Half a century ago, my father took me walking in the woods. Not a huge wood by New England standards, but from a six-year-old’s viewpoint, three feet above ground, it seemed to go on forever.

We worked our way along a deer path, through laurel and spindly undergrowth until we came to where the ground grew green again, all the brighter for our having last passed beneath a covert of hemlocks, where dirt, dry leaves, and shade mixed with dappled sun to make a deep, yet bright and shimmering brown. It hypnotized and held me captive until my father, calling my name, broke the spell.

Here the woods surrounded and kept secret another world. The long, splayed roots of fallen trees stood tall, forming castles and villages for (I hoped) gnomes and fairies. Pedestals of mud and grass rose among them, and thin bands of water ran between them. Atop the pedestals grew sculptured vases of mottled purple and green (which would later become recognizable as ordinary skunk cabbage). Wood ferns, preened and plumed, formed circles­graceful green dancers, holding hands, backs arched, waiting for the music to begin, their dainty toes hidden in the earth-tone carpet of the forest floor.

“Now sit and be still.” Dad squatted down and led me by example looking from ground to treetop, side to side, moving only his eyes. “If we don’t move or make noise, we might see something!”

I chose a nearby patch of moss growing close enough to the shell of an old oak to lean my back against. Dad stood and started to move away.

“Where are you going?” I whispered.

“There.” He indicated a direction with his chin. “Right behind you. I’ll pretend to be a rock, you pretend to be a stump.” I thought this was a fine idea. Maybe we’d see elves.

The memories of that six-year-old child are now encased in a 56-year-old body. Where I now sit is many miles and a lifetime away from that place, but much the same: a rivulet, just outside the shade of hemlocks, a stone's throw from a magic village made of plant and earth and fallen trees. I come here often, but now instead of sitting cross-legged, I hug my knees, thereby reassuring them that I have neither forgotten nor taken them for granted.

Here I always feel my father’s presence sitting quietly behind me. This place centers me. I come here knowing I will return home wet and muddy and bug-bitten, because the closer I can get to the earth, the more grounded and alive I feel.

A Blanding’s turtle joined me here once. I was sitting as still as possible considering the sign over my head, written in mosquitoese: “Free Food Here.” For whatever reasons, the turtle considered me harmless, settled in, and we sat in companionable silence. Too soon, sufficiently rested, he rose and strode forward until his front legs stood in the gently running water. He submerged his head and drank for so long I thought he’d drown. Once sated, he lifted his head from the water stretching his neck towards the sun, his beautiful golden-orange throat seeming to glow. He appeared to be considering the world around him, and smiling.

We both enjoyed the scenery for a while, neither of us in a rush. The pale white spots on his shell became clearer to me the longer I looked at him. It struck me that perhaps this was a descendant of the turtle in the Iroquois creation myth that once carried the earth upon his back, his carapace­high, rounded and elongated like the milky way­a map of the heavens, its throat the color of a sunrise or sunset. Perhaps he is still holding up the earth, keeping it in place as long as he is on it. Lose him, and we’ll all be lost.

The turtle made an almost imperceptible movement, and I knew he was ready to travel on. I closed my eyes because I didn’t want to see him go. The temptation to follow would have been too great.

By Lynn Quinlan, Volunteer