I have been going to this place for many and many a year, since long before my father and I brought my mother and my brother there one day last year to set them free forever. My youth is bound to this place along with a rich natural connection that is now so powerful as to feel like tripping when I visit. It is awesome.

I was called there today. I woke up in a hotel in Keene NH, and soon after I knew the visit had to be made. A very long day, but one I could never have refused. I saw a Diamondback Terrapin female on a nesting trip at the start and lightning bugs at the end. They were the candy, but perhaps not the true reward. It was the sort of day when I knew early on that I was not quite up to the journey, and I was extremely grateful to find a decrepit piece of pine deadfall that seemed to be just up to the task of serving as a meagre walking stick.

These journeys represent highly sacred moments to me. I truly believe that I will receive knowledge during the course of them, the sort of knowledge that cannot be predicted. The sort of knowledge that comes from the same place as a dream. The unknowable comes to mind through a process of faith. Light shines on a rock, you pick it up and mark it evil. A voice tells you that you do not have to carry it. You put it down, and moments later you see a perfectly heart-shaped rock beckoning.

Today I am not sure that I was successful in interpreting signs. I know that I was called, but I am not entirely certain why. I have an idea, though. I made it all the way to the point where half my family remains. I wanted to hear, but I heard very little. I did not hear nothing I am sure, but nothing did I hear that gave me to understand my calling. I felt called back to the wooded areas I had passed through on my hike earlier.

In the first wooded area I felt a distinct notion that I was safe. I knew that I would see the red ball of the setting sun through the trees eventually, and that I would emerge to see the sun set itself. So I did.

In the second wooded area, however, the sun had set many minutes earlier, and I soon became oppressed with a feeling of unease that rivaled any I have ever felt before. My hair was standing straight up from my head I am sure. I could not account for it. I had to keep looking back over my shoulder even though I had not seen a living soul for several hours. I knew that no one but myself, no corporeal human form, was about the land. I tell you that if it was not evil, it was certainly an unknown entity that made my skin crawl. I found in the very most oppressive moments that my decrepit walking stick grew in stature. I leaned on it with a will.

I emerged to the final long salt marsh section that preceded my arrival at the car park, and breathed a sigh of relief. I was in fact rather glad that the anxiety of the wood had propelled me through a phase of extreme exhaustion. I do this regularly, especially at this time of year. I push myself far beyond comfort in some insensible pursuit of enlightenment. I seem to have faith in my ability to follow signs that I do not yet know how to read.

I made it out of the second wood, well into twilight, exhausted, and wanting very much to sit down and walk no more. That would not be a good choice, however, because my mantra had become the phrases I had heard back at the point when I was striving to listen, “I believe in Good. I am strong”. I could not in good faith sit down with fatigue and still chant that I was strong.

I had a walking stick in my hand that I had picked up hours earlier in my first passage through the difficult wooded area that I had carried since. Now it was powering me along, a virtual staff despite its terribly fragile state, the poor old pine deadfall. I came to realize moments before the lightning bugs rewarded me with their candy of sight that the walking stick itself was the lesson. It had been in my hand all the way through the uncertainty. It had grown in force as I had kept it to my being, using it, taking it for granted.

It has been said that you never miss a mother’s love until it is gone. I know this because my mother told me those words herself! She left nothing to chance. She taught me everything she could, and that is why I do not in fact miss her love because it is not gone as long as I have faith that it shall be there every time I go to see her.