That the Real Work Might Begin

After the initiating roar and snip of New Year's Day, the Way-making has continued in our woods these past two days.  The presenting task has been to link last week's new path with an existing access point along the fence line at the northwest edge of the prairie, via a deeper loop of cleared ground.  The stub of a trail has long-since extended past the large cedar tree at that intersection, but quickly dissolved into the thicket of scrub and brush and densely growing trees.  It's passable in winter while the branches are bare, but forbidding throughout the rest of the year as if nature was protecting secrets.

Yesterday consisted of "macro" work, the brush mower snarling its way through saplings and scrub.  It was trial and error progress, the Way more opaque than last week's clearing.  More than once, stumped, I quieted the engine and walked in circles, prospecting the way forward, before turning the key and activating the blades to make the discerned way plain.  I made mistakes, abandoned halted progress, found myself briefly lost, and ultimately followed the way tantalizingly close to the edge of a drainage ravine, eroded there by years - decades - of rain and wash.  Loosely roofing the ruts nearby was a lattice work of roots, the soil below and around them long-since washed away.

Eventually, the cedar sentinel came into view, this first swath, rough cut, completed.

Today the hand work - the "micro" pruning - commenced.  With less difficulty than I feared, I located yesterday's rudimentary efforts and pressed the loppers into more detailed labor.  I had quietly dreaded this slower, more retail undertaking and hoped to quickly snip my way through.  But as often happens, the Way, itself, became wondrous.  The details became distracting.  The woodland floor was littered with branches and twigs naturally pruned through the years - the brittle stories of winters and winds past, written in the kindling.  There were fallen trees - woody elders with whom time had caught up through northers or age or shifts in the soil beneath them.  There were the stubs of dead branches on a trunk's lower reaches, laddering the way up to vigorous older siblings higher up.

And there was deception.  Sturdy, intimidating saplings turned out to be shallowly rooted and easily pulled away.  Harmless looking branches I expected to easily snap out of their encroachment proved dense and solid and beyond the blades of my assault.  Branching, imposing arms the thickness of my own snapped off at the slightest touch, fooling with their faux facade.  A first-impressioned clearing proved canopied by overweaving fingers from mirroring trees on either side.

It was beautiful, it was fascinating, daunting and hypnotizing; and by the time I reached, again, that landmarking cedar I was disappointed that the circuit was completed.  To be sure, there is more trimming and pruning to be done - and no doubt will be in perpetuity.  I need to return, sooner rather than later.  But this time I'll enter with a different set of eyes.  I had broached this quietly strange world with one presumed work to do, but in attending to it, and despite my furtive glances, my loppers had distracted me from the larger labor of seeing and listening, and allowing myself to be...

...led,
informed,
spoken to,
rooted
and taught.

Perhaps that will be the work - the real work - of tomorrow, the weather of this unpredictable winter permitting.