Wild Spot

The sun is due to set soon and I am sitting away from the cave entrance, at the bottom of a steep grade. My walk here was very aromatic. A sweet smell stopped me in my tracks almost out of fear. Of what? I do not know. It didn't smell like a natural sweetness. I immediately thought of rot or death. The smell literally stunned me. And now I sit here, my feet in the leaves, feeling each minute get colder. 

I hear sirens in the distance and short, loud sounds as if someone or something else is exploring this darkening section of woods. The horizon is golden with leveling sun and the night sounds and song birds are revealing their noise. I hear three different birdsongs and the squeaky stop of a city bus on the main street in Creighton across the river. Brown skeletons of flowers still stand with their off-white crumbly blossoms. Yards away, a wind I cannot gauge or feel is blowing the hanging, leafy branches of a tree which has not gone barren yet. The sky is blue-white and cold and all the leaves on the ground can easily be mistaken for something stilled with fear or something else that is dead. That one looks like a chipmunk on its haunches. That one, a splayed-0ut mouse. That rotting wood looks like the  backside of a groundhog. And speaking of backside, I just heard a loud rustle behind me. It may be a deer. Quick sounds in the leaves. And then silence. All of it behind my back. Yet I turn and see nothing. I hear it again, but it's out of sight. Unclear. Not nearly as clear as this tree in front of me with its deep-grooved bark that gives the tree a canyon-like appearance. Something just landed beneath the leaves near my feet and I see its burst-movements beneath the leaves. A mole?  An insect? Again, I see nothing and it's right in front of me!

What looks like a snake skin poking up from under some leaves is a strap of material. I pull at it and relieve one end but the other end won't budge from its roots underground. The rich, black dirt I pulled up, though, smelled delicious. I read somewhere that some pregnant women crave dirt. What an amazing time to experience the outside world--when one is pregnant! I c an only imagine how amazing yet conflicting it would be to truly sense the world outside me when so much is going on inside me. I am jealous of animals in a way. They are always out there. Making their calcium eggs and regurgitating their food for their young. They gather, sort, bury, climb, build. I want to make a nest. Lay an egg. Teach my children that they must learn to fall before they learn to fly.