Upon Leaving the Cabin in the Woods

I listen to the plinking noises of the heaters as the afternoon sun dwindles to nothingness. Like everything else, the sun’s rays leave the cabin for the last time. The boxes have been piled into the back of the moving van, the floors vacuumed and swept. Even the dirt has left, brushed out over the door jam in a flurrying cloud. Like us, it too had settled into this place and, having left the confines of the cabin, explodes into the world, meeting it full force.

I wish I had the same courage.

The boxes and me . . . trapped in the space between here and there, here and . . . where? What do we really know of the future? How much do we truly remember of the past? How much of it all is fabrication, imagination, or lies? If we really believe, does it then become reality? Or truth only for ourselves?

But I ramble which I have a tendency to do at the best of times. Is this one of those?

I will miss this place. It offered me sanctuary—or at least the people in it did. But they have all gone, too, now. Lives packed up in cardboard boxes taken out into the world. That strange place which presses them back until they stand suspended in a single moment. An instant—a memory.

Maybe it was an era, or something less grandiose—an experiment. Has the experiment failed? What have we learned from all this?

Love.

Friendship.

Life.

All of these are little bits and pieces of the time spent here. In this space they merged together into a picture of truth for me. This was what I wanted. I lived vicariously through those that had succeeded in living—in loving.

It was fear, I realize. I hoped that if I tread in these footsteps that maybe my feet would find solid ground. The dance would be laid out for me, and I could follow it in confidence because I could see where it led. I was tired of laying out my own path, finding my own beat, spinning with my arms wide open in the sunlight only to slam into the unexpected, stumble and fall. Call it cowardice—I do.

But now this place has become empty. It is a shell without the beating heart that rested in this space. What happens now if I spin in this space? There is nothing here for me to trip over. Nothing left off of which to rebound. I could spin here forever, but would the laughter be temporary? Would it matter? Do I want it to?

I don’t spin. I sit and stare at the open door, watching the golden particles of dust dancing in the air outside this room. They spin and dance with no fear of what time or the world holds. They are suspended in the now. If only I, too, had the courage to be dirt.