The Woods

by Hazel McCorriston

A heavy November morning where it is difficult to have the energy for the day. We set out towards the woods by the house, I in a long waterproof coat and his harness fastened around his little body. He could walk there himself, he knows the way, his pace perfectly matches mine from years of practice. Now off the lead, through the style and onto the path; he trots in the direction of the stream, stained brown from winter damp. He stops and looks to me to tell him which way to go. Of course it is the way he expects. The air is crisp wet on my hair. My little dog zig zags beneath the trees, and I like to think he leaves a trail behind him as he forages across the world so much vaster and more real to him than it is to me. Richer, more at peace, something he walks within rather than past.

Further up the track he pauses and looks to me again. He trots these days instead of bounds, happy to exist more slowly than he used to. He will still run for a ball, or with excitement, or when we see someone we know. But there are more grey hairs on his chin and he sleeps in my lap all evening, happily, restful. And though his life will be shorter than mine I do not fear his ageing as I do my own. Our lives are shared but there is mystery in his eyes and I can only feel privileged to be his witness. Like a poem in a foreign language I cannot equate his meaning to my world, only watch, and try to understand.

I do not know where some joys come from, what stitches them together and makes them real. But I know their needle and thread is maneuvered by my little dog as he scampers, weaving in and out of hedgerow seams, field-border streams; some stitches so small they might be missed and some so essential that my breath catches in my chest. It is he who knows the way.

*****

I know the smell of the air beyond the window pane: woodsmoke in a pink sky, December crisp, earthy firs speaking their damp breath. The quietness of Christmas Eve, its simmering cool. The woods where I walk my dog are flattened to an image behind the glass window, promising their depth, dense as featherdown pillow, quiet as sleep. From inside’s warmth, I stare, blank, at something white, catching the escaping light, a pillar tall and singular in its length. A hindleg, and a little to the right, a foreleg: still, sure.

            Firs obscure her body, and yet I know the creature’s outline before I see her head, stretched to the ground, smoky muzzle. The gentle foraging, the slow progress, unrushed across the ground, feeling for what is beneath. Each part of her is obscured into columns, fragments, by criss-crossed trees and low branches. Yet I know her scent, her damp coat, her gentle alertness as if I were a few strides away. I know from her neck the feel of crushed mud that crumbles off between fingers, the weight of each leg that becomes light when it hangs in the air. The warmth of breath, the eagerness to reach for something in a pocket.

            I stare, still blank, but now each hoof becomes more than its name. I understand that their names, like branches, contain them, keep them singular, their meaning controlled by hand: whisker and ear and eye. I understand that is how I have lived my life. Blocks of this earth, shortened for consumption.

            But like a story she comes from fragments of nothing: to know, not to see, that which is hidden behind firred branches and aged wood. To know the waxiness of winter-cold mane, to know her quiet stillness. To know it is more than what reaches my eyes.

            Now the white smoke floats onwards through the grid-crossed structure of trees, slow, unrushed, as if browsing the earth. Out of my sight, but in her place I know her outline and I know that she has seen me, too.

*****

Now I walk to the woods alone, a pot of ashes in hand: our little dog’s little life. I raise my hands and give him to the wind so he can move with lightness and bounce. In the path ahead and in the ocher-pine branches, I see his wise face, his understanding of the world. His eyes that hear, his coat and heart which both grew softer through the years. His knowledge that there is something which moves beyond sentences, descriptions, the names we give to our experience. To tell me he loves me by nosing my chest. I imagine going home without him waiting, his little rhythms that constituted life and, with time, contained all of the world: patience to wait for me, loyalty to stay, joy to be free, warm, full, loved, to forgive.

On this frozen ground, it was his movements through the world that showed me these things. We give those movements words, but in this new stillness I see they were as opaque as his eyes dark and black, and so far beyond our understanding.

It is not these ashes that make me cry but the path that is now empty ahead of me. Stillness. And so as I turn and walk towards my reluctant home, I hope he knew and felt my love, that my strokes shared it more sufficiently than my words could. That he knows but does not feel sad for the place he leaves in my world, and that he feels the ease of loving something beyond object or word. The swift existence of another being, and the joy: beautiful, moving and unknown.

BIO: Hazel McCorriston is based in London. Her short fiction has been featured in Aesterion Magazine and Between the Lines Anthology. She has a degree in English Literature and a Master’s degree in Psychology. More of her work can be found on her Medium platform: https://medium.com/@HazelMcCorriston