The forest sans the trees

For the last two months I’ve experienced the sensation of living within a Polaroid. We arrived here the first of June when to describe this place as green and verdant would be to expose a severe deficiency of superlatives in one’s vocabulary. Our property, unattended for a mere two weeks, was shoulder high in grass and weeds and hay and whatever else grows green and sky high. A machete, had we had one, would have been the garden tool of choice just to clear our front walk. There had been a big hill rolling up toward the western horizon, we’d even walked it in February, but it was nowhere to be seen. Instead, in every direction, thick peninsulas of trees enclosed us like a walled city. Lush underbrush filled in any chinks in the solid walls of green, a haven for the wildlife that regularly ventured from their protective cover: deer, fox, rabbit, turkey, snake, birds and owls, Bigfoot.

But for the last two months it’s been as if the woods are melting. Little by little, as the leaves fall, more comes into view. There’s that hill! Oh, we have neighbors! Look, a creek! In the night I look out the window at low slung stars that turn out to be lights on a nearby home. We’re not as isolated as it seemed. Day by day new vistas appear, a gift still being unwrapped.