Getting out of the car

If I fall in the woods while being tugged vigorously by the pup at the at the end of a 26-foot leash, I occasionally get to brag because the aforementioned pup — who likely contributed significantly to my being on my backside on the ground — comes back to sit beside me until I feel like hoisting myself back to my feet, at which point he resumes his tugging, searching for whatever next grabs his attention.

My spouse, as I brag on my four-legged companion, often makes a not-necessarily mental note that her “elderly” mate has fallen again. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate her concern but more than seven and-a-half decades of ambulating across the planet has taught me ambulating with a young dog is sometimes fraught with hazards.

In my earliest experience, I played in a park in Manhattan, New York City, climbing on rocks I did not yet know had been pushed up from beneath to make an excellent climbing and sliding area. Mom did not obviously hover as I sledded down the wintry rocks, or tried to launch into space from a swing, but I always knew where she was – so the day I was running with a stick, fell and jammed the stick into my lower jaw, I knew exactly where to take my tears. I still have the scar, covered now by a beard and a patina of age.

I started Fourth Grade in Maine, where a bus took me to school in the morning. Recess and lunch time I played ball in a field of milkweed at the edge of an apple orchard, or wandered a web of trails with schoolmates, (and tried my first cigarette). I walked the three miles home in the afternoon, often stopping about halfway to visit a work horse its owner employed pulling trees from the surrounding forest. I didn’t know his name or breed, but he came to the gate to be petted by his pre-teen visitor.

Elsewhere on my walk there were deer in apple orchards and occasionally alongside the road, and one could occasionally come upon a garter snake or a raccoon. I spent most of my play time wandering through the woods, swimming with the loons and beaver, and fishing the crannies and deadfalls of the lake beside which we lived. Unknowingly, I learned all sorts of stuff about my wild world — stuff I never would have encountered from a seat on the school bus or the back of my parents’ Pontiac.

Thus began the curious perpetual wanderings of Mrs. Messeder’s eldest child.

We expend a lot of energy bad-mouthing Christopher Columbus for stealing our home from its original owners. (Though I know of very few who seem interested in giving it back.) It is deserved criticism, but the more profitable lesson to be taken is that Chris made the trip in the first place, when so many of his age were sure he would sail off the edge of the world.

Leaving the safety of car is about discovering the previously unknown. It’s the only way to find moths in the woods with eyes that glitter like distant cat-eyes in your flashlight beam.

What is your favorite discovery found wandering in the wood outside the car? Please Leave a comment.

Text and Images ©2024 John Messeder. John is an award-winning environmental storyteller, nemophilist and social anthropologist living in Gettysburg, PA. He may be contacted at john@johnmesseder.com