Kettle Moraine Trail

She knows this hour’s grammar.
How mist pools in the kettles,
which birds speak first.

Nine miles of Blue Trail ahead,
through forest climbs and sunny flats,
her footfalls testing the loose moraine.

Wild geranium
catches early sun in the open stretches.
She runs past
mayapples under canopy, umbrellas fully opened now,
past dame’s-violet claiming the edges.

Her breath clouds in the kettle bottom,
dissipates as she climbs. The forest moves with her.

Deer trails cross and recross the human path,
fresh tracks saying they were just here,
are always just leaving.
She’s learned to accept this.
Their presence in absence,
their refusal to share her hour.

Later. He carries his camera,
notebook for recording what blooms when.
Years of Wednesdays, tracking the handoffs.
Dandelions to dame’s-violet, honeysuckle to wild geranium.

Today, fleabane emerging,
garlic mustard spreading through understory,
first columbine by the steep descent.

He pauses at the steep descent,
uses the oak for balance,
stones shifting underfoot.
Notes it all,
the slow journal
of a forest moving through time.

Other walkers pass, nod, move on,
everyone mindful on the glacial debris.
He barely notices,
focused on the yellow of ragwort,
the way poison oak hides among beauty,
how the same trail
tells new stories each week,
each step.

Afternoon brings chaos.

“Look, a flower!”
“Don’t touch that!”
“How much farther?”
“I’m tired!”
They’re creating their own route.
A bit of this trail, cross to that one,
young father lifting the smallest over a modest hill,
turning back before the real challenges begin.

They miss the subtle things.
The specialized leaves of bloodroot,
the way moss indicates north.
But find the obvious joys.
A walking stick that’s perfect,
a puddle in the kettle bottom
that must be investigated.

The forest accepts this chaos too,
this alternate way of being present.

Already they’re looping back,
done with their improvised adventure.
The youngest clutches wilted geranium,
conquered her version of wilderness.

Last light slants through the canopy,
transforms the ordinary.
A woman walks the White Trail slowly,
not for exercise
but for something harder to name.
Three miles of mostly gentle earth,
a few modest hills testing her resolve.

The trail gives what it can.
Solidness beneath feet
despite occasional stones,
the reliable progression of flowers,
the way silence can be an answer.

She touches the bark of the old oak at the one steep turn.
Same gesture every evening since February,
since the funeral.
The tree stands.
She stands.

Spring helps, she thinks.
Spring helps.

Deer trails everywhere but no deer.
They own the in-between times,
the hours humans surrender.

The trail holds all these passages without preference.
Dawn runner battling every hill,
families befriending every flower.
Each necessary,
none complete without the others.

Between visits,
the forest does its patient work.
Roots deepening through glacial till,
flowers cycling through their brief assignments,
deer paths crossing human paths
at angles that speak alternate knowledge,
alternate needs,
alternate hours.

The kettles collect mist,
then sun,
then shadow.
The moraines shed stones like thoughts,
rearranging slightly with each footfall,
each season.

This is a landscape that remembers ice,
that knows about patience,
that reveals itself as challenge or comfort,
depending on the seeker.

This season’s abundance gives what it gives.
Wild geranium,
the promise of summer,
time to notice, or not notice,
to climb and descend
at whatever speed healing requires.

Each footfall joins the conversation
between human need and forest patience,
between conquering miles and gathering flowers,
between the trail we think we’re walking,
and the one that’s really there,
between the deer we never see
and the proof of their passage
everywhere.