I take four or five walks or hikes most weeks — usually 3 to 5 miles each — and rarely take the time to post the photos and my thoughts here, but I am trying to make more of an effort. It’s difficult, on a lovely spring day, to sit at the computer remembering the trails without wanting to head outside and do it again. Or at least sit on the patio with a G&T and some savory oily olives, overlooking the young garden, an eye on the neighbour’s black cat stalking the almost tame chipmunks, and consider life and the universe.

I plan to walk another trail today, and pick dandelions to make a dandelion-honey-brandy elixir, and perhaps plant those bean and flower seeds, so with the hope of those outside things to come on this 80F May day (a bit of a rarity in northern New England), I’m taking a few minutes now inside to record memories of the green sunlit woods walking through me.

A friend is visiting from Florida this week, and a few days ago we walked the paths that were her old stomping grounds, which she calls Scarlett’s Trail.

We startled a flock of turkeys soon after we got walking, but I was startled too and didn’t get a photo. But here are some photos of how we saw and felt the woods, the brook, sunlight, flowers, the vital force that day:

The green, leafy trail:

The woods, and brook, and sunlight:

The mossy, rocky green flowing brook:

Favourite canine swimming spot:

The trail alongside the brook:

I mean — that light!

“Woods were ringed with a colour so soft, so subtle that it could scarcely be said to be a colour at all. It was more the idea of a colour – as if the trees were dreaming green dreams or thinking green thoughts.” ― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

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Foamflower (tiarella) in bloom beside the brook:

A red trillium (Trillium erectum) in bloom, one of several we saw:

A lady’s slipper in bud:

Interrupted fern; easy to see why it’s called that this time of year!:

Finally, the tree formation that my friend’s granddaughter dubbed ‘Scarlett,’ and hence the name of the trail:

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In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me. — John Fowles, novelist