A Walk in the Woods

I stared at the edge of the woods for 30 minutes, overcome. I could not stop pondering it's creation and purpose. The effort for conjuring questions I could not answer melted away. Once again, efforts in accessing my memory proved futile, but as the minutes passed in thought, my care for the past withered away as well. When I looked up, my vision blurred and centered in on a tree. It was particularly large, appearing to be mighty, but dilapidated. The bark flaked in the wind, continually ashing away. I raised my hand to touch it, but the curiosity I held before faded, so I set my hand at my side. I just stared at the tree and bathed in its simplicity.
"From the ancients," The Elder tree hummed slowly, deeply, and softly. He hummed it again unfazed by my disrespect, and his voice echoed deeply throughout the forest-an alluring siren. He made me happy. I laughed like a child, a feeling I have not felt in years.
After a year of gazing at the forest, I took my first step. I crossed the threshold, a line that barricaded the mundane from the mystical. In doing so, my mind scrambled. Before, I heard the song of the birds, but now I listened; I could grasp and understand it. Their tune vibrated through each of my skin cells, holding me like a soft blanket. I took another step, quicker and much more eager than the one before. Then, I noticed the ground was decaying. My foot sunk into a heap of skeleton leaves. I looked back, but I saw no entrance, only an endless expanse of wild beauty. Turning my head, I noticed what was in front of me once again: The Elder tree.
"Truth," he whispered even softer than before, but I would not laugh. Age creeped across my skin. The tree had grown enormous since our last encounter. I ran my eyes to the top, but they were blocked by a cloud of picturesque leaves that protected a vampiric surface. The sun muscled its way through them for
my eyes, so I waved hello. He was so polite. When I looked back down to surface level, I noticed the tree was gone, but the forests hues began to morph and move into each other like a washed, oil painted canvas. They began to vibrate vivaciously, filling me with a fused creation of life and love.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath for the shaking. When I closed them, I saw myself standing in the woods. I watched him walk and wave his hands in front of him as if he were blind. I began to panic because he would not hear my warning: the approaching cliff to a deeper expanse of the forest. He walked, but I saw the ground and Earth move for him. I screamed and pleaded for him to stop, yet he kept walking. Flocks of birds sang and danced in the air across from the cliff as if they were inviting him.
He simply stopped at the edge of the cliff, put his hands by his side, and took a deep breath.
“Liberate yourself from hell," the trees said collectively. There, he stayed for hours, breathing the wind through his hair.