A Secret World

Along a country road, beyond the guard rail, past the visible vines, lurks an ancient jungle. Most who travel pass don’t have an inkling of the depth of the danger— this cliff so close by, this mystery in their midst. The steep-slanting ground and lush vegetation in quintessential green drop, and drop again to a long-forgotten brook that one can only hear-- though perhaps by peering, one can glimpse refracted light sparkling from its surface. After blithely flowing through this lost world of twisted roots and tree trunks, the creek quickly merges with the Quaboag River, and, coming into normalcy, loses some allure. Another mystery calls from this roughly hewn valley (gouged out by ice sheets and still too severe for human encroachment). More resonant than the birds and deeper than the stream, it registers in a region somewhere in the soul. Taking one by surprise, this precarious paradise suddenly feels familiar, as though we’d been there once, as though we all belonged there, long, long ago, before the last ice age, in some primal place before mills and industry, before roads and rails.