Motion

Tap tap tap, drum beat footsteps on the boardwalk ring out along with voices that discuss the meaning and feel of nature. Poison sumac reaches for my arms and legs as I carefully place one foot in front of the other, making sure to stay centered on the yellowed wooden platform that runs along the path. The constant motion of classmates draw my eyes from the fallen trees that lay silent on the springy peat ground.
Life and movement call my attention, human life. I have to make a conscious effort to separate myself from who I am, a human with a life in constant motion. I push myself to the opposite of motion. I look at the fallen, the dead. I search for stillness. Dead leaves litter the ground. They fall, break, and create peat where ferns spring up and dance together to create a mass of feathered tendrils. Logs along the boardwalk turn green with moss and sprout mushrooms in white tent colonies. Out of the past new generations build themselves. The motion cyclical and achingly slow, but still motion.
Tap tap tap.