In Which We Engage in a Forest Walk With Time, and Thereby Gain a Revelation

A stream in Lamorna, Cornwall (AWM)

 A short story written for my high school literary magazine, inspired by the description of "Old Leisure" in George Eliot's Adam Bede (Chapter LII)

The progression of time is not constant, like the smooth motion of a rolling ball along a road paved with seconds, moving as regularly as the turning dials of a clock.  No, time totters forward down winding forest paths, his pace as variable as the changing scenery that unfolds as he sallies forth, his speed ever altering as he proceeds onward to his destination.

Time tramps through the woods with coat, hat, walking stick, and mind to see all that he can;  here slowing down when passing a pleasant meadow that welcomes him like a pair of open hands, here hunching over and quickly stumbling forward as some cold wind or bleak black colonnade of burnt trees reaches out at him, prodding him on.

Or, as it oddly seems is the more frequent turns of events, he inexplicably does just the opposite, this odd and avid traveller:  while moving through the vernal tunnel of leafy canopy and flowery trail, the air overflowing with the sweet-smelling vapours of the green wood, whose evanescent tendrils slow us down, pulling us inward in an aromatic embrace, prompting us to call up the trail dreamily to Time, telling our colleague to stop to admire this miracle, he stolidly marches off already, as if he had some urgent appointment on the far side of the wood!

And when, in his hurry, he comes across a withered heath, or ashen quarry, where misery itself seems to be pooled stagnantly across the landscape, and things bear only a semblance to life, and his coat flaps menacingly and resoundingly about, although after flying over the frozen terrain, even the cacophonous sound freezes and clatters silently to the grey earth;  where the wind moans ever terribly about and the cold ground burns our feet with the powerful desire to get anywhere hence, Time stops still.  With his feet shuffling ever so slowly, no matter how powerfully we hunger to go on, regardless of however forcefully our hands pull him forward by his jacket, until we upset his hat, and he bends over so tiredly to pick it up, extends his hand so sluggishly in order to wipe the dust off its brow as travel-worn as his spirit, raises it upwards so high, as high as the wheeling black clouds overhead in the realm of the winds, and finally meticulously replaces it on his brow;  his motion is so very slow that it seems we will remain in the proximity of misery forever.

Yet then again, when rising healthy trees or floral paths have extricated him at last, and hold him dearly, as if the beauty sorely missed him in his absence, he belatedly obeys out commands most unexpectedly and undesirably, rushing hence with a passion that his tottering figure would seem to make impossible;  and down the path we are forced to run as well, sailing by the clustered hills, the ponds’ smooth reflections of delicate and momentary clouds, the crowds of bright attentive flowers, and try as we might to snatch leaf or bloom from the trailside, the winds flying off of Time’s coattails blow all flora backward, out of our reach, while also forming that selfsame solid cape of air, rigid as the earth itself, to which we tightly hold, on which our body floats high, high above the almost weary soil below, the torrent of air so powerful that our cries to Time below are blown backwards and stirred in among the clouds (even though they mean nothing to either one of us), and we are nevertheless fearful of letting go, lest we lose our companion forever.

                               

Ah that old, odd traveller!  Whither does he go so swiftly?

               

Only when we see the trees spreading out, as if departing each others’ company now that our walk here draws to a close, and we near the edge of the wood, puffing, wheezing, bent low over the path, like one of the dead trees or blasted downs that we found so very unpleasant, Time still trudges onward, as robust as the foliage was green, the skies were blue, the wood was fresh, and the day was sunny, as if ready to recommence the entire tour.  Only then, as we burst out of the forest into the dusk (whose collapse from the canopy where it was hitherto supported on a lattice of winds we were much too enfeebled to have noticed), do we realise that if perhaps we had not been so insistent on slowing the man down in regions he obviously did not consider particularly resplendent, he might not have been so slothful othertimes near ugliness.  Similarly, if we had desisted in our struggle to press this well-travelled walker forward when he seemed to need rest, and had no desire to move on, he mightn’t have raced so hurriedly under the spreading leaf-bedecked branches, or past the wide welcoming meadows, or have tromped so cheerlessly upon the flowers, with the overall result of this entire odyssey being a general feeling of weariness imparted upon us as we came hither, but by which Time seems strangely unaffected.  If only we had let him go as he pleased!  He seems sensitive enough to appreciate the vernal splendour we so enjoy; he does not seem so absurd as to revel in bleakness.

               

—We are truly sorry, good guide and friend!  is our only thought as we finally pass him by, entering the open fields, only to collapse exhausted in the tall grass, which easily covers us entirely.