Nature Walk

a poem

There were three quarters of an hour in one sunny summer day when I and a little boy whom I had just then met found ourselves – by quite unlikely circumstance – lost up on a wooded mountainside. We had no gear. We were alone. I damn sure had to find the freaking road. I had to keep the young lad hardy too. That is a mountain range where failing hikers sometimes die. I helped him choose a fallen hard wood branch as walking staff and taught its proper use to save your ankles from a sprain. I watched for any large fresh scat and warned against the verdant beds of poison ivy as we passed. And yet, to my delight, it soon became an easy pleasant task and I was very very happy in its doing, very glad indeed to have his gruff and silent earnest company; me looking round to see the strange little boy catching up, me grinning at his frown. I found a dry rocky stair-step way beside a steep and tumbling rivulet, so cool in dappled shade that we did not thirst. I did not ask his name nor offer mine – for I had best be cautious of his childish self-protective delicacy – but when the thing was safely done I made him shake my hand. That was so long ago that now I would not recognize his face.