There is a great sense of stillness for me today. Even with a busy morning of getting ready for the week ahead, there is a peaceful feeling that has wrapped me up so tightly and I am quite grateful for it. It has been a while since I have felt this way. I gratefully welcome it back.
Yesterday, I got back into the woods. I suspect that it is part of the reason of the reflection and peace that is felt today. I found a location that is part of a town forest yet, it is not on any map. There are no real records of it. The town was never formally named. No one really knows who the residents were. We know it once existed from what was physically left behind and the stories that are infrequently whispered. It is said that the land may have been given to veterans from the French and Indian War and later the Revolutionary War when they returned home. Some say the poor and unwanted took the land for themselves, wanting a place of their own. The residents tried many times to be annexed by the surrounding towns, but were always denied. They were too far out in the wilderness and it seemed no one wanted to have any part of them. There are no recorded explanations of why the famers eventually left their fields. We only know that they did, maybe around the time of the 1830’s to 1850’s. No one returned to this tiny and faded village. The old and long forgotten fieldstone foundations of this glimmer of a farming community are all that is physically left. It is the town without a name, in a place that society did not want, in a time that has been forgotten… well, almost forgotten.
As I wandered the land on top of a steep and rocky hill, there was a presence that both watched and followed me. I wondered who they were. How did they live? Who did they love? I wondered what dreams they held and what fears they shared as they lived deep in the rural woods, far from any other community. This is in a place nicknamed Monsterland, after all. There were flashes of farms, of cattle, of chatter. Odd smells blew along the November air. The scent of pine and decay, yet there was something else unfamiliar. We were in an abandoned town, but also in a place that maybe life still wanted to be lived, to be seen. Now that people come to witness this place, maybe they feel torn because it is too late to be a part of a community. It is a beautiful place. Yet, hidden beneath the fallen leaves and passage of time, there was something else – a longing of wanting to be accepted and a pride that now wants to be left alone. Is it all just too little, too late?
As we made our way along the rocky cart path lined with meticulously crafted fieldstone walls, I kept my phone in my pocket. While we were there, my camera would freeze. My phone would reboot itself. There was no cell service. Again, that odd feeling of wanting to be seen and left alone mixed all around me. That was when a song began to play on my phone without me touching it. The orchestral sounds of a song that finds its way thought many of the Coheed and Cambria albums began to play. The first few notes of “Keeping the Blade” rose out my pocket and sent chills through me. Scott found a path at that exact moment and we felt pulled to follow it, music playing. The sun was beaming down, as if to guide our way. We found a stone circle hidden by a thicket of laurel that we navigated through carefully. It was possibly an old filled in well. It also looked like a possible fire pit, but there were no scorch marks on the constructed stones. A liminal space that held yet another mystery. Again, a heaviness crept across my heart. How many times have I felt like this? The conflicted feelings of wanting to be noticed and recognized for who I am only to be left on the outside looking in, whether it was my own doing or not. Is that how some in this community felt, here between the boarders of three other towns? How many times in our lives have we struggled to be seen, accepted, recognized, or welcomed only to be left out in the wilderness, making our own way? This feeling was carried with me as we made our way to the edge of the forgotten town and back home, haunting me still.
As I sit here reflecting today, I am drawn to look at the patterns of life. How do I move in this life? How am I a part of some communities and maybe an outcast in others? What is my struggle with wanting to be seen and also left to my own ways? How do I connect with others? How do I make an effort? Where do I retreat?
I am brought back to a few experiences of my visit yet, there is one that I want to talk about now. The song that played. It is an interlude. It is a fleeting progression of notes that carry us from one point in time and place to another. This particular song that played has been reprised in various ways in a few different songs over many albums. Yesterday it showed that it is more than a melody that has been recycled over time. Even its name is an amalgamation of two album titles. So, what am I an amalgamation of? Is there an interlude, a beat, a feeling, an experience that moves me from one place in time and space to another? Are there wisps or ghosts around me that mark my passage through time? Are these experiences echoing through the years and when they return, are they only visible for a moment? I believe that I caught a glimpse of an image of days long ago. It was a fleeting breath, a feeling that can turn your stomach and pass through your beating heart. Are they really there, longing for connection or are we what keeps them alive by wanting connection, both reaching out to each other? I am not sure if we will ever truly know while on this plane. One thing is for certain through, patterns and interludes reoccur, sometimes with only a few notes of the original melody of life. Maybe after all is said and done, that is what we are too – a repeated pattern from a long-lost love, a joined hand in friendship, a melody that is or was a song in someone’s heart. And maybe, just maybe, we have the ability to bring them peace, understanding, closure, and release by being witnessed, therefore, releasing ourselves.
By Renee Bedard ~ The Whispering Crow
The Whispering Crow 