The sun is shining, yet the fall air is cool, and sends me a chill. The intense coldness of the wind shooting through my body feels as though I have just dived into a pool filled with ice water. The harsh sounds of the wind, whipping through the air, colliding with anything it comes into contact with provides an element of harshness to these beautiful woods. The tree branches are swaying back and forth, as if each one is fighting with the branch beside it. Back and forth these branches go, back and forth, until the wind dies down and the quarrel seemingly ceases to exist as the branches return to their quiescent state.
A squirrel now appears, spiraling up the tree as if climbing straight up was too simple. Once at the top, the squirrel stops to observe his forest home, then scrambles down the tree to a bush full of blood-red, smooth berries which remain damp from the rain that fell in the past few days. The squirrel runs around the bush, as if making an attempt to decide which berry will make the best meal. Being dissatisfied with the berries, the squirrel runs off to wherever it is that he came from, which leads me to wonder what could possibly be wrong with the berries. Seeing such an energetic little creature run about like that arouses a feeling of joy in me. As I leave the berry bush, and inspect it from afar, it seems as if it is not a berry bush at all, but a bush of brilliantly-colored flowers.
As I am walking, I sense movement to my right, and turn to see that a fawn, no more than five feet long, is feeding upon a bush. Despite its youth, it walks in a majestic manner around the bush, searching for fresh leaves. At the sound of a passing car on the adjacent road, the fawn’s tail immediately shoots up and he scampers away as if he had mere seconds to escape danger. I then hear a rhythmic thumping, which must be the sound of music being played in a passing car. The noise is fairly low and soothing. For a moment, the stressful feelings of life disappear just as quickly as the fawn had, and are replaced with internal serenity.
En route to a pile of rocks I see in the distance, I glance down at the dirt floor that I am treading upon. I make out a slight movement in the dirt and bend down to observe the crawly creature there. I find none other than a slimy, drab-colored worm that is as thick as my pinky finger. The worm is diligently inching along the ground, mustering all of its strength to continue moving forward. It begins to decrease its speed a minute after I started to observe it, almost as if it has given up hope that it will reach its home before the next rainfall comes and forces it back into foreign land once again. I decide to leave the worm to its work, and finally arrive at the pile of rocks. I take a seat on one of them and subsequently feel the coldness of the rock that seems as if it enters my body and fills the entirety of it with coldness, as did the wind previously.
I then focus my attention to the sky, where the clouds are taking turns blocking out the shining, gold sun. For one moment, the forest is illuminated, allowing the bright pink flowers on the bush beside me to sparkle, and in the next moment the forest is dark again, making the forest seem like a frightening nightmare. All of the marvelously-colored flowers and leaves appear more washed out and gloomy than they did in the light. Still watching the sky, I notice that each of the airy pieces of cotton candy that passes the sun blocks it out for a longer period of time than the last, as though they are schoolchildren competing to determine who rules the sky.
I then notice a faint smell in the air, a smell of barbequed steak that is no doubt sizzling in the hot, iron barbeque. This piece of civilized life leads me to realize that I must abandon the sounds and smells of the world that I have so much separated myself from, to return to the world I am accustomed to, and continue living with a new perspective on the natural world which civilization arose from.