There is a carpet of ivy covering the ground. It stretches from the brambles on one side of the clearing to the trees on the other. The trunk of one tree, leaning precariously, obstructs some light, but it is still well lit. Looking upwards, I can see a large chunk of sky, the color of the hawthorn tree up the hill. The verdant green of the ivy is in sharp contrast to the rotten brown of the blackberry vines.

It is chilly, here in the woods. The temperature has lowered since the last time I was here, although not yet to freezing. The sun does not seem to glow anymore. It is just a yellow spot, adding a bit of color to the dreary sky. A raindrop falls, then another, then another. I am glad of my jacket. The color of the sky deepens, changing to an ominous blue-gray. The cheerfulness of the sun has been lost. It is just clouds, clouds, clouds. And the clouds are moving, moving quickly. They almost run across the sky.

I sit down on a rock that protrudes from the living carpet of ivy. I look, listen. All is still. All is silent. I wait. The silence is broken by the quiet cheeping of a bird. I cannot tell where it is coming from. I pull an empty book – college ruled, 100 sheets – from beneath my jacket and open it. I begin to write. The words take shape, swirling from my pencil onto the paper. Pausing, I look up. A deer – a young buck, horns starting to come in – is standing, poking its head out from behind a thick cottonwood tree. I freeze. It just looks, perhaps wondering what this weird-shaped creature is doing in its bedroom. Going back to my writing, I interleave my life with my protagonists. I see a deer. They see a deer. I freeze. They freeze.

It has been a long time since I last spent time here. Perhaps the last time my foot stepped here was last month, when I walked down these paths, looking for solitude. Perhaps it was over the summer, when I decided that the trails needed someone to walk on them again. Perhaps it might have even been the summer before that, when I carved a trail to it. I thought back. My time here had been short, whenever it had happened. This is probably the longest time I have spent here. But I am getting tired. I stand up, I stretch. I walk back down the path that led me here.

I look back. The clearing is hidden behind a wall of blackberry. The ivy is gone.