Memory Lane

I have several preserves that I visit again and again. Sometimes, I wish I could explore new trails more often than I do. But this morning as I walked this familiar path, I was reminded that I have the companionship of memory — of the many times I’ve been here, and with whom. One of my favorite Wendell Berry stories is the bittersweet “The Boundary,” in which Mat Feltner goes out to repair a fence. He is old, too old for such a foray, and it seems every bend along the familiar creek is populated by others he’s known in the long years he’s lived there, re-enacting the episodes he remembers. He begins to have serious trouble distinguishing present from past, though many of the people he remembers have died.

It was on this trail 10 years ago that I came upon this fawn lying in the grass. When my parents visited for supper later, my father was concerned and wanted to go back and see if the fawn was still there. So we set out on a drizzly evening. My father tucked my mother’s hand under one arm and carried an umbrella in the other, and we trooped off through the woods to make sure all was well. (It was.) Ten years later, my dad is 85; my mom died in May. Being in that place brought them back to me, two pieces of a whole, in a way I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

There were other memories, too:

• The trees where we first saw black and white warblers on Mother’s Day
• The bench where my husband and I sat eating ice cream one evening while a caretaker on a lawnmower drove loudly past, looking straight ahead as he blew grass all over us
• The spot by the creek where my daughters and I always lingered, looking at frogs and tracks in the mud, and feeling peace

There’s much to be said for new adventures! But it’s also good to experience the richness of a familiar place, and its power to restore and affirm who we are.