Buckmanville Path

Caroline Erlandsen

What you are looking at here is the edge of the woods path that my dad and I created, and I just now named ‘Buckmanville Path.’ It is a small trail through the woods to make it so when I was a kid and wanted to walk the dog along Buckmanville road, the very quaint country road with a slow speed limit, I did not have to walk along the state road with busy rush-hour cars. This trail starts at the corner of my property and travels through the woods, across a creek, through a field, and lands you at Buckmanville road. I walk down this path all the time. I take my dog for his walks and we travel through here because he loves all the smells. Sometimes I just go down the main road because it is easier, and it means I don’t have to get my rain boots on I can just wear my nice sneakers to walk.

This path means a lot to me and only a few times a year do I really reflect on that. For starters, this path means so much just because it is a project that my dad and I did ourselves. It is a half mile trail through the otherwise untouched woods in our backyard that we worked on together and alone. No help came from my mom or siblings it was just a Caroline and Dad project. We blazed a trail, cut back the thorn bushes, mowed the weed and made a bridge to cross the stream. 7 years ago, I used to walk through it everyday just so that the earth could learn its new place and ensure that the wildlife would not grow through the new trail as soon as we left for the day. We spent a lot of time into this trail that I have grown to underappreciate, but it is beautiful and so peaceful. Under normal circumstances nowadays, I am nineteen years old and if I need to escape, I can start my car and go for a drive to someplace quiet and away from people. Growing up, I did not always have that luxury and now in quarantined I am brought back to those days.

I have a big family and when my emotions get the best of me, I never show it to anyone so I had to find an outlet outside of the house where I could just be alone. Thus, so many times I found myself just walking through the trail. Untouched and unbothered, the trail was quiet and human-less. I would sit on the fallen down tree that gave me a bench and listen to birds chirping or watch deer pass me in the distance or hear the squirrels run past me. Somedays I would bring a blanket out and lie it across the trail and play music as I would draw or read. A few times I would just lifelessly sit and stare out into nature and just take it all in. It was my very own form of therapy. No one would know or needed to know where I was, I just got to disconnect and work on myself in nature.

I have lost this art as I have gotten older. Revisiting the path for the first time since college I find a few things different. The bench lying parallel to the trail that I always would sit on slumped a little further to the ground. A storm ripped apart the bridge my dad and I built (we have already started plans for a new one so fear not). Some bordering trees have fallen, and some wildlife has grown in. I have not appreciated this place enough in recent years. I have not gone out for reflection as I used to. It is truly the only place at home where I can feel alone. Not the bad alone where there is no way out and you are drowning, but the good kind where you can listen to your head and think our all your thoughts. I missed that and I missed just sitting and taking in nature. This has reminded me of the very cool thing I have in my very own backyard. A garden of reflection, a childhood memory, a sliver of sanity, an emersion into nature, and a haven. I have missed my Buckmanville path and I am glad that these times can help me re-appreciate it in all its glory.