An autumn tale - © 2009 Maarten Elout

The earth at summer's end smells of yellow and brown and bathes in rusty droplets of the setting sun. Autumn has come with Mr. Spider's silvery shiny webs and the crunchy gravel underneath my boots whispers a crisp tale of damp and dusky demeanor. It was ages ago but I remember where he's taking me. I let the kingly little wren lead the way through thicket and brush. Trusting. Breathing. Shivering. Its song is muffled by decaying ochre leaves, yet its guiding voice as clear as the icy tears drooping from my windowsill. It is spiky cold and like a frightened tortoise I retreat my head and hands deeper into my woolen shell and venture on, farther and farther into the woods.

Earlier on the trail I crossed paths with a few hikers who were enjoying the sunrise from a ridge and sat down for a cup of coffee with a couple guys fly fishing in the river that flows elegantly through the winding gorge. They amused me with their stories of the day's catch, which of course turned into disproportional adventures to entertain themselves and the happy audience. The quiet one then continued to tell me they had seen some weird shadows in the gorge and unusual flapping sounds on the water at night. There was a twinkle in his eyes as he demonstrated the sound by roughly slapping the transparent surface with his hand. The loud and liquid sound echoed and eventually died from bouncing off the cliffs. I acted shocked and concerned. They get it. We had good laugh. After lunch I spotted one more hiker in the distance making his way out of the wilderness following a path that leads to the southern entrance of the wilderness. Still a good few miles to go I thought to myself. Since my afternoon break I hadn't seen another soul.

I fight my way out of my sleeping bag as quickly as I can untangle myself from its mummy-like grip and stumble to my feet.
"Who are you?", my voice tremors as my brain desperately tries to compose itself and separate the dream from waking consciousness. Reality bleeds into the dream state, the dream state into the present moment. Her scent still on my breath, an enormous being in front of me. It's dark still. I'm camping in the wilderness...
"That ain't the right question," he disrupts. "But if you need to name me you can call me Wanderer. Now hurry up, we haven't got much time!"
With that he turns around and crosses the clearing in two large strides and stops underneath a pine tree at the edge. With his staff he flicks my bagpack from one of the higher branches and in one swoop tosses it in my direction. It lands semi-softly on the bed of heather at my feet.
"What are you waiting for, the fucking bus?", his demanding voice thunders, as he heads out on the trail mumbling to himself.

I can't remember how long we walked for or how far. In his presence and the dark of those early morning hours time and distance became harder and harder to grasp until at dawn I had lost all sense of who I was, where I came from, what I was doing here and where we were going. All there was left was an elongated experience of the present moment and my miniscule place in the greatness of this amazing creation in which I was submerged. Strangely enough it didn't feel odd at all. I had a place in all of this and although I didn't understand at that time what my place was I wasn't concerned about any of it. I knew on a deep viceral level that this was right and I simply trusted that I would be shown the way when the time was right.

"Long before the earth was created a place emerged;
the land of mists it was called,
and from the well at its core twelve power-filled rivers flowed,
in pulsating waves they flowed,
farther and farther away from their source they kept flowing,
slower and slower until they almost stopped,
and the edges became solid and turned to ice.