The old lady lingers at the mouth to the trail. I use the word mouth because that's the way it looks. The trail opens like a mouth leading into the belly of the woods. We both stand on the paved road and look in. She stands further back, and I interpret her action as the hesitation of old people. I call my dog, Farley, to me, afraid he'll run at her and bark.
It is a glorious sun-filled autumn day. The kind of day that is a metaphor for life because you know it won't last forever. Winter. It sits at the edge of the day, like the perimeter at the edge of a rectangle.
I enter the woods, thinking maybe the old lady is lost or has wandered off. But then I push these thoughts away. She is probably just out for a walk on a beautiful day. Like me, a few years further down the road.
She'll walk a short way, and then retrace her steps back to the street.
The path narrows, and roots protrude, some hidden by leaves. The trail bends, and I lose sight of her. I turn another bend, and check my step. The hill is now steep. I reach for a trunk to steady myself. Eventually the trail flattens, and I come to a small meadow, and then a stone beach alongside the river.
The dog thinks this is the reason for our walk. Why we choose this route and not another. He runs ahead for a drink. I follow, looking for herons, and watching the geese and the pattern of the water as it spills over the rocks. Then the dog decides it is time to leave. He does that. Makes a decision. Runs back along the way we have come, and then sits, waiting, looking at me, as if to say, okay, let's go, c'mon now, I'll lead you out of the woods. I've had my drink, and played in the river, and you've looked for your herons.
On the return journey, I come face to face with the old lady. Somehow, she has made her way through the narrowing of the path, over the roots, down the steep hill, to the trail below. She hesitates. I say hello and she smiles, but peculiarly, as if she doesn't quite understand. It occurs to me that she doesn't speak English.
She wears department store loafers. Soles as thin as the leaves. Unsuitable for hiking. We pass. I climb the hill, my heart thudding with the exertion. My heart feels too big for my chest cavity. How will the old lady climb this hill? What if she doesn’t turn around, retrace her steps, but continues along the trail? She will exit the woods far from her entry point.
I scold myself. She probably lives in the neighbourhood. Been walking these woods for years. Who am I to doubt her on the basis of age? I reach the end of the trail, put the old lady into memory. Submerge my concerns like gnarled roots beneath autumn leaves.
The next afternoon, I walk the trail again. The dog, too, of course. I am hard pressed to get out the door without him these days. Let alone put on my hiking boots – his signal that I’m going to a place he damn well wants to go, too.
We reach the river. The scenery has changed. Funny, how that can happen in a day or two in autumn. A brisk wind last night has sent the leaves tumbling. In the summer, the trees canopy the path hiding the water from view. Now I can see the river clearly.
Canada Geese sit on the water like umbrellas dotting the sky of a René Magritte painting. The birds face all in the same direction. Beaks and eyes forward. They are absolutely still. Evenly spaced, a metre or so apart, across the ribbon of river. The surface is mirror-calm, and I fear the moment might crack like a fine sheet of ice.
The moment cracks, and I hear a noise. I search out the source. It is the geese themselves. One rears up and flaps its wings, but doesn’t fly away. Flaps hard against the water like someone beating a carpet. Then it stops and settles back into position. Another takes up this strange ritual. The pattern continues, without any apparent order, one bird, sometimes two or three, rearing up and beating its wings, then settling into place. And so it continues, up and down the river. Like a secret passed from bird to bird. I stand there for a while, and then continue along the path, the beating of wings breaking the quiet of the trail walk. Then I am past the geese, and the beating diminishes.
Finally, I come to the meadow at the river’s edge. I notice people. That’s all that registers at first. Then I become curious. These are teenagers, five or six of them. They scour the meadow, intently examine the ground.
Then I see the two women. One is middle-aged. She, too, scours. The person at the top of the incline is dressed in black and stands with her back to me. But I think I recognise her. To be sure, I check her shoes. Thin black loafers.
The old lady surveys the scene. I have the impression that she orchestrates the drama that plays out before my eyes. Not by speech or instructions, but by presence.
Today, she is not hesitant. She is strong. Perhaps it is strength that comes from family. People who see you in a different light than strangers. She is the matriarch. The Queen. The Witch-Crone, maybe; a woman of importance and certainty and power.
The middle-aged woman stands up triumphantly. She holds something between her fingers and lifts her arm above her head. It seems she holds a plant or herb of some sort. She says something I don’t understand, calls to the others excitedly. They look up; peer at whatever it is she has found. I continue past the searchers, past the old lady. I do not want to disturb them.
Much later, I return. No one else is around. I go to the water to let the dog lap at the waves and chase bubbles. I check the ground as we pass by. The meadow is filled with clovers. Is this what they were looking for?
I don’t know. But I do have a sense of "rightness" about it all. The old lady, her two journeys into the woods. I have no doubt that she searched out this particular spot the day I first saw her. A scouting mission for something over which she later presided. A deliberate act of will. She reminds me that everything is not always as it seems. There are mysteries. Wonderful mysteries. Mysteries that rear up and spread out before us, if we only watch for them. Like the beating of wings.
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“Beating of Wings” was originally published in Vox Feminarum.