2020 Freshwater Literary Journal

Diane Woodcock Roaring Fork Passing through a cove hardwood forest— gloriously diverse deciduous trees— my windows wide open, I inhale deeply the scent of flame azalea, mountain laurel, Frazer magnolia. In this deep-soiled valley grow beech and white ash, white basswood and sweet buckeye, eastern hemlock, oak and butternut hickory, bigleaf magnolia, red and sugar maple, cherry, tulip tree and yellow birch.

As if in the sanctuary of a church, I sit for a spell among them, feeling small and insignificant. Entering this magnificent watershed, sacred cathedral, I marvel at Eastern hemlocks, at Minerva Bales with her husband raising nine children in a two-room cabin preserved here. How hard life must have been, but then again how splendid, surrounded by such an understory—ashleaf and sassafras, earleaf magnolia and flowering dogwood, silverbell trees and redbuds.

Am I a person dreaming I’m a tree, or a tree dreaming it’s me? Is it I who am writing, or the tree writing me?

What I would give to be that hickory over there cradling the Black bear and her two cubs tucked into one crook of it, or to be that bear taking immaculate care of her cubs in this safe place no longer looming with hunters—her only fear now 132