A secret path

Looking far into the backyard.

We haven’t done anything with the backyard in a while, letting the weeds that have rooted grow as they will. The back was never really planted. When we bought the house there were two massive silver maples, sadly gone now and deeply missed, with the remainder of the yard mostly gravel over roofing material, or in some places instead of roofing material it was plastic. As the trees died some of the gravel we removed. We also planted a hedge of yew pines across the back to act as a screen from the ally and the apartments behind. 

Because the back is not planted it has a feel of wilderness to it. It’s very subtle.  At first glance it’s just a jumble of dried grasses. Then as you look patterns start to emerge. The grasses grow in waves, little pockets of order in the midst of the chaos. New plants are constantly emerging even though we haven’t watered or treated the soil. The neighbor’s hedge is slowly taking over our common block wall. Already the ugly spiked metal topper he put on is mostly covered, the vines clinging tightly to the wall taking advantage of the morning sun. 

A neighbor’s vines consuming the wall.

New green growing in the midst of dry plants.

Two large trees from the adjoining neighbors east of us shade the middle of our yard. Between them and the garage, the morning light is arrested by a deep shadow that does not give way until you are almost to the base of the yew pines. There the sun suddenly springs forth, a natural spotlight shining across the entire back. For the ground at that spot this is the only time of the year it will receive direct sunlight. The sun will soon swing south around behind the trees plunging their north facing bases into shade. In winter, indeed in every season except high summer, their bottoms never receive direct light. 

Between the trees and the garage the deep mid-yard shadow gives another dimension. It marks the shadowy line from the real world, through an underworld passage, to a far off sunny land on the other side. I think this is part of the allure, partly why the back feels so wild, because of that journey through the shadows.

The view back, though the land of shadows.

This same spot, the deep part of backyard, has an entirely different feel at mid day. When the sun is high, the house is parched, the heat baking. It is like standing in an oven with weeds, whereas in the cool of the morning is it a sun-dappled secret garden, a fantasy realm 50 feet from out back door. 

As I stood back there, first in the shade and then later in the sun, everything felt removed. Walls of foliage and surrounding tall fences give the space a sense of shelter. There are no flat distant lines marking the horizon, short of the one leading back to our house. Traffic on the nearby avenue is blessedly light in the morning, so the road noise doesn’t intrude upon my sense of wilderness. Private jets from a local airport pass overhead so high they sound like some strange species of bird. Over a neighbor’s yard two actual birds flay past, carrying on a very loud and ernest discussion. They weren’t close enough for me to recognize, but I’d never heard that kind of call before. Listening to them as they passed gave me that embarrassed feeling that you get when you find yourself suddenly next to a strange couple that is bitterly arguing in public. You don’t know whether to plug your ears or pick a side and loudly cheer. 

Then finally the morning sun had warmed me enough that it is time to return. Mug of coffee in hand, now almost gone, I walk past the weeds, plunging again into deep shadow, only to emerge on the other side, back again in the real world. But the rest of the morning that sense of the wildness persisted in my mind. If felt like any moment I could spin around and suddenly find myself back again encased by nature.

And this I think is the reason why we love the wild. Because once we’ve crossed their border and entered their realm, the wild never truly leaves us, but clings to us, following us back to the real world so that even when we are surrounded by cars and buses and city streets, the wild remains, just around the corner, waiting patiently to reclaim once again its land.