A Fun-Loving Guide to the Natural World for Kids and Adults

Almost Lost

A walk through familiar landscapes,

streams and gnarled trees,

rocks and damp moss.

Then an eldritch thing,

something from another world,

and we can only stare.

For a moment, the familiar landscape becomes strange -

the stream speaks a forgotten tongue,

ancient messages are scawled in the twisted bark,

the stones mark their age at a time of forgotten beasts,

and the moss is a forest where strange things crawl.

The moment passes, and we view this odd thing in context.

Something left for breeding by a creature we’ll never see.

Still strange, but small now, manageable.

We have our world back, which is a good thing.

That time we were almost lost.

Visit this week’s Adventure Journal, as well!

7 Responses to “Almost Lost”

  1. How well you have described that moment of transportment! Sometimes the mystery of it all just overwhelms.

  2. Interesting take on the micro. Cool picture.

  3. I too have felt that eerily “lost” feeling, even in familiar territory. Great post, and lovely picture.

  4. Hello Jackie,

    Indeed it does. Just another of the joys of nature =)

    Hi barefootheart! Thanks so much. It is such a strange looking thing . . .

  5. Hi MObugs41,
    ‘Eerie’ is a good word for it. Often it seems, when out in nature, that there is a threshold that we sometimes nearly pass into, a borderland where we encounter our own ‘wildness’. Thanks for sharing!

  6. Ah, what a moment you shared. Like sending someone a breeze…or a ray of sunshine. Lost indeed. One is never lost and perhaps that’s why you wrote that marvel of words: Almost.

    So wonderful, thank you.

  7. Thanks so much, Jay!

    We love how you say that ‘one is never lost’. Even from a very practical viewpoint, we were just reading ‘Deep Survival’ by Laurence Gonzales, and he makes a very good argument for the state of ‘being lost’ to have nothing to do with geography, and everything to do with our state of mind. Of course, I think your words point to something even deeper — thanks for sharing =)

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