A Forest Walk

by Åsa Eriksson

On this autumn day the sky is piercing blue and the air sharp, carrying the promise of winter, crystal clear and tense like a violin string that holds its vibrating note ready, prepared to let it sound. We lace shoes tightly and pull another sweater on and wind scarves carefully around our necks and then go in search of the gloves that have yet to be unearthed from their summer's nest in the wardrobe; in a hurry though time is endless, crossing the living room with boots on, bounding up the stairs, calling back "Where did you put them?" and soon descending triumphantly with the coveted gloves without even receiving an answer.

The walnut tree stands grey and leafless, bold and proud even when deprived of its treasures--a basketful in the kitchen and a bag sent home with mum and dad. A bottle will be opened on some December evening, pale yellow wine poured into glasses and releasing the sweet scent of elder flower; a steaming apple cake with raisins and walnuts will be taken out of the oven and put on the table in front of guests, close friends, friends of the family. "This wine comes from our daughter," they will say, "and the walnuts we picked ourselves from the ground under the tree outside their house," and they will feel the pull of the distance in their hearts but never once spell out to others how it feels when your children move far away.

From the road we look out over the valley and the mountain beyond is an almost unnaturally dark blue silhouette and seems so much closer than it really is. A buzzard swoops down over the meadow but rises again as its prey scurries out of sight under a tuft of grass or a crouching bush. Later in winter the voles and mice in the fields will be hunted down by the fox trotting alertly across the snow, his head cocked to minute noises under the white blanket and then stopping in his tracks, standing still with his entire animal being focused on one little spot of snow-covered ground, then tensing his muscles and leaping forward in a peculiar arched jump so that he will land on his prey from above and the vole's frantically beating heart will finally stop between his jaws.

Soon we are under the trees and the sun slants through branches and we keep our eyes open for chantarelles; ever so often the bright yellow of a birch leaf lying in the moss just so will give us a start though we know it's too late in the year. There is an intensity to the colours that remain. In the midst of muted browns and greys even a speck of living green seems courageous, just as the bright reds and yellows cry defiantly in the face of death. And I fall behind for a moment, slowing my step, trying to take in every detail of stone and earth and trees, in awe of that which dies and yet lives, feeling both painfully separated from it but at the same time connected, one.

The path is a familiar one. We reach the place where we have encountered boar and where, in early summer, the wild strawberries ripen first. We walk past the tree where we found our first cauliflower mushroom, and the place where a roe deer went to sleep in the cold of last winter and froze to death; when the snow melted it still looked as if it were about to stand up and leap off between the young spruces, but looking closer we saw that it was filled with a different kind of life and that the movement under its eyelids was the crawling of insects. We pass the spots where we know to look for forest champignons, summer boleti, wood blewits, brittlegills or saffron milkcaps at different times during the year; here we have filled a bucket with blueberries; there forget-me-nots always grow in summer and there tall, pale grass touched by afternoon sun glows brilliantly against the dark backdrop of trees and deep shadow.

A pair of ravens lifts on heavy wings and circles over the treetops, their calls hoarse and barking, letting us know that they have seen us, and we stand still and gaze upwards at the birds that are like black velvet cloaks flapping in the wind. Yet these creatures are not bringers of ill omen or representatives of evil. I know how deep my roots reach; they spread like mycelium, drawing nutrition from the earth but also from the mystical core of the world; they stretch and grow and worm their way north and tie me closer to everything I have left, everything I might have lost, everything I cannot forget.

The Author

Åsa Eriksson is a moderately insane redhead born in 1972. Originally from Staffanstorp, Sweden, she went in search of the meaning of life and ended up in South Bohemia, as caretaker of a mansion in the forest. She paints and writes but also knows a great deal about baking bread and chopping wood.