In Velvet

Boots against the dust, with an eye out for berries, we entered the forest single file, crossing switchbacks alongside the trampled stalks of coneflowers, wilted mistletoe, and coagulations of greenish sap. Gray acorns lay petrified on a downed branch, like sleigh bells of cellulose. Bark collected around many a trunk’s ankles. Some bore a large, resinous gash where, presumably, a moose had attempted to shed its velvet. Purple hands clutched at the glutinous fruit on hip-high bushes without breaking stride, though here and there roots with Seussian kinks at their middles seemed almost designed for hikers. Beetled into submission, the hard ghosts of trees—both ashen and statuesque, with one shaped like a whale’s rib cage—cautioned us with lessons ecological and foregone. A single pine, carbonized by lightning, pointed accusingly at the sky.