Zen & Grief: On Lying Down in the Woods

Fritz was a German Shepherd, calm and self-assured in the way that certain animals simply are — as though they arrived already knowing something. I found him at the shelter, emaciated, heartworms, abandoned by the family he'd had before. I was six months out from a traumatic injury that had left me struggling to walk. I'm not sure which one of us adopted the other that day.

We healed in those woods together. Sope Creek, the trails along it, the particular quality of light through those trees, the sound of the water — he knew that ground the way dogs know places, which is completely, with the whole body. When he died, I brought his remains back there. I tucked them in the base of a tree with a panoramic view of the woods. It seemed right. It still does.

I hadn't visited in a long time. That fact had been living with me the way unfinished things do — not loudly, but as a breath, the way a door left open changes the temperature of a room. So one day I went back.

I didn't make it far before the hornets found me. European hornets, fiercely defending their nest, struck me just to the left of the third eye - the irony not lost on me. Felt like a rusty nail moving into my skull. The neurotoxin moved fast — through my face, into my ears, a loud buzzing that had nothing to do with the woods around me. The dizziness came on quickly. I stumbled, couldn't take another step.

I sat down on the trail and reached for the nearest thing, a young maple. I held it the way you hold something when you don't know what else to do, which turned out to be the way you hold the tree of life. I watched the waters move. I was calm. That surprised me. I thought about the writings I hadn't finished. I thought about Fritz, his remains nearby in that same ground. I thought about clinging, and about what my practice has always said about clinging, and I let go of the tree.

Then I fell back. Perpendicular on the trail, flat on my back, looking up through the canopy. The wind was cool. It felt like the end of things. I remained calm as the dark surrounded me.

I don't know what came after that. Only that at some point I opened my eyes, soaked in sweat, and there were two young women standing over me.

I asked, "Can you help me?"

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A note: I often hike alone, and I'll likely continue to. But this experience was a reminder that the woods don't negotiate. If you spend time on trails alone, carry an epinephrine auto-injector if you have any known sensitivities, tell someone where you're going, and keep your phone charged. The wilderness asks for presence — bring the practical kind too.