New Kid in the Woods

In the pre-dawn darkness I slip on my new trail shoes and wiggle my toes. I think they're a bit too small, maybe 1/2 a size. I guess my American feet can't decide if they are 43 or 44 European Foot Units long. I shift left and right slowly, trying to intuit how much forefoot stability I have to work with. This will my first time running trails in more than a year. My 29-year stint in the suburbs capped off by a 20-month stay in Dallas taught me that I don't like running roads, so I'm excited to be back in proximity to some trails.

C is starting her second week in her new RN position. The hospital is less than a mile from our apartment, but it's chilly and rainy so I'm going to drive her up. She's not much of a morning person, so we wordlessly dance around each other's routines: coffee, pop tart, packing lunch, water bottles and daybags. Out the door, down the stairs, down the stairs, down the stairs to the basement garage. A quick drive, a quick kiss, a quick goodbye.

Winding up French Hill I watch the thermometer on the dash drop a few degrees and wonder if I should have brought gloves.

As I start off jogging up the trail, the low clouds slowly suck the sun's light up from below the horizon, casting a diffuse grey glow into the woods. Everything is different. The rain sounds different here: a happy chatter of droplets on thin leaves. Almost like a handful of rice dropped onto wax paper. The tree-rain smell is different, light and tart. The earth-rain smell is different, still musky and dark, but not nearly so heavy. The ground is different, not cracked clay but decades of compacted leaf-litter dotted with outcroppings of slick gneiss.

I climb up the first crest and the underbrush opens somewhat into a glade of yellow-topped trees - I don't even know what kind of trees, even these are unfamiliar. The light snags in the upper branches creating a gradient from gold down to green, finally to the newly-fallen rusty red leaves underfoot. The trail stands out dark and wet, slicing right through the vivid scene. I wind down into the saddle and after a mile or so, I start to realize I'm probably a little bit lost. I started out on one of the marked trails, but I took 3 or 4 turns without seeing any markers. The friendly chatter of the rain has grown into a persistent clamor. I glance down and catch a flash of white: a bleached birch branch broken below; skeletal and brilliant against the soft darkness of the wet earth. I turn around and start to pick my way back toward the soft glow in the eastern sky.

I round a corner and patter across a slippery log bridge spanning some marshy ground, the trail splits up the bank and down the other side. I wipe the rain from my eyes and begin searching for landmarks to help me find my way back to the main trail. Around the next turn a large stone juts out about waist-high. The rain has stained it black, highlighting its stark white marble-like veins. Good, I'm sure to remember that. I round a corner and patter across a slippery log bridge spanning some marshy ground... ok, time to get my head out of the clouds. I take the other path and it leads me back up the ridge toward the east.

The soft padding of my feet on the leaf-peat slowly transforms to gravelly crunching as I find the path back to the trailhead. I'm soaked through; my jaw back by my ears beginning to ache from the cold. It's strange to do a such a familiar activity in an such unfamiliar environment. I'm excited to get to know this place, but I have the distinct feeling of being the new kid in the woods.

These are stories from Vermont.

Some of them are true.

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