Nature/Descriptive Essay

College Composition

By Danielle Vine

 

 

Beech trees are known for their wide leaves, with veins that crinkle the skin of the leaf, leaving little ridges for rain to run down.  These woods are full of Beech trees, so when it starts to rain, I know I’ll be getting wet.  In books and movies, people always run under a tree and are magically saved from getting soaked, but that’s just ignorant story telling from someone who hasn’t actually been out here.  In fact, sometimes it can be worse under a tree, because those big leaves will fill up and then dump on you all of a sudden.

The snowmobile trail that I’m on is overgrown.  All spring and what summer we’ve had so far has been full of sunshine and rain, perfect weather for undergrowth.  Why did I wear my shorts?  I know the answer, my hiking khakis were in the wash.  But now my legs are all torn up from hostile raspberry bushes, and saplings that bend and whip as I pass. 

The rain is picking up, but I’m almost there.  The trail curves upward and away from me, but the trail is irrelevant now.  I climb down the side of the hill, leaving the trail behind me.  I choose my footing carefully, and don’t allow my momentum to build.  If I let myself descend as quickly as gravity would dictate, then the landing would be far from pleasant.  The slope is slippery.  Every patch of dirt is turning to mud, and every rock is rejecting the rainfall and allowing it to pool up, creating no safe surface for my descent.

I do reach the bottom safely though, and set my feet on a bed of leaves.  They are little basins for rainwater now, and my hiking shoes are soaked through.  I wade through the leaves that come to the middle of my calves, and curse the valley and its ideal location for storing dead leaves from years past. 

Finally, I come to the place I had set out to find.  My hair is soaked, hanging in a tangled mass, with water dripping off the ends.  But that’s behind me, and there in front of me is the fort.

I can still remember the day we built it.  My big sister, who always got us lost in the woods until I decided to lead, and I.  Just the two of us, pretending to be lost forever on a desert island.  I love the ability that children have to believe.  Once we grow older, we find all the answers we’ll ever need, and we decide that belief and wonder are things that children do.  I suppose exposure to the world breeds mistrust and doubt, but in those days we were innocent, and truly free.  Logic was irrelevant.  Tell us that desert islands rarely have beech forests on them, and we would disregard you.  Tell us that our first priority once stranded would be water or food, not shelter, and we would probably nod and then simply continue building our fort. 

This was what we had come up with.  I bend down and grab one of the slimy wet logs that had fallen from the lean-to and was lying on the ground.  Carefully, I place it in the gap that it had left, and then walk around to the other side.  Our lean-to is built against a large boulder that is covered in moss.

I creep around to the inside of the fort, and crouch on my knees.  I had made it to the safety of our leaky fort just in time for the rain to stop.  The dripping would go on for a while though – another drawback of escaping rain by diving for trees.  The ground inside the fort was still somewhat clear.  Even though the fort was built on the floor of the forest, my sister and I insisted on making it our home by making brooms out of ferns and grasses, and sweeping the tiny space.  And of course, we made the brooms before we found food and water sources.  They were much more important.

My ankles are getting sore from my position, so I lean back against the rock.  It was wet from the rain, but I'm wetter, so I don’t care.  The rain only makes the hot July atmosphere more humid and hard to breathe, so I run my hand along the stone and drink in the cold through my palms. 

My hand runs along a crack, and I remember my sister’s words.  She had told me that this crack was the safest place in the world – here hidden away, and secret.  So she had put our locket in there.  I turn around in the small space and peer into the hole.  But nothing is there, and I walk away with empty hands.