As I make my way across the dewy pasture, I am thinking of my Great Aunt Margaret. Did she lace up her tanned leather boots to venture through these same fields? What did she bring along as she wandered? Did she carry upon her shoulders a divine responsibility to the farmland she’d chosen to steward back in 1930? In my mind, I find her lingering near the herd of Jersey dairy cattle where there is peace in the low murmur of their chomping and the rich scent of spring’s orchard grasses upon their breath.
Still lost in my imagination, my journey continues onward. Another aroma, this time the Turk’s cap lilies, brings me back across time to the summer of 2006 when my devotion to return home and steward the same land struck like a bolt of lightning. While my mind retraces the past, my feet guide me forward.
I now stand at the threshold of a familiar path. Tucked away in the southern corner of Foxhollow Farm, the footpath is made mostly of an old logging road. The trailhead is downhill from an early 1800s homestead; the lilies surrounding the remnants of the bygone log cabin are in full bloom. It’s as if their orange petals wave me onward as they dance in June’s mild breeze. Peeking just through the mouth of the trail lies a cluster of moss-filled limestone boulders. It is known as The Rock Temple across the three generations of ancestors, named by stewardesses who came before me.
We come to The Rock Temple when we have a question or a prayer; the center altar rock has been weathered smooth from a century of hands resting upon it while sharing hopes, doubts, or intentions with the mother we all have in common. Mother Earth. I had come to visit The Rock Temple on that mild June day in 2006 as a young college student wondering what should come next. With only my final year remaining, I sought to understand how I could align my passion for nature with a job that allowed me to exist within it, working alongside the carnelian lilies of summer. Disenchanted by the concrete jungle of city life and the idea of spending my days trapped inside a cubicle, I removed my own nubuck leather chelsea boots to bury my feet beneath the forest’s cover. The cool earth poked through my toes.
“What is my next step?” The answer came clear as mud. “You are home. It will be an adventure worth taking.”
I emerge from the woods as the sun begins to set. Looping back towards the field of lilies at the trailhead, their perfume grows heavier. The setting sun has stirred awake an intensity in both the lilies and me.
I am home. And it is still an adventure worth taking.
