Deep in the woods somewhere in Whately, there’s a rotting log covered by vibrant green moss. Its still-solid-for-now frame resides on a soft bed of last fall’s dry leaves and its old bark is protected from the elements by a crusty covering of snow.
Surrounding it are wiry trees as tall as your imagination, perhaps taller, reaching like youthful fingers toward an eerily cold sky. If you’re quiet enough, music can be heard, as if the recently returned birds are singing the tired log to sleep. The air is crisp and raw. Rain has recently fallen and the first signs of spring seem to be retreating from whence they came. Amid this change in season — neither yet here nor there — the log is a fixed point. Soon, the snow will recede and summer will come, followed by fall and then winter again. The log will bear witness to it all.
I know because I’ve been there and, in my mind, I’m still there.
As tension surrounding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has ratcheted up over the last few weeks, I find myself longing for what I cannot have — friends I cannot visit; places I cannot go; physical freedom that’s not possible right now.
But while I might be restricted to the cramped confines of my small second-floor apartment, my mind is free to wander — and wander it has. I’ve visited that old log, as it exists in my imagination, far more times in the last week than I’ve ever been in person.
And, as ever, it’s been for me a place of solace.
In this, I’m reminded of Henry David Thoreau, the transcendentalist author (a personal favorite of mine), who wrote about striving for mental emancipation in his essay “Civil Disobedience.” While in jail, he writes, “I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was.”
Of course, Thoreau’s self-inflicted travail (he intentionally withheld taxes in protest of the government) is far different from our own — but his inspiration rings true. Our movement might be restricted but our imaginations are not: We can still create and learn and let our minds run wild with recollection.
Were he alive today, I’d bet you anything that Thoreau would be where I am — lost in thought, inspecting a moss-covered log somewhere deep in Whately’s quiet woods.
Andy Castillo is the features writer for the Greenfield Recorder. He holds a master’s degree in creative nonfiction from Bay Path University and can be reached at acastillo@recorder.com.