An Appropriate Title for this Story

My foray into Romanticist literary style.

                After hours of sweating and hiking, after adding new, painful callouses to her already rough feet, she finally emerged from the woods, into the clearing.  She sighed, joyful and weary; she came just in time for the sun to shine perfectly on the flowers, making their reds, greens, blues, yellows, and purples stand out at their most brilliant.  She dropped her backpack; the grass, so soft, cushioned its fall to the point that it scarcely “thumped”. She flopped down immediately next to it, sighing again and smiling. Tired as she was, she still found the strength to roll around in the soft grass, among the seeming millions of flowers. The hike through the woods never was too bad; she always saw plenty of wildlife, and some critters even started coming up to her, albeit warily. They grew used to the weekly visits of the benevolent stranger, who always carried snacks.

                 But it was this clearing that made the weekly hike worth it. The heat, the sweat, the dirt, the pain in her feet never mattered whenever she came upon this clearing. It was this clearing which made the rest of the week bearable.  She always thanked Mother Nature for providing this escape from the drudges of life in the city.  She pitied her office co-workers, forever trapped in their cubicles, in their cars, in their cramped apartments. She sometimes wished she could share her wonderful world with that other one, but she knew the sanctity of the clearing would only be ruined by a bunch of slobs, and that eventually, some greedy man, seeing green, would pave it over and replace it with something the world needs much less of.

                She looked around at all the splendor.  The clearing, in reality, was just a tiny blot of color amidst a sea of green trees. She felt safe, a peaceful land in the middle of an ocean.  At the same time, her insignificance, and the insignificance of the clearing, awed her; it seemed to her that the rest of the forest, the rest of Nature, waited hungrily to swallow her up, to consume the different colors, to devour the upstart clearing with its uniform trees.

                She plucked a flower, apologized to it for causing it such pain, sniffed, and placed it in her long, blonde hair.  She lay back down in the grass, smiled softly, and drifted to sleep, her serene smile still adorning her face.

                She awoke slowly at night time, underneath a starry, moonlit sky.  She yawned, stretched, and felt elation from seeing the stars.  The city lights killed all the stars in their section of sky, so the magnificence of all those millions of twinkling lights never was lost on her.  She rummaged quickly in her backpack for her trail mix and water.  The insects, frogs, and various other noises of the night provided a beautiful symphony as she munched a few handfuls of nuts, raisins, granola, and M&Ms.  Dinner and music, under a beautiful night sky; what most people only see in movies, she experienced weekly, in real life.

                The cool night air caressed her skin; it slowly, sensually washed over her, seduced her.  She never could resist the advances of Mother Nature, nor Her temptations; she peeled off her clothing, dropped to the ground the last of civilization’s brands.  The feeling of total freedom swelled within her breast, and made her giddy.  Laughing, she danced gleefully around the sleeping clearing.  She merrily bathed in the starlight; the night sky blanketed her, clothed her more fully, more securely than any polyester rag ever could.  To the music of the night, she danced, the night air her partner.  She reveled in the sensuous chills the air’s cool embrace gave her.  She danced and sang with the nocturnal creatures.  The chirping of crickets, the croaking of frogs, and the buzzing of cicadas provided the perfect accompaniment for her sweet, melodic voice.  She danced until the tortured muscles in her calves, thighs, abdomen begged her to stop, and she fell down, immediately fast asleep.  Her mind, her soul, unfettered by her tired body, continued to dance in her dreams, among the flowers, the stars, and the beat of her perfect world.

Author's Note

I've always loved best the literature from the Romantic era, and I thought I'd try to capture the genre's awe of nature, and its emotional power.