Old Man Forest

by Jeremiah Zitzloff
Throughout my childhood, the forests of Minnesota have intrigued my boyish curiosity. Heavily influenced by my father’s hunting and fishing trips, I quickly became acquainted with the expanse of woods and swamp behind my family’s old farm house located in suburbia. Yearning for a place of excitement and wonderment, I began to explore this Maple and Basswood sanctuary, fabricating my own world of adventure beneath a canopy of luscious green hues.

During the late spring and summer months, the forest began to come alive. The fragrance of earth, the damp soil and twisting vines created a world that only a young imagination could fathom. Even after a long and harsh winter, the forest floor completely transformed itself as the earth began wiping winter away with a brilliant rainbow paint brush. Tiny wildflowers of purple, yellow and white, vibrant green plants and berried shrubs—all began glistening in the filtering sun that added its own yellows and oranges, delicately flickering through the canopy like gentle baby’s breath—life. Throughout my excursions into the forest, I discovered places of unparalleled beauty: an old cement well, matted with dark mud and spongy moss; a crystal clear stream and small pond flowing and shimmering between thick cattails swaying to and fro beneath a deep blue sky, and the ever present singing of song birds—paradise.

After the warmth summer bestowed, fall began to creep into the veins of the forest, permeating into its warm blood and offering up its season with crinkled hands of orange and brown. The trees began to change; the once vibrant emerald leaves turned to fantastic shades of carrot, beet and ginger, rustling from their perches high up in the crisp air. One by one, they would slowly fall to the Earth, covering the ground like a blanket that the withered plants lay their heads under to rest. Golden-brown white-tailed deer moving silently on their beaten paths left me in awe; fat wild turkeys and their beautiful plumage was something I had never seen before. The forest and I became friends to an extent I never thought possible—my refuge; an untouched and natural haven where anything was possible, a place that would always welcome me like an old friend.

As I began to grow, my companionship with the forest began to fade, but not my love for it. Busy with high school and relationships, I neglected to wander into its bosom, but rather looked down the hill to its open arms. I thought the forest would always make me feel the same sense of happiness; couldn’t I always enter and know that joy existed there? I believed the answer was yes, until the day my brother passed away under that same green canopy I had cherished for years.

Today, the forest looks unforgiving and wretched, even in the summer when its heart is beating—pulsing with life. The warm colors and fragrance no longer tempt my bare feet to tread once again on its soft soil, and I wonder to myself, “Will I ever be able to renew the spirit I once had for this place?” Sorrow has pierced my heart when I look down to its ever-open arms, but I ask myself again, “How can such god-given beauty encompass so much pain?” After pondering these questions, the answer became real; as real as those vibrant green hues, as warm as the bright sun, washing over me like that shimmering stream. I realized that the old forest had been teaching me its secrets on those long summer days I spent exploring its anatomy; it became my metaphor of life.

This is what the forest taught me: life may become like the winter, pulling me down with its icy, black claws, but I must remain tenacious; I must hold on to life until I can re-grow like the forest. I must hold fast and believe that one day, I too will rise from the cold—bringing with me the pulsating colors and warmth that sustains my very being.