The Stuff Legends are Made of

The perfect season for a mystery--when morning fog shrouds every form, and the woods and fields have grown quiet. Shorter days steal the last light from the deepest recesses of the forest.
For what we cannot see—
there is imagination.


I stepped off the leafy path last weekend, where the grass leads into the dark pine woods. Beyond the crunching of dry fallen leaves beneath my steps, it became suddenly quiet, the ground a densely woven blanket of randomly strewn green and brown needles.
Shadows stretch from the edge, inward, across them.
The lower branches forming an impenetrable fence, their long bare fingers laced together--catching my hair and clothes as I venture past them into this protected space.

It was here, last year, that I discovered our owl, as she sat on a low branch, watching, from a distant corner. We met, with only feet between us, and held each other, eye-to-eye, until she flew off in silence through the woods and beyond. Her tree stands empty now, the whitewash faded from summer rains.


So what of this skull?
Bleached bone laid neatly on the blanket of needles, nothing more to suggest how it came to rest here, in the pine woods.
And what of the cow that is without it?

It is the stuff legends are made of.