Whacking Moles in the Woods

A photographic reflection on an accidental hike

My eyes open against my will. 5:30, says the clock.

Ugh.

I do an auditory sweep of the home. Husband: breathing softly nearby. Dogs and t(w)eens: soundless. Five-year-old: not yelling my name down the hall. Yet.

No alarms swelling to fill the silence, no bad dreams leaving my heart racing and my mood low.

I seem to have woken up…naturally.

Well. Un-naturally, because 5:30 is a ghastly hour to be waking up if you have a choice in the matter. I don’t feel like death and my mind is already at work. Might as well get up.

Watch: secured on my wrist. Phone: disconnected from the charger. Glasses: pushed high onto the bridge of my nose.

In the living room I balance my computer on the arm of the sofa and work on the day’s news update. It’s a rare hour of complete quiet, and though I have to reel my thoughts in — You can reply to that email later. That graphic isn’t urgent. Update that document on your own time! — by the time 7:15 rolls around, I’m able to press Publish. For once, right on time.

Morning has arrived. Kids: awoken. Breakfast and lunches (for them): made. Coffee and smoothie (for me): consumed. They are off to camp, and I am back to work. It’s 8:45.

Summer is always a struggle, and this year has somehow been harder than most. No one’s schedule is consistent from day to day or week to week. My time without kids is reduced by 25% or more. I need to build in time to get outside and be active while the weather is nice (or at least tolerable — this is New England, after all). And, since I run a business, I have all of the meetings, all of the time. I haven’t even had time to shower in two (three?) days.

Today, like most, is a long game of whack-a-mole, though after 20+ years as a professional adult I’ve finally figured out that, if I’m ever going to get anything done, I need to structure my days so I only whack certain moles during specific time slots. My email whacking time is 8:30-9:00, for example, while 9:00-9:30 is my advertising whacking time.

I’m late for all of it, because summer, and as I whack my 31st email at 9:26 I look outside.

The sun looks warm, doesn’t it? I bet it would feel nice on my skin. And the smell of the breeze on the air — I’d give anything to just breathe it into my lungs. Suddenly, as if that image was all the permission it needed, my body takes the reins. I can live without my phone for an hour. I stow my phone in my pocket, anyway. Then, without consulting the rest of me, my fingers lace up my shoes and my legs take off out the front door.

Whacking advertising moles is important — my local news business can’t survive without advertisements — but they can wait. I have a workout scheduled (Yes, I schedule time for exercise!) later this morning anyway. I’ll just shift things around.

My normal route would take me through a flat neighborhood with varying levels of car traffic, pedestrian traffic, barking dogs, and misaligned sprinklers. But I did that yesterday. I opt for one that’s a little sleepier and hillier, hoping I don’t run into someone I know and have to carry on a conversation when all I really want to do is get my heart rate up, my mile pace down, and my steps counted.

I’ve got moles to whack, after all.

A mile gone, and I’m about to turn right and take the straight road that leads to the other side of the neighborhood. But my body once again disagrees. The trailhead for the conservation area is to my left. I’ve walked here before — I even brought my youngest into one of the shallower trails just a few days ago — and my oldest spends almost more time out here than at home. Maybe it’s the echo of my child, pulling me into their sanctuary. Whatever the cause, my feet turn me off of the pavement and into the forest, without regard to my plans.

I know some of the folks who built these trails. I interviewed one of them, an Eagle Scout, for a story last year and even ran into the Scout Master while we were out here last weekend. He beamed as he talked about helping his son create the first trail here for his own Eagle Scout project years ago.

I think about that as I walk, the care those people took to set aside this space in our suburban jungle so people like me and my kid can still commune with nature. I also think about how this is not how I planned to spend my morning. Exercise was a mole that needed to be whacked, for sure, but I hadn’t expected to end up in the woods. What if I get lost? I thought briefly.

The answer came immediately: Isn’t that kind of the point?

Up to now, I’ve spent the day on autopilot, sitting inside the structure I’ve built to keep myself sane and productive, to make sure all the right moles get whacked at the right time and in the right order. Is it okay to just…meander for a bit?

I keep up my pace as I clomp along the trail, my desire to slow down and inhale the woods at odds with my determination to get a good workout. With my body speeding through and my senses stuck in my head, I step wrong on a tree root and nearly crumple. I catch myself, saving my ankle from what could have been a nasty sprain. But before I can take another step, I hear a crash in the woods.

I freeze.

Too big to be a squirrel. I haven’t seen a person yet today, not on the streets or in the forest, and anyway I don’t expect a person would be that far off-trail.

Coyotes? It’s a little past their bedtime, but they’ve been around a lot the last couple of weeks. The kid and the dogs have both had encounters with them. I look toward the noise, preparing to threaten them with big arms and a loud voice.

Deer. Two beautiful, big deer were standing not 20 feet to my left, and I startled them with my clomping and huffing and puffing. I raise my phone and inch down the trail, trying and failing to get close enough for a good shot of something other than their rear ends.

I slow down and walk more deliberately, watching the ground for obstacles but also listening and watching for birds and bugs and squirrels and whatever else I might find in this little expanse of woods. The deer watch from a distance and eventually they’re gone.

The rotted out corpse of a 1963 Impala* sneaks up on me. I’ve seen it before, six years ago, the last time I ventured this deep. The water that surrounded it that day is gone and I can walk up close, peer inside the trunk and under what’s left of the hood, look inside the cab. Nothing there aside from a short, squat log (not original to the car) and the framed springs that once made up a seat, upholstery long since looted by nesting squirrels. No treasures, no old tape deck, not even a colorful swatch of fabric.

There’s nothing left that makes this car interesting. Other than the fact that it’s a car in the middle of the woods, of course. And the fact that I could make up whatever story I want about its provenance and history.

Making up stories. Writing, in other words. The thing I love the most and the thing I haven’t been able to do in nearly two years. There’s always a story in my head, calling out to be told. But the demands of the world, the things that make a career, a family — everything is in a constant state of getting in the way while I ache to remember what I was trying to say and find the time and space to say it.

I put the car behind me and walk deeper into the woods, batting at the gnats that circle my face.

I need to write something.

There’s an old stone fireplace at the other end of this trail. Maybe I’ll stop there, find a log to sit on, and write up a quick story on my phone. That’s the way this version of my life started, after all — with an iPhone and two thumbs and the rest of the world falling away.

My pace is shot at this point. I’m picking my way along the trail, not sure how far I have left to go. I photograph the interesting things I find: the huge frond of a fern, catching the sun just right; some toadstools; two trees crossed like an X, calling me to dig for treasure. I record for a moment the screeches of two juvenile red tail hawks, watching from high above. There are other warning calls, too — cardinals and squirrels and robins and countless others. Sorry, I think at them. I’m not here to hurt you. Go about your business.

The spot marked by the X, it turns out, represents nothing more than a choice: turn around or sink. Mud has claimed the shallow roots of one of the trees, and it is suspended in front of the second, half-toppled with its bottom showing. I search halfheartedly for a path through and, when none reveals itself, I turn to go.

Walking back the way I came, I pass the ferns and the toadstool and the car, then make a left toward the trailhead. I crank up the speed, because I now have both a destination and a goal: Get home and write. Advertising can wait. News stories can wait. Showering — no, actually, that one can’t wait. I stink.

Another crash, from exactly the same spot as last time, and another deer taking off, prancing in a wide circle away from me, the idiot tourist disturbing this peaceful land once again.

It seems like they have business here. I contemplate sitting still on a nearby log and waiting for them to come back, but that’s a dumb idea. While staying put might fool the deer into thinking I’m gone, it will have the opposite effect on the bugs that continue to swarm my face — bugs that can surely smell the blood beneath my skin and would like nothing more than to feast on it. Or at least irritate the hell out of me while I try to blend in and instead end up flapping them away, using my hair like a horse’s tail, until I give up and leave.

I skip that part and just leave.

At home and smelling less like a wild animal, I sit down and open my computer. I don’t have long, and I do my best to shut out the pings from my calendar, reminders that I’m not whacking moles. And for an hour, I just…write.

I show and don’t tell. I use sensory details and imagery to make the reader feel like they’re there with me. I use humor and wordplay to connect with the reader. I type, backspace, type again, reread until two-thirds of my thoughts are laid out on the screen.

Then it’s 11:59 and I can’t stretch the time any thinner.

Reluctantly, I close the tab and prepare my mallet for whacking. After loosening the strings that wind me so tightly, I don’t want to pull them snug again. But I do, because that’s what has to be done. I join one meeting and then another, get the kids home from camp, get the ad work done that I put off this morning.

But, after dinner has been eaten and the rest of them are out having ice cream, some slack settles in and my body brings me back to my work. Not my career work — the stuff I do for 100 hours a day, the thing that (theoretically) pays the bills — but my passion. The words on the page — these words, right here — arranged in an order that, for now at least, soothes the ache.

Tomorrow, I’ll wake up before my alarm again, grab my mallet, and start whacking.

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*Thanks, Dad, for the car ID!