My Backyard Remembers (place entry 1)

I am sitting in my backyard (my chosen place) at 11 AM with the sun shining and a barely-there breeze, and I am terrified to go any further. I cannot take a step into these woods that have surrounded my home for as long as it has been my home. So, instead, I pull out the camera and look up at the skeleton branches above me. This tree turned every shade of yellow in the spectrum before it finally gave its last leaf in November. I remember sitting under it then and thinking, “Brilliant. It’s lit from within.” Now, it is bare, a silhouette against a peaceful blue sky. 

Next, ribs shuddering because it is 33 degrees, I tentatively step a little further into the forest. There is an odd little plant that bends wistfully, but still stands. Its top is a cluster of delicate grains. It survives against a backdrop of brown and brittle thorns. On the hill behind me, shale scatters among dirt and pokes up between tiny green shoots, reminding me that these woods are still alive. Enticed, I push aside branches that reach for my scarf to snap a picture of verdant leaves poking hopefully from a knot of barren brambles. 

Here, I stop. “All I see is you,” I whisper. Twittering birds answer back. I don’t look up, though. Instead, I glance down at my feet where the steep hill has finally evened out to meet the forest floor. I look and fearfully wonder. Is this where my dad died? Is this where he lay? I will never know for sure. I suck in a deep breath, and the trees go all wavy before my eyes.

Yet, the sun shimmers more strongly where I stand. For the first time since I’ve come here today, I feel its warmth settle on my chest. The clouds are gauzy, stretched thin. They drift so lazily that I wonder if it’s a trick of the eye, a figment of my imagination. To bring everything into focus, I take another picture. I am safe behind the camera. I hug it to my chest.  I didn’t come out here to be safe, though. I came out here to explore, to heal, to get to know my own backyard again. And, just like that, I wonder what has been in these woods that I have called home for as long as I can remember.  Surely it is a record of my childhood, but what animals have left word of themselves here? What plants have poked through to make room for themselves? What does my backyard remember? I will not ask it now. I will not wonder too deeply about how this forest remembers my father.