Halloween night. You lay awake in the blackness, listening as the wind blew through the hills like an angry ghost, moaning and lashing the house with rain. By daybreak, which arrived clear and calm, all the trees had been stripped of their gold and poked their bare limbs into the dawn. Over the course of the day, the temperature proceeded to drop, and thick, dark clouds moved in. By afternoon, it felt like snow was in the air.
As soon as the afternoon sitting was over, you put on your boots and walked long into the fields and woods, greeting old friends, the maples and venerable oaks, the shagbark hickory and dark stands of hemlock and spruce. The fields, sky, and low clouds were all in motion as you made your way up the hill. It was a blustery, cold day, and the wind was making a happy racket, whistling and whooshing through the woods. After several days of silence and inquiry, the mind had become clear and exquisitely sensitive. Kicking through the knee-deep leaves was the deepest mystery and yet, completely innocent. A spontaneous laugh gurgled up out of the pure joy of just being.
In the corner of the upper field, there is a small, singular sassafras tree. Over the years, as I have passed this tree on a summer day, I have picked and chewed its leaf stems, which have a slippery, sweet licorice taste. In the old days, there were many sassafras trees around here, which were overharvested for their roots and bark, used to make root beer and spices. On this first day of November, there was but a single, brown, mitten-shaped sassafras leaf left hanging and wobbling in the breeze. It fell off in your hand as you reached for it, like it had been waiting for you. As you walked, chewing on the leathery stem, it softened in your mouth and, sure enough, yielded a faint trace of the slippery sweet licorice taste of summer days.
You stopped in the big field and followed the flight of a single crow, his black wings gulping air. The sound of wind blowing through the naked branches, the ever-present ‘caw! caw!’ of the crows, the distant hills and sky, the lingering licorice taste, and even the memories of summer days were all beheld in a vast and silent emptiness that was all-knowing and not-knowing at once.
