(Writer’s Note: This piece was written as an exercise this past weekend at Douglas Wood’s “Writers in the Woods” workshop held at Osprey Wilds Environmental Learning Center near Sandstone, MN.)

I am haunted by old trees; trees that reach skyward with form and grace. Darkened, aged arms like that of a classical ballerina; poetic, and for some, reaching through thick canopies in search of their last leafy breaths of life.

Around their gnarly, roughened old trunks, or around broken branches easing biologically into the forest duff, an under story has already come to life. Perhaps seedling offspring from years of dropping acorns or other seeds.

Yet there they stand, defying the supple youth surrounding them, with a grace and form that attracts me, especially now as I am about to enter my eighth decade.

Perhaps my haunting is in hoping I can finish my own life with as much grace and form, with such strength.

These thoughts began a few weeks ago in Norway when I slipped on a slick slope above a rolling river, banging the back of my head on a rock with such force that my glasses flew off along with both hearing aids. My camera lens was shattered along with any sense of youthful verve. My diagnosis was a Class One concussion. Where I almost always felt agile with some semblance of youth, I’ve since found my being in the wild now filled with fear and awkwardness. I have a vulnerability I’ve rarely felt.

Recently as I walked an uneven and somewhat rugged and hilly trail along the lively and rushing waters of the Kettle River in Banning State Park, I found myself constantly struggling in search of safe passage, of reaching for rocks and nearby trees to keep myself upright and safe. Even with slow and deliberate effort to climb down an incline for a photograph, I felt so alone and found fear I had seldom felt before that fall in Norway. I was aware of my aloneness and continued to search the nearby trails for others in the event of another fall.

Along with this vulnerability, I’ve felt as if I had lost my sense of adventure and wonder, and despite the multiple comments of “you don’t move like someone your age” and similar shared thoughts of loved ones and friends, there it was. Where my mobility had rarely been a concern, I was now frightful and even scared in the uneven terrain. I was feeling old, an age showing itself in my gait. 

Then this morning I awoke more rested, and en route to breakfast we ambled along another rocky, uneven path. Although the path didn’t offer many of the same adventurous and challenging features of the Banning trail, I slowly began to feel perhaps righted in a way, less frightened. Perhaps it helped being near others.

Then came our assignment: to head into the nearby nature and return with perhaps something to write about. While many headed toward a trail meandering through a big woods, instead I found myself ambling alone through the remnants of an old forest nearby, one with old trees. Aged trees. Gnarly trees. Trees with character and graceful form. Trees still with shimmering leaves, golden in the morning sunlight. Trees that had grown old and stood brazenly strong among both seedlings and younger brothern, with sturdy trunks and long, well defined poetic limbs still reaching ever skyward toward the heavens with both beauty and grace. They were holding course and standing their ground despite their obvious age.

There came a smile, and a deep breath or two. I was among friends.