And I Keep Forgiving It

The path ahead beneath my feet is wide enough for one to walk, but only one. Maybe that is a recent development. The long grass on either side looks as though it stands waiting to reclaim the path almost as soon as I pass. I resist the temptation to turn quickly around in hopes of witnessing the reclamation.

I’ve been told, or somehow know, that this path once carried the traffic of many people walking to the river, even past the river in the dry season. I have seen signs of another path continuing along the far bank.

Is this path relieved now that I walk it alone? Or am I merely one more resentment it must abide for the moment?

I would not be surprised if, on my return tomorrow, I discovered there had never been a path here at all, by any account. So willful is the wild on either side. It would make me doubt my own memory and sense.

But I forgive it. I know the willfulness in me, or am beginning to know it. And noticing that I assumed resentment on the part of mere wild places reminds me that there are worse things than willfulness, even in me.

Is this why I find the out of doors so refreshing? I may accuse it of willfulness or inhospitality, but it does not hold resentment. Never that.

Perhaps of all things on earth, it alone is able, after any amount of decay and growth, to present me with a new season. Yes, it may show, and often does, the marks of what it has weathered. But that does not come between us. It only serves as evidence that this, too, is another season.

All is forgiven in the wild. Or at least nothing is carried forward as grievance. We are taken as we are because the forest and even the individual trees themselves always come to us as they are: without the weight of accumulated debts, without resentment carefully stored away.

And now I find myself at the river’s edge. Instinctively my eyes seek out the path along the other side. I trace it as far as I can, needing to know it has not been lost while I was away.

I sit here, allowing myself to become less and less concerned about the path behind me. Part of me knows it is slowly vanishing.

And I keep forgiving it.