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| Ramapo College path (photo: Nick Sammartino) |
By Nick Sammartino
I walked this path for three years, and
now, in my fourth, I walk it again and again. Not because I have to—really,
it’s inconvenient—but because I can trace the trajectory of my thoughts in the
wood grain, the curl of the bark. I can follow the change in my ideas over
time, just like I can see where the trail stops and turns back into campus.
There’s a smell out here not like decay,
not like that rising stinking bloat of spring, when all the animals are
shitting and eating and dying, and the plants are thawing and rotting beneath
warm showers. It’s totally unlike that. The smell here is clean and concise,
and when some bad aspect does come through, it’s faint and quickly swallowed by
the wind.
That’s if you’re by the green bridge,
though, which looks out over the pond and sits below Overlook. Meanwhile, if
you’re at the end closest to the Birch Tree Inn, a clinging stink of grease
wafts from the building and touches wilderness. Latches onto your clothes and
hair.
The middle of the path is a nice compromise
between man and nature. Orange-red leaves turn on the ground like the hands of
children. A lamppost, fitted with a safety box, looms like some clockwork
sentinel. Wind pirouettes between the trees, singing empty ballads—its voice a
grim implication of the quiet blue days to come. Cold will compress the brain
in my skull, just as these dark mornings do. Can you feel the change like I
can? Soupy layers of gas have sheathed the world, blotting out the light, and a
shadowy depression has already checked in.
Three years back, I was walking here with
folks. We were freshmen. A new winter just like this one reigned over the
forest. It was early and the world was blue and black. I stopped on the path as
fog throbbed beyond the trees like a ghostly heart. I was so cold. Erin touched
the tips of her fingers to my elbow and asked if I was okay. With numbness I
responded, said something like “Yeah I’m fine,” though I was not. The three of
us—Erin, her roommate, and I—walked back to the dorm. They spoke, I went in
silence. They said “Goodbye” to me when we reached Mackin, we split apart. Then
I went up to my room and coiled up under the covers. It was early, yes, but the
world was blue and black.
Back to the present. The grey sky swirls
overhead, over the pond and the woods. Cloudy depths conceal a sick, pale sun.
Acorns plink down on the concrete path. Two years ago, as I was stepping off
the green bridge and onto the path, one plinked against my skull. It’s strange
to think that acorns hold oaks like skulls hold brains. It’s strange to think
that seeds and heads both harbor huge potential—and that this potential often
remains unrealized.
Oaks and maples and ash trees stare
emaciated over the pond, some starting to hook and bend down at a common
zenith, as if pondering the fate of the fish below. The fish swim below,
unseen, unperturbed; as far as I know, they do not wonder about the fate of the
trees above.
To my left, the green circle of marsh water
reflects a flat canopy, surface untouched by the dancing wind. Where’s mister
turtle? Where’s the bog-witch with her creeping ten-inch fingers of vine?
Likely here and likely not here. But mister turtle will be back, when the
meltwater flows along the path on either side, and so will the bog-witch and
her jittering goblin boys, bodies made of banana peels and apple cores and
discarded cups.
Some friends in Sophomore year were
thinking about organizing a Ramapo clean-up club, because the problem went
beyond bananas and cups. In the puddles around the path, you can sometimes see
floating wrappers. On a few occasions, I’ve spotted empty medicine boxes: the
gradient blues of NyQuil or Sinex. Plans for their club fell through, but I
still do my part when I can. If there’s trash on the path, I take a tissue from
my pocket, grab the offending item, and walk it to the garbage cans that sit by
the mouth of the forest.
In the time between pleasant seasons, this
is a lonely place, and the only occupants until spring will be death, wind, and
ice, who all three love to dance together on the false grave of wilderness.
Wilderness is lying in bed right now, not quite dead. The fever has passed,
chill is setting in, and the pre-mourners, they know—flesh sloughs from the
bone, hair falls from the scalp, color leaves the skin. They know. I grieve for
the passing of fall; so, too, do the bears and squirrels. They’re hiding their
faces right now, too sad to be seen about. Their grief is vast, but temporary.
It’s hard to say if I’m going to miss this
place. I’ve walked here a fifth of my life, and that has to mean something,
right? I admire the nostalgia, how I can follow the flow of my own creative
choices as if a path of its own. Landmarks mark the inception of ideas; my
stories share the soul of this forest. The fallen log, the swamp, the pond, the
canopy, the green bridge. Each has its own incarnation in my fiction.
Maybe I am going to miss it.
Breath jumps from my lips in a fog. My lips
are chapped and shedding skin.
What I’m not going to miss, though, is
Ramapo winter. Or this place at night, when the terror comes not from the
darkness, but from the light of the lampposts. How their haloes project
deformed shadows—like the planet is asleep, and its nightmares are out walking
upon its head.
Before day dies completely, before the blue
and black turns to just black, I make like a leaf and walk away with the
wind.
