There are sometimes things you just have to do, you know. Things that cry out for justice, hoping for their rightful place, begging you to simply help them out –or pick them up. Scraps of paper are like that, for example. Or tissue that finds itself hanging helplessly from a branch. Sometimes it is a solitary glove, alone and desolate, lying prostrate on the ground hoping for a hand. It’s not boring being a trail-minder –it’s a calling.
But sympathy for the forgotten things, redemption for the cast-asides, a bag for the downtrodden –these were not what pricked my conscience initially. I first glimpsed Agape in a clump of burdock. And yet I blush to mention this, lest the more cynical of my readers suggest that it was merely a flash of enlightened self-interest that sparked my ministry. While it’s true that the plant dared me to pass untouched, I like to think I heard the scolding of a generation of mothers burdened with preload anxieties as they confronted the laundry, and the distress of innumerable hapless dogs, their coats encrusted with burrs, condemned to prolonged, painful grooming they did nothing to deserve. A trail, after all, is still a trail no matter what anathemas hide along the way.
And so it was that, on an overcast and drizzly day, as I wandered aimlessly along a well-trodden path just killing time, I had an Epiphany -like Paul on his way to Damascus, I suppose. Only I didn’t get the blinding light, or even the Voice –just a sudden sprinkle of rain and a gust of wind that sent Satan -sorry, I mean the burdock- grabbing at my clothes for all I was worth. I figured this was probably a sign or something, because after my overly loud, and heartfelt curse, the sky darkened. Okay, it was just my hood that had shifted, but stuff happens differently nowadays, eh?
Then, as if the weather had just been teasing me, and I began to free myself from the feckless hood, it occurred to me that maybe I had been singled out for some reason. And, through the Gortex still wrapped across my nose, I thought I heard the soft insistent whispers of pant legs yet unborn telling me to kill the burdock. Of course it might have been the wind –I don’t normally attack plants.
But it got me thinking that I might be on to something. There was a niche service that I could provide -and it could be done anonymously. In fact, would have to be done with nobody looking… Aye, there’s the rub. You can’t just walk around tearing up plants willy-nilly; there would no doubt be complaints from the all-powerful burdock societies, and their affiliated bush-huggers. Yes, and probably Facebook posts denigrating my character and suggesting my mental health was not really up to par. And of course, in the background, the inevitable, whispered fears of garden molestation that always arise in the more faith-oriented ecological presbyteries. I decided to switch niches –you should never waste an epiphany.
That’s when the idea of trail-minding occurred to me. Leave the plants alone, no matter the rumoured malevolence they try so hard to conceal. I started small: paper. While picking up scraps of Snickers wrappers, and the odd MacDonald’s cup may seem tedious and unrewarding to everybody but the felons, I have to say that there is also a whole undiscovered world of crumpled letters and smudged envelopes out there –names naming names, addresses begging to be researched, and information usually locked within the interstices of inner pockets along with the accompanying Kleenex. If I were of a mind, I thought, I could probably make a few Facebook posts of my own. But I didn’t want to soil the vocation that was thrust upon me to bring meaning into my life.
Still, one can’t let paper be one’s entire raison d’être can one? Sometimes, I feel more comfortable, more amused, rescuing fragments of coloured things from bush-tops and low hanging branches. I spent an entire day gathering some orange ribbons strewn along an unmarked trail last week. I could scarcely believe my luck –it’s uncommon to find so many like that. Whoever threw them away should be arrested. And to make it even harder to gather them, they were often tied where they sat. Now that’s mean. Utterly irresponsible!
It’s also rare, thank goodness. Usually, my day is limited to an envelope or two, and maybe a dirty mit or a scarf some peripatetic child has dropped. Those kind of days are necessary, of course, but sometimes there is a haul of soggy tissue paper of uncertain usage. How it finds itself under the wings of hard to reach bushes so far off the path, is a mystery. But wonders like that are part of the allure -part of what keeps me coming back.
One time, I remember finding an intriguing spot at the end of an unusually busy day of gathering. It was an isolated meadow that seemed particularly littered; it was a nexus for beer cans, wrappers and even a soupçon of little deflated balloons scattered hither and thither. Now why would you bring your kids way out there? But that’s part of the mystery that sustains me, eh? Anyway, after cleaning up as much as I could find, I decided to rest under a nearby cedar. My plans were necessarily fluid, you understand.
I leaned against the bark for five or ten minutes reading my phone apps, when an elderly couple, one of whom I’d seen coming out of some bushes a while back, arrived on the other side of the grassy knoll. They spent a few minutes sitting on the ground and glancing over their shoulders at my tree. Finally the man rose to his feet and limped over to my aging cedar. For a moment I thought he might have had another urgent text from nature, but he walked right up to the tree and stared at me.
“Was it you who passed us on the trail?” he asked with hopeful eyes, but without introducing himself.
I nodded wearily, assuming he was just another autograph-seeker.
His face broke into a wrinkled smile. “I think you dropped this,” he continued, holding out a mildewed, lacy, lingerie-like thing for me to take. Wow, I thought, I’m finally trending -people were actually helping me with stuff. Even though it looked rather small, I could see him mentally assessing whether or not I would actually put it on. But when he saw other articles of dubious merit also hanging from my pockets he winked and hurried back to his friend, no doubt sure that he’d just talked to a deviant. After they left, I noticed one of them had dropped a small pledget of Kleenex on the grass so it was definitely a bonus day. Of course every trail isn’t motherloded like that.
But looking back all these many years later, I have no regrets. I was awarded a purpose not given to many others. And as I’ve fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf, as Macbeth so aptly put it, there have been no curses -nothing loud or deep that I could hear, anyway. Okay, there was maybe a bit of mouth-honour, but hey, I imagine everybody gets that when they pick off soiled gloob hanging from branches… And I figure I’m probably in line for that which Macbeth felt should accompany old age, as honour, love, obedience and troops of friends…
Actually, I’m still waiting for those.
Musings on Retirement 