
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 9, 1994                   TAG: 9405110077
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BROKEN-HEARTED FOR A WOODS BROKEN BY THE STORMS

THREE OR four years ago, determined to exercise daily, I blazed a walking trail through our woods. It was short - less than a quarter of a mile - and it meandered, following first an old trail that led to a little stream, and then various, crooked deer paths, before circling back to home.

Along the length of this trail, an attentive walker could enjoy old-growth woods of pine and poplar, a rhododendron glade, and the cool silence of a 20-year-old white pine plantation.

In fact, this particular walker grew so attentive that she soon enjoyed so much more than she exercised, that the Man of the House graciously added for her (and for him) seven resting benches along the way.

Throughout that first summer, and in nearly every season since, I have walked the path devotedly. Not for the exercise anymore, but for the Wake Robin trillium, the lady-slippers, the ruffed grouse and the occasional curious deer; for the way light falls in green and animated patches through the highest poplar branches, the way blue jays yodel back and forth to each other late in the afternoon; for the stunning sight of snow sifting down through a shaft of sunlight, the surprise of a single Carolina lily, the conversations between squirrels.

I walked, too, with the children for the absolute, nourishing joy of their discoveries. "Look, William! A rabbit!" Patrick once called, crouching and pointing. Had I ever seen - really seen - a rabbit before he pointed one out?

Since February, I've been in the woods only twice. All through the ice storms, I could hear trees breaking. Near and far. Much of the breakage, I knew, had to be in the woods. Finally, late in March, I gathered enough courage to look.

The sight was - is - devastating. My path is gone, buried under hundreds of fallen trees, thousands of fallen branches. Perhaps a logging crew could clear it again. I cannot.

I've tried to convey the magnitude of this destruction to others. I've tried to express the depth of my loss. But I've not succeeded. "Oh, yes," people reply, gazing off somewhere. "We had a lot of tree damage, too."

"Tree damage?" I don't count my loss in mere "tree damage." I've lost a connection with grace.

Before condemning me as hyperbolic, or even hysterical, understand this: I grieve.

I grieve for the loss of a loved one.

And I can't say when, or if, I'll ever finish grieving.

Last week, in a fit of fury, I told myself that the best way to deal with mourning was to do something. Go out to the woods again and find a way to build another path! Repair what I could; blaze a new trail around what I could not.

I marched out resolutely. I managed to ignore, even, the first hundred or so fallen and blocking branches.

But I when reached the south-facing slope of the old-growth woods - site of the worst damage - I was struck down again, as if seeing it all for the first time. All of those massive trees, broken in half, stacked like twisted corpses.

Is there really any way around this desolation? Any way through this sadness?

Maybe. I certainly hope so. But right now, I can't see it.

And so what will I do with this summer's evenings, when the air has cooled and the sky is purple, when the blue jays are yodeling and I know that the lady slippers bloom? Where will I go?

Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.

by CNB