Running. With Ferns.

~ Live & Learn

green,photograph,woods,fern,

We’d run.
Our sneakers dripping with mid morning dew.
Hearts pounding.
We’d reach the plateau.
And See.
Our eyes held in rapture.
Not just any Green. An ethereal magnificence.

In Spring, it was an unfurling of a carpet on the forest floor.

In Summer, the ferns rose.
They climbed, fed by hard, warm rains.
Knee-high under the cover of deciduous trees.
Chest-high in clearings.
Emitting an earthy fragrance, fresh and cooling, filling our lungs.

In Autumn, Green gave way to a harvest of Gold.
Tips of fiddleheads crumbling as we batted them with our hands in our climb.
Rising particles of fine dust in air behind us.

We’d reach the creek.
A trickle now.
We’d kneel down, the moss cushioning our knees.
Lips rushing to slurp the cool water.
Pausing to catch our breath.
And, then back.
Back down the mountainside.
Our footprints cutting shadows through the ferns.
Leaving their imprints etched in our consciousness.

It’s so close.
So close today, 40 years later.
Thousands of miles away.
I close my eyes,
My skin tingles from the coolness under the canopy.
The Canadian Cascades lingering in my nostrils.
There it is.
Right there.
The Sea of Green.

“You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.”

~ Luis Buñuel

Credits: Image Credit: Saicode via Sunforhersoul. Quote Source: Journal of a Nobody

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27 thoughts on “Running. With Ferns.”

  3. a wonderful memory of all sensual engagement. isn’t it amazing how a color or a scent or any sensual trigger really, can bring back a whole experience in an instant? beautiful post d

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  10. That’s a gorgeous poem David! 🙂 Reminds me of family country walks, and the lovely picture adds to that memory, we did so many of them. I see more of the country through the computer now – that sounds so strange doesn’t it? But I love city life too! 😀

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  11. David, Your eloquent words capture the magical breaths that are taken out among the ferns, along the creek, under the old growth Douglas Fir where the seasons come and go and memories are forever treasured, in our souls. I am privileged to have read of your vivid, wonderful memories. I am so thankful to still have the eyesight to look out my window at the Old Growth and ferns and truly my “eyes (are)held in rapture.” As my eyes dim I am storing up memories of faces and places touch my soul…

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