Routes

Retrograde - adj. Moving backward; having a backward motion or direction; retiring or retreating.

I took advantage of some unexpected free time this past week and biked up to Pennypack Park and the patch of wooded trails that used to be like my backyard growing up. It was the first time I'd been there in about 4 years.

It's a strange thing, going back to visit former places of significance in one's life. They're all at once familiar and completely different, and somehow are comforting for both their familiarity and foreignness.

I used to ride my bike there as a child. Used to fish there as a teenager with my boyfriend Fred. Would drive there in my convertible to take hikes with my dog Cain as a young woman. Now, grown, older, even for my old-school mode of transport, those trails seem to have shrunk in girth and depth. I came down the same old path, but found certain places grown over as if swallowed whole, or closed up like old wounds. A small waterfall I remember from always is no longer heaving itself over the rocks in the creek. I followed a small footpath that was once an open field with a firepit I used to warm my hands in front of in the center and found an impassable wall of weeds. The firepit, a glimpse of rock obscured by all the overgrowth.

Still, even for all the changes, for better or worse is hard to say, as I climbed down onto a sandy bank, a miniature beach on the creek, I had the eerie sensation of climbing around in my own root system. I am a part of that place, a native organism so to speak, and have changed as much or more than the trails and old landmarks.

I practiced yoga on that little beach, soaking up the sunshine peeking through the splayed fingertips of the trees, gazed intently down the creek that in many ways taught me how to flow. There was the hint of a waterfall, a new one I'd never seen before, rushing over exposed rock, seeming to insist upon onward movement. Forth, it seemed to say without pause.

I took the path along the other side of the water to go back. The path through the wood narrowed to less than a footpath in places, forcing me to clear the way bike-first on foot. At one point I had to take it up a notch and pick my way across the stream rock by rock with the bike up on my shoulder. I hadn't known until taking the first step across that I'd actually be able to do it, but onward seemed the theme of the day and so onward I pushed.

When I finally exited the tangled woods of my youth, I understood that some things grow in different ratio to other things, and that some things can grow over completely and disappear if there's no use for them anymore. Other things prevail and strengthen. A good way to really see the size and scope of oneself is to retreat for a spell to old versions of home: places, people and things, and take stock of what still fits and what doesn't anymore, and how clear is the path in and out.