Maybe the leaves that have fallen will feel crisp under your feet, or maybe they will feel spongy.
Maybe you will kick and skip or maybe you will slip and fall.
Maybe the leaves will be chewed up and composted or maybe they will be left to rot in place.
Maybe one will stick to your shoe and it will remind you of your walk outside in the cold and damp.
Maybe one leaf will stick to your windshield, and maybe one leaf will cling to the wiper as you drive, streaking its way across the remains of bugs and bird shit.
Maybe it will wave as it passes, maybe it will try desperately to escape.
Maybe it will escape, a refugee in a forest of evergreens you now drive through.
Maybe you will open the window to invite the scent of pine to enter your car, the box that sometimes feels like a prison, other times a nest.
Maybe many animals have trodden on the pine needles or nosed at them or nudged them into a bed.
Maybe they like the smell as much as you do.
Maybe, as you drive in the forest of pine, you turn down the radio, even though the music has been a comfort to you.
Maybe now you want to hear the wind, the birds, and the creaking limbs.
Maybe you want to hear the scented air, smell the decay of flesh and greenery, and feel the outdoors, whether warm and gentle or cold and bracing, and maybe you will settle into it.
Maybe your hair will tangle in the breeze.
Maybe your eyes will tear up.
Maybe you’ll hear a coyote.
Maybe you’ll catch eyes with a deer.
Maybe you’ll pull over, find an opening in the trees, and follow a path as far as it goes.
Maybe the path ends at a creek.
Maybe the water is cold and clear and maybe there are tiny fish in large schools gathered near a fallen branch.
Maybe the mossy rock feels cool to the touch.
Maybe you see a pretty rock, streaked with color, and maybe you pick it up and feel the earth stop spinning.
Maybe you look up, into the sun where it peeks between clouds, and
Maybe you drop the rock, with a plop, back into the creek to be washed clean, and
Maybe drops fall off your fingers and ripples grow at your feet, bumping at the muddy banks, and
Maybe across the creek stands an animal, you don’t know what it is, and it’s looking at its reflection in the water, making ripples with its nose as it drinks.
