Wednesdays in the woods

Today was full, but we squeezed in a bit of woods in the afternoon. After Audrey's guitar lesson, which brought us to country roads, I drove a bit farther to the edge of Michaux, our closest state forest. I chose the first fire road I saw, and stopped the car once the woods were all around. It was cold and the kids were hungry and the baby finally asleep after fighting it in a particularly thrashing way, so we were not getting out. I rolled down the windows to let the smell and the sound in and we were silent for a few minutes. I asked the girls to notice.

Audrey saw the different thicknesses of the tree trunks, and how, after a length of bare trunk, the branches would suddenly spread and the leaves make a one-layer carpet in the air. She heard water.

I saw the translucent brightness of the leaves, as if they captured all the sunlight to share. And looked beyond the near trees to see those in deeper. I identified the water as a just-starting rain, falling on a million leaves.

Marian was carsick after doing a math worksheet and wouldn't talk.