Field Notes: Above the path

Field Notes: Above the path

I enter the woods. The clough.

Left foot. Right foot. Keep going.

The canopy closes in behind me as if it knows I am here, as if it always has. The air shifts. Sound softens. Birds settle somewhere above, constant but not demanding. The world begins to quiet without asking permission.

Dogs bark in the distance. That means they are here. The walkers. The routine. The expected path through a place that was never meant to be routine.

And then it happens.

I lock eyes with a couple and their spaniel.

Alright, how do.

An automatic exchange. Unapologetic. Brief.

But enough.

Enough to remind me that I have been seen.

Something about that unsettles me. Like I have stepped into something I was not meant to interrupt. Or maybe something I was not meant to belong to.

So I carry on.

The verge comes into view. The one I climb. The one that lifts me above it all. The one that hides me.

Step by step, I move up. The ground is still holding the storm. Soft. Boggy. Ready to take your footing if you are not paying attention.

But the leaves still crunch.

Fresh. Cold. Alive.

I glance down as I climb.

Water moves beneath the bridge, full from the rain, steady and unbothered. And then I see it.

Ducks.

Not in the water.

On the bridge.

Waddling across it like they have somewhere to be. Like they have chosen this path. Like they are following something that was built for someone else.

Almost human.

It makes me laugh.

But then something else surfaces.

This climb pulls something out of me. Something older.

Childhood.

Exploration without permission. Finding space where there was none. We did not have woods like this. Just a carved out bush on the estate. A place we made ours because nothing else was given.

Mucky magazines. Old phone cards. Half understood worlds passed between us like secrets.

It was not much.

But it was ours.

I climb higher.

Squelchy. Slippery. The kind of ground that reminds you where you are if you get careless.

And then I reach the top.

I look down.

The path is there. Carved into the land by repetition. By habit. By people walking where they are told to walk.

Everyone follows it.

I wonder if any of them ever look up.

Wonder how long I could stand here before someone notices me watching from above.

But I move on.

Into the woods at the top. Away from it. Unbothering the people below. Unnoticed again.

And I like it that way.

No performance. No need to be anything. No summit to claim. No version of this to prove.

Just walking.

Just being.

I find it again.

The fallen tree.

My tree, I call it. But it is not mine. It never was. It belongs to the woods. To everyone. To no one.

It must have come down in some storm, some season that took more than it gave. But it is still here. Still growing. Still holding life.

I lay back.

The canopy opens just enough to let the sky in.

Clouds move slowly above me. Birds pass between branches, calling out without hesitation, without question.

And above them, cutting through it all, a different kind of bird. Metal. Loud. Distant. Carrying people away or bringing them back.

I watch them both.

The ones that belong here.

And the ones that pass over it.

I wonder if any of them notice me.

I wonder if it even matters.

Because here, everything slows.

The water below. The air above. The movement around me. It all settles into something quieter. Something softer.

For a moment, I am not carrying it all.

Not the weight. Not the noise. Not the pull of everything waiting for me outside of this place.

Not even the parts of me that are hardest to hold.

I am just here.

With the woods.

With the earth.

And I want to stay like this.

But I know I will not.

Soon, I will go back. Back to the hours. Back to the routine. Back to the life that demands something from me every day.

The nine to five. The repetition. The constant forward motion.

I slog on.

But here, in this moment, lying beneath the canopy, watching birds move from branch to branch, I hold onto something else.

A thought that does not leave me.

Maybe one day this will not be something I visit.

Maybe one day this will not be something I have to return from.

Maybe one day this will just be life.

And until then, I keep walking.