By miracles (gumption), I traded in my little land upstate for a bigger parcel—for the same price, all of one closing date apart after many months of benumbing bureaucracy and knuckle-biting stagnation. At last, as if by no effort at all, the money came in, the money went out in this cosmic exchange (plus fees).
And then there’s a moment in the space between, when it’s done. I did it! The fleeting space of relief, stillness, before my wheels of industry engage the gears again and grind through a new longer task list.
In this tiny reprieve from relentless activity, as I waited for the winning keeper of my parcel to arrive for some technical instructions and her keys to the locks on sheds, I stood on this land of my dreams of four years to say goodbye and revisit the memories I made there on rotation: the fire pits, the fireflies, the stars; the many times I couldn’t ignite the kindling in the dampness or wind, the cloud-covered times the constellations eluded me. The freeze, the endless field mice that sacrificed themselves for a taste of my RV, the tiny wood stove and the tiny firewood I chopped for it. The moss on the stream banks deeper in the forest, the mist clinging to the surrounding mountains, the menagerie of the wild (families of turkey, bear cubs and mom, spring rabbits, hummingbirds, lone lurking fox, some unknown midnight howler from hell). The times I hunkered down there with a boyfriend or a book, the many minutes I cried and fought with my kids or heard echoes of the neighbors battling or popping off fireworks; the ideas I wrote there and pondered; my 18-year cat buried, and then unearthed.
The land, like a very porous house, has a vibration, a depth of life you can feel, only added by its historic layers, all the “owners” and visitors before me. There is a cemetery in the back populated by a buried handful of the original Lanes of Lanesville. This massive boarding house that squatted over most of this was once the heart of this part of the Catskills, a destination, a vacation for many from Brooklyn before the age of air conditioning, when there were train tracks ascending the road. How grand it was once, verses the collapsed eyesore I willingly purchased:
And what it would become:
To better see the trees.
Buying something in order to destroy, but not without setting aside minor artifacts from the ruins. Trinkets of no value to anyone except those who may have visited once as a child and had a faint memory of that floral pattern of wallpaper, or that sport trophy that sat on that shelf. With a metal detector you can discover more such buried traces of humans and their disposables, which I find to be treasures and hung on the exterior of my shed, like a reliquary. This buyer was the best one because she could pay cash at a fair price, but also because she cared to honor these land-layers like I had, appreciated the “quirks” of my tiny firewood and the sawdust toilet bucket, would lovingly tend to the saplings I was trying to nurture to fill in these human holes.
And then it’s time to depart and make my way to the “new” land, leaving behind what was never really mine to begin with for something else I will only try to tame. A new plot up the road also sitting there since the beginning of farming at least, whatever year that was, when someone made these impressive bluestone walls this way and that with stacked debris from clearing every inch of the arduous soil. I think with each heavy rock how someone’s hands did that, every piece. Hard to fathom. This land that is primordial but foreign to me and full of knowledge to learn and adjust to, and witness with awe and, I admit, a fair amount of fear. What will become of me here? Can I handle the mildewed patch in the RV where the roof leak has softened the wall, the generator that drinks gasoline and powers this place with a terrible roar, the long winding private road washing out in trenches with the rain. Yes, I can handle it, I just have to begin, one item at a time, but first:
Pause.
Savor that feeling of exploring alien territory for the first time without feeling like a trespasser. I’ve never met this place with leaves as it was naked in November when I first visited, and still exposed now in April. But it begins, the rebirthing season, a hint of tiny bright growth, so I did have a question for the owner when I met him the one time. Will it be totally shaded or might there be some sun in this denser place? This seemed to prompt his own moment of memories, his eyes sparkling and wandering off over the acreage. He described these glorious pockets of day when the light was all dappled through the trees, spots of sun like a Monet painting and how almost mystical it was, psychedelic even. I imagined fireflies by day, glowing orbs, and green. And I knew then that everything was going to be okay here, I made the right choice. I was the correct caretaker for this place now. Change is invigorating and necessary. But first, there’s this peaceful pause I need. I refuse to engage yet, to start moving tools and scouring surfaces. I just want to sit and eat my lunch by the stone wall in front of the sleeping fire pit, my living room.
Poetry is the language of nature, and I often long for a better vocabulary for the ineffable it murmurs. For this dappling of trees my predecessor talked about. Sure enough, as I wrote about recently with Saudade, other languages often supply the most beautiful way to encapsulate these glimpses of the divine.
From Japanese, there’s these characters 木漏れ日 (in Rocketlanguages):
“Komorebi” refers to the sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees. The word consists of three kanji and the hiragana particle れ (re). The first kanji means “tree” or “trees,” the second kanji refers to “escape/leak” and the third kanji means “light” or “sun.”
MoreThanTokyo waxes on about this, complete with light-escaping tree pics:
Literally, “sunlight leaking through trees,” this word describes the beauty and wonder of rays of light dappling through overhead leaves, casting dancing shadows on the forest floor. The fact that there is a word to specifically describe the beauty of the sunshine filtering through the leaves of trees overhead invites us to notice and to take a moment to marvel at this wonder of nature. There is a profound peace and sense of tranquility that one can absorb from simply stopping to appreciate the transient beauty of komorebi.
The Japanese have another word, and act, of forest-bathing, which does not involve water. From Japan.travel:
Shinrin-yoku, 森林浴, or forest bathing, is the simple and therapeutic act of spending time in a forest.
If you’ve ever been in a forest, listened to the birds and watched the sunshine filtering through the leaves [see above, now that we know the word for that], you’ve already participated in one of the best things you can do for your physical and mental well-being. Even Japanese doctors promote forest bathing as a relaxing break from hectic urban life.
This article claims the practice dates back to the 1980s when the world bathed itself in terms like depression and stress. But really it seems as ancient and Japanese as Zen meditation and, of course, gets a big uptick in interest during and post-pandemic that endures.
If we’re further talking forests and forest-words and a return to nature inspired by all of history (or more recently world-lockdown), we also need the Germans to guide us. From the BBC:
Type waldeinsamkeit into Google Translate, however, and the immediate result—“solitude of the forest”—does little to spell out its true meaning: the enlightened, sublime feeling that can come from being alone in the woods. It is a quintessentially untranslatable German word, and yet owing to the Covid-19 pandemic and ongoing national and local lockdowns (of which Germany and its regions have had several), the spirit of waldeinsamkeit as a philosophy is increasingly alive.
With more free time, more flexibility and more pressure at home, but also fewer alternative pastimes, Germans have sought calm, fresh air and hermit-like solitude in greater numbers than before. There is a palpable yearning—a feeling of a life being half-lived—and it has not gone unnoticed that the country’s restriction-free spruce, conifer, beech, oak and birch forests are busier than ever.
“On one level, waldeinsamkeit is a simple compound of the word ‘forest’ (wald) and ‘loneliness’ (einsamkeit), but on another it represents the soul and deeper psyche of Germany,” said [Princeton Professor Nikolaus] Wegmann, who teaches courses on German literature and its motifs, including waldeinsamkeit.
Scientists are even amassing data on what compels visitors to the forest: tranquility by far rates number one, and then there’s another study actually trying to quantify how much we value forests “for their spiritual attributes.” The Germans are woodland people, as evidenced in their literature from the Brothers Grimm to more recently, German forester Peter Wohlleben’s bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, which I plan to read and report back on since I’m eager to hear and share what they have to say.
“The concept of going into the woods is part of everyday life for us Germans,” Wegmann [said]. “Even though we’re one of the most industrialized nations in the world, you don’t need to go looking for a forest here. We are forest people, even as far back as the Roman Empire when the Romans described us as such.”
The way saudade is a certain sadness and longing you cherish, waldeinsamkeit captures the feeling of fullness rather than mere isolation you can experience in solitude and silence, communing with the trees.
From The Local Germany, some 18th century poetry to end on, from fairy tale writer Ludwig Tieck, “or rather, by a bird in his story ‘Der Blonde Eckbert’ (The Blonde Eckbert) who sings:”
Waldeinsamkeit
Mich wieder freut,
Mir geschieht kein Leid,
Hier wohnt kein Neid
Von neuem mich freut
Waldeinsamkeit.
Forest loneliness,
Brings me joy again,
No sorrow can strike me,
No jealousy resides here,
Yet again, there’s the joy
Of Forest loneliness.
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What a lovely piece! I swear you are so intrepid, and definitely braver than me. But it works! Also when you were describing the Japanese compound words I thought there had to be some German ones that would work, and then you went there!