A walk through familiar landscapes,
streams and gnarled trees,
rocks and damp moss.
Then an eldritch thing,
something from another world,
and we can only stare.
For a moment, the familiar landscape becomes strange -
the stream speaks a forgotten tongue,
ancient messages are scawled in the twisted bark,
the stones mark their age at a time of forgotten beasts,
and the moss is a forest where strange things crawl.
The moment passes, and we view this odd thing in context.
Something left for breeding by a creature we’ll never see.
Still strange, but small now, manageable.
We have our world back, which is a good thing.
That time we were almost lost.
Visit this week’s Adventure Journal, as well!
Posted on July 21st, 2009 by Kenton and Rebecca
Filed under: Nature Mysteries
How well you have described that moment of transportment! Sometimes the mystery of it all just overwhelms.
Interesting take on the micro. Cool picture.
I too have felt that eerily “lost” feeling, even in familiar territory. Great post, and lovely picture.
Hello Jackie,
Indeed it does. Just another of the joys of nature =)
Hi barefootheart! Thanks so much. It is such a strange looking thing . . .
Hi MObugs41,
‘Eerie’ is a good word for it. Often it seems, when out in nature, that there is a threshold that we sometimes nearly pass into, a borderland where we encounter our own ‘wildness’. Thanks for sharing!
Ah, what a moment you shared. Like sending someone a breeze…or a ray of sunshine. Lost indeed. One is never lost and perhaps that’s why you wrote that marvel of words: Almost.
So wonderful, thank you.
Thanks so much, Jay!
We love how you say that ‘one is never lost’. Even from a very practical viewpoint, we were just reading ‘Deep Survival’ by Laurence Gonzales, and he makes a very good argument for the state of ‘being lost’ to have nothing to do with geography, and everything to do with our state of mind. Of course, I think your words point to something even deeper — thanks for sharing =)