Dirt crunches under rushed footsteps, mind brimming with worrisome thoughts. I wander down the trail that wraps around the lake. I am a toddler in my 20s learning how to be someone. A baby snake blends against tawny dirt before arduous skin shedding, before its many rebirths. It slithers across a worn path, eager to touch the lake’s clear water. An off trail leads to a clearing: a dead end. A futile outcome from fruitless curiosity. However, on my way back, I find a Geocache jar perched in a hollow tree stump— a bright blue lid and clear plastic showing its contents: local business cards, a child’s craft, a metal tag. I am an accidental treasure hunter. An inchworm dangles near my nose, hanging by a silk thread, interrupting worrisome thoughts. I grab the silk gingerly and place the worm back on the tree. A large tree stands in front of me where I sit on a picnic bench to draw. Its leaves spread out like an umbrella, stretching over younger trees. It reminds me of a small schefflera plant that lived in my old college apartment— (Now at my parent’s house, it is leafless, pot empty, ready to house a new plant.) I wonder about what I can’t see, what I don’t know: the time this tree took to grow, the creatures nestled between branches, the complex root systems that spread below soil. I stand up, and I meander through the last stretch of the trail.
