I’m on a trail. Far into the forest. It’s isolated. Nothing but trees, deadfall, undergrowth, mud, gravel, dead leaves. The trees don’t care I’m there. Their indifference is welcome. They expect nothing.

Then I see a guy walking up the trail toward me. I see him when he’s far away, and as he gets closer we look at each other. When we’re close enough to speak, he expects something. He expects me to say “hi,” and of course I do. And he says “hi,” this stranger.

Such greetings are built into the culture of the trail.

But it got me thinking: When we’re out of the woods, out in the man-made world, on the streets of the city, in the malls, in the halls of office buildings, guys are passing by, all the time. And of course we never nod and say hi.

It’s the culture of the cultured world to keep our own company and pretty much ignore those we don’t know. But in the woods, we say “hi.” It’s unthinkable not to.

I wondered about that today as I walked in the woods and passed that stranger. I have no answer for why this is the way it is. It feels right, though. I’m not going to think about it any more.

In addition to the guy, who was unremarkable, I saw a Hairy Woodpecker with a long beak and red on his head, very bright in the sun. I saw a Brown Creeper and a Swainson’s Thrush. I saw other birds, too, but my time in the woods wasn’t really about birding.

It was about being in the woods, being absorbed into the cold wildness, being somewhere that wasn’t man-made for an hour or so. I guess I didn’t really mind running into a guy and nodding and saying “hi,” but I’d have liked it just as well if he hadn’t come along.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 10:36 pm and is filed under "Daily Sightings" A Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.