The Trail
A man and a woman walked through a dense forest. The woman was in the late stages of pregnancy so she held her stomach in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other. The couple was on their way back from a picnic in a maple grove and though the sun was high in the sky, the trail back was long and the man walked quickly, anxious to return to their cabin before night fell. But the woman waddled behind, admiring the vegetation on the side of the trail as she went.
“See how that flower wilts beneath those fallen leaves.” She exclaimed. “It is surely about to die. Will you please uncover it? My stomach is far too large for me to bend down so far.”
“I see the color in the sky turning to orange. The sun will go down soon and there are so many flowers in the wood. Why would the death of one make any difference to the rest of the wood?” Her husband answered.
But the woman kneaded her hands together with a pathetic look on her face as if she would never be happy again. So he grumbled and gave in, stooping down to lift the moist leaves off the flower. Immediately it lifted its little red petals that quivered with joy. It was a poppy. And the man insisted they get on their way without another stop.
They walked on, the man ahead and the woman dragging behind until the man heard his wife yelp. He turned to see her frozen in her tracks and pointing to the little stream that ran parallel to their path where a daddy long legs teetered on a piece of bark. “Oh poor spider! It’s going to fall off the bark, the stream will soon overturn it and it will die in the rapids! Will you save it? In this state, I am not fast enough to run.”
“The sky is dimming. Let’s leave the spider so we can get back to our cabin before it is too dark.” Her husband begged. But his wife wept so bitterly that he gave in and ran down the stream to retrieve the spider and place it safely back on the ground.
The two walked on and soon the man could see the trees open up at a crest on the hill where the little cabin nestled. The sky seemed misty with twilight. The moon was naked. The man heard his wife cry a third time but this time he didn’t turn around. “I see the moon.” He said. “Soon it will be too dark to keep walking.” He was so anxious to get back, and frustrated with his wife that he marched on, deaf to the silence following him, because his wife was not there.
The man walked alone until he came to an old apple tree where he almost walked over a fallen crow with her belly up to the sky. She was bleeding from her wings. A few paces away he saw her fallen nest. Next to it lay a broken egg and a chick, slimey with newness and squeaking away while its mother took her last helpless breaths. The man knew that the chick would die in the forest without its mother, so he stepped past the dying bird and knelt in front of the chick. Dirty, callused hands picked the bird up. He was a mountain compared to it. Muscles rippling on his back and hair that hung down in blond curls. The chick was the size of his thumb.
As he admired the bird he remembered his wife and looked behind him to make sure she was there, but she wasn’t. He peered at the darkening trunks to see if she might appear, but she didn’t. He looked around him and found that, in his haste, he had walked straight off the trail and was now quite lost. Keeping the chick in his hand, he circled the tree, trying to remember where he had come up to it so that he could retrace his steps back to the trail.
About to give up completely and set up a camp for the night, he heard a long moan echoing among the trees- then a cry. He recognized it and ran into the trunks towards it, the chick still enveloped between his hands. He found his wife lying on the trail to their cabin, screaming in pain. She had the same look in her eye as a dying man, recognizing something. The sweaty wrinkles in her face were a maze and he could not find its center. He didn’t know how to help her, so he watched as she screamed and when she was done, he lifted his hand to reveal the chick that craned its neck up to him. He extended his arm down to her with his other hand holding the bird. “We will take this home,” he said and a bright smile spread over her face. She put her hand in his. The moon was quite bright enough to light their trail home, and they walked on into the thicket together.
