wanderings

As it turns out, my wife never did write about our family's walk in the Assiniboine forest, so it is left to me. We all went: mother, father, baby, even canine. We drove to the head of a trail in the little blue car, then set out on foot. The weather was agreeable for an afternoon in March, but the light was diffuse. The sky was not overcast, it was featureless white cloud, and the pale evidence of a sun somewhere above met our eyes only after infinite reflections between white snow below and white cloud above. We were in-between, squinting into a void broken only by ourselves and the countless thin, black lines of birch on either side of our blank path.


There is very little to observe in the Assiniboine forest in March. During a momentary rest that also served as a chance to put the mittens back onto a child who continually managed to get them off, our faithful hound relieved her bowels of their burden. Only then did I realize how wonderful the wood, the day, the whiteness had smelled. We held our breath, then our noses. I had a camera with me, so I captured a few images of us on the trail. I took a picture of the dog's business in the snow; a more vibrant brown I doubt I have ever seen.


Some short time later, as we were passing some cattails, I think made our first remark about the monster who inhabits that forest. "Very elusive" he or she is. Then I believe we headed back toward the blue automobile awaiting us in the parking lot. The path on the journey back twisted and turned. We had not  turned around and gone back the way we had come. We took the first intersecting path in the general direction we needed to go. Intersecting paths then somehow seemed to abound. We zigged, we zagged. We were lost.


Eventually, we saw some signs of movement through the trees.... We headed toward the moving things, and found that we were very close to the road we had traveled to get to the forest. The car-park must be near! But the path looked nothing like the return-path we had seen when we had first set out. On the sidewalk we realized that, though it felt as if we walked more than the return distance, we were actually a kilometer short of our destination. Had we fallen prey to a monstrous spell?