Making Up For Lost Gratitude

By Stephanie Linehan

I couldn’t fill up on enough nature yesterday.  The summer sun. The fall air. The just-right temp.  The wisps for clouds.  Nature is like food in that way.  But I can binge without regret.

*

As I walk from my childhood backyard, I crouch through the low boughs of the trees, carefully stepping through the overgrown path I was accustomed to taking.  Bending down, creeping, and feeling mystified, I’m transposed. Like a time warp, I’m immediately taken back to ten years old again.  Innocent.  Naïve to time, commitment, and all responsibility.  Being in the moment was a constant, not an effort. 

From there, an old crick bed leads me to the public access/emergency gravel road like usual.  Everything is familiar.  The terrain seems barely changed.  Just the coming and going with the seasons.  The growing and dying of the weeds and underbrush.  Some limbs lost.  Some thinned out like the logging company to the paper mill among my grandparent’s stoic, towering pine trees.  All the same.  Enchanting and welcoming.  I inhale an incredibly deep breath.  The woods embrace me.  It’s my safety.  I’m at home here.  I could hike it with my eyes closed.  The familiarity of the terrain.  The rush of the Kinnickinnic River getting closer and louder with each step.  I know each incline and decline.  The newly laid mulch from the recent philanthropy and brush-cutting is already starting to mold to the trail.  Trees tower.  Arch-like.  They've known me since childhood.  Watched me.  Listened to me.  Were there for me … even when I never realized it.  Now I know.  Now I appreciate.  I’m making up for lost gratitude.  Thank you, trees.  I’m indebted to you.  

Still child-like, I’m eager at the chance to wade in the cool water.  Replaying in my head the many times down here by the rocky branch.  With my sisters.  Neighborhood friends.  And later, my own kids and their friends.  The many seasons and adventures and stories.  I am grateful for some of those in pictures.  A smile crosses my face. 

I continue.  The trail parallels the river.  I admire the donated and engraved benches, and the limestone kiln built in the 1880s.  I reread the historical signage for the ump-teenth time.  Still trying to engrain the story, significance, and incredibleness of it.  So many things from my childhood I took for granted.  I thought every child had backyard public access to the river, history at our fingertips, and these hiking trails.  This beauty, this richness; the air, freshness, sunlight, breadth, freedom, and peace.  

I still cannot get enough of it.  It’s as awe-striking to me as any national park, national monument, or foreign country.  Isn’t that love, afterall?  Constant. True. And unconditional.

*

What did you do as a child that made hours pass like minutes?  Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits. - Carl Jung

If you ever find yourself empty from something you cannot know or name, find a stretch of ocean, a field, or mountainside, or even clouds or trees. Because there are a thousand simple ways to fill your tired soul so you can remember how to be, how to see and most importantly, how to breathe. - Victoria Erickson