Ah, but the words sparked a joy deep inside of her and suddenly she felt young again. The last time she had walked through that door was sixty years ago, but Nora would never forget what was beyond the archway.
Slippers were useless in the snow, but she would keep the dress, yes, she would keep the dress. Nora pulled her hooded cloak down from the knob beside the door and sunk her feet into her heavy boots.
“I’d marry him again,” she muttered, sounding addled to the man in the living room sitting in the rocking chair.
“Nora, you best come and rest your bones beside the fire with me,” he called out, but Nora was already gone.
Hours passed, and the old man beside the fire dozed and woke to the hunger in his belly. He sniffed the air and frowned. “Nora, is dinner ready?”
Silence filled the darkened room, and the man began to worry. He stepped into the front room and saw the kitchen empty. No lights had been turned on. The front door was slightly ajar, and an icy air blew through the crack and sent a shiver up the man’s spine.
“Nora, you out there?” he called through the twilight. A pair of feet had left their trail through the day’s snowfall, and the old man followed their path with his eyes, down the granite steps where they ended in a pool of violet light.
“She always said they would come back for her,” the old man shook his head and closed the door.
I had been contemplating going inside when the hawk flew by. It was so close, it could have grazed the branches of my apple tree. It also could have been an eagle, or a vulture, it was that big. Later, it circled the sky while I watched in wonder.
Instead of brining my writing inside, where it was warmer, I let my head fall against the edge of the couch, my eyes blurring into reverie as I wondered where the former inhabitants of the fallen forest had gone. You can come here, the thought passed through my heart and I let it go before I held onto it.
The truth is, I have been riddled with the guilt of what ifs. Yet, in that quiet moment of surrender, the unexpected occurred. As I gazed out the window, Noah’s Ark in feathered form arrived, along with more than a few squirrels. For the next half hour I watched in wonderment as my backyard filled with winged life. There are no pictures to tell the tale, as I watched transfixed and filled with gratitude. Peace replaced anger and the pervading sense of futility I had so long been feeling.
Most of them are gone now, perhaps because I don’t have feeders to keep them around for too long. But, in that glorious half hour or so, I was graced with the presence of several woodpeckers, flickers, nuthatches, chickadees, blue jays, mourning doves and more, while the hawk flew sentinel through the skies, which parted their clouds to the sun.
To me it’s like entering a war zone. A complete annihilation of life at a heart-stopping speed. Part of me wants to rage. To point fingers. To blame. To say to the collective masses, “This is what you cheered for, as though it is a victory.” I cannot help but be angry. I have only entered the second stage of grief.
Aren’t you glad it’s not your home?
For some this is a victory, but I can’t help thinking about squirrels running down the supporting structures of their homes as they fall like dominoes, wondering if they made it to safety in time. Birds, flying the nest. Chipmunks hiding beneath the ground, unable to hold their ears against the maddening roar of destruction.
How much life was lost?
There were coyotes and deer and this forest. There were countless insects and the life that lives beneath the ground, and only sometimes comes to the surface. Not to mention the hundreds of trees and plants, razed in one day.
The dead trees are piled, too neatly. One thinks of the Holocaust.
Should we be proud of this?
A week ago my children ran and laughed under a canopy of trees.
I want to believe that we can make peace with this land, that we did before it was destroyed, but the truth is, we haven’t. There was no collective ceremony. No giving thanks and asking for forgiveness, only a righteous justification in a belief that it was ours to dispose of as we wished.
“We bought the land for this purpose thirty years ago.”
In 30 years a forest of life grew and flourished. In 3 days it was gone.
It rained all day yesterday, and the dogs and I decided to stay near home. Today, though, is beautiful. It feels like April instead of March, the air soft and warm.
Where I was stopped.
Last night I dreamt of a hummingbird. I was sitting outside, on a warm sunny day, and the hummingbird, larger than life, flew into my field of vision and hovered before me. It wore the colors of the forest. The colors of the heart. A rich green cloak over a gold breast, reminding me that the heart beats for life, but also for joy.
A living embodiment of resilience, and a reminder that joy is the nectar of life.
This time I was stopped at the edge, where the yellow caution tape three days ago embraced a forest filled with life. I thought of the beautiful struggle of a seed, smaller than my fingernail, quietly, valiantly, growing into the full breadth of a pine whose trunk once spanned the embrace of my arms three times over. What did it take to grow to those great heights? Perhaps 50 years.
There once was a forest.
It took less than 3 days to lay waste to the forest. Each time my breath catches in my throat with loss, my heart beats towards life. The last bird I heard singing inside the forest was a cardinal. Today, the 3 crows that have been by my side faithfully, flew to the edge where I stood and bore witness with me. Two nights ago I dreamt of an eagle.
Tomorrow has arrived, and the forest I knew has begun to turn into yesterday. I can think of little else.
The trees by the roadside are being felled first
I want to bare witness to each fall of life, and I also want to stay tucked inside my home. This morning, as if by happenstance, I was given the grace of friendship by my side while I walked the path of memory. We heard the saws long before we saw the evidence, and while I listened to their unyielding power, I swallowed back grief and regret.
Life is a series of sacrifices. Life, by nature, cannot be possible without death, yet I struggle to make sense of loss. Especially when ceremony is replaced with a belief in ownership. This distancing of connection. A forgetting that we are of the land, intricately tied together in this beautifully complex, strong, yet fragile, web of life.
How many days, I wonder, will it take for the last of my friends, destined for death, to fall to the ground? In mere seconds, when we reached the edge of the woods, by way of the field, I watched a whole group of them fall nearly at my feet.
The only people stationed to warn were beside the paved road, as though they have already forgotten that feet pass through the forest often. That life is abundant, even with the leaves have yet to bud into bloom. If we had not been aware, we could have fallen with them.
I didn’t intend to write a blog post this morning among the list of things I wanted to accomplish, but sometimes what plan to do is not what we were meant to do.
When I walked out of the door this morning, Crow greeted me as she often does these days, from somewhere hidden among the tall trees in my yard. She continued to call each time I brought more boxes to the end of the drive for donation, and I thought of her, later, when I stepped into the woods with my two canine companions. I’m almost certain a third was with me, in spirit. Tomorrow will mark the year of her passing, but I did not weep for this loss.
In truth, I had not been thinking about Daisy, but about the life that lives in the woods down the road from my house, where I have long enjoyed walking with my dogs and family. Once, my daughter and I saw a pack of coyotes running through the trees. Today, I noted the tracks of deer and wild rabbit marking paths home through the fresh snow.
The morning was quiet, aside from the incessant hum of traffic that always filters through the trees, and the soft tread of my feet, accompanied by the dogs runny ahead of me. Rosy and Zelda were filled with joy, as they always are when they step inside these woods.
About a month ago I had a dream. I was sitting on the hillside below the forest, where children sled in winter, and families gather in the summer to listen to music. I was looking at the vast sky above where dragonflies dance, when the message came through, “Don’t let them bulldoze this sacred ground.”
Now, weeks later, long ropes of tape mark off the boundaries around several acres of trees. Wooden stakes in the ground label potential gravel dumps and irrigation ditches. There is even one that says “pond” where there is no water. I almost laughed at the irony, but instead I cried. Standing among the sentient beings of the forest who speak in a language most have forgotten, I wept for this sacred ground that so many call home. When did we forget? I wondered. We are of the Earth.
Perhaps we need to forget in order to remember. I know that each time I have forget my sacred connection to my Truth, and the much wider Truth of Life, my body/mind/spirit becomes out of alignment until I have no choice but to remember.
We are of the Earth, but we do not own the Earth. She, in fact, owns our bodies, where are made from her nutrients. Long before we walked her surface, she was here, flourishing with life. She will be here long after we leave, broken perhaps, but she will heal. We depend upon her, she does not depend upon us.
At some point, the collective consciousness of humanity chose to forget. There are times when I think it is almost a burden to feel everything, but this is one of those mornings when I am so very grateful that I have chosen to reside in a vessel that remembers how to feel this sacred connection to all life. I believe we all have this ability to feel, this innate knowing, but many of us have chose to forget.
We value our homes. We love the beauty we create, and the money we make is invested into making our homes as beautiful as we can, yet what about this larger home we all share, that we all depend upon? When did we forget that we walk upon sacred ground? When did we forget to that the air we breathe comes from the lungs of Earth we call trees?
Clean air and water have become a universal gift of a long forgotten past, because of us. I walk the woods to remember Home. I walk the woods to feel whole again. When there is a rip in the web, we are all affected.
It has sadly become an abnormality. An uncool condition. A label of scorn…to remember connection. To remember Home. To remember that all life is sacred, and that the “I” cannot exist without the “We.”
The Light Behind the Story 