PUTNEY — There is a closet I've been inching my way out of for a few years now, and perhaps the time has come to throw caution to the winds and come out full bore. Judgment be damned.
First, let me bring you up to speed. Two minutes from my house is the Putney Central School, which comes complete with a 176-acre forest. How many public schools do you know with such a resource?
For years, I walked its few trails alone, rarely running into other people. That changed when the intimidating log-and-slat bridge across Sacketts Brook was washed away in a hurricane more than 12 years ago.
The town replaced it with dual steel girders that supported an elaborate wooden structure that struck me at first as massive overkill. They also put a sign with an arrow on the road saying “Central School Forest Trails.”
I no longer had the forest to myself. Now that the forest was safely accessible, parents of children at the school initiated an after-school forest program.
Within months, I had been “volunteered” by friends who knew of my love for the forest and my background as an elementary school teacher.
Now you are up to speed.
So one day, a few years later, I set off from the parking lot kiosk to take inventory of needed trail work. I hiked out across the field that leads to the new structure that the students, without adult input, had named “The Portal Bridge to the Sacred Forest.”
Halfway across the field, I saw a man, much older than I, coming toward me from the bridge. His white beard reached almost to his ankles. His clothes were dirty and torn, almost shredded; his hands and face, caked with dirt.
He asked me the date. My answer brought a look of shock to his face.
While out walking, he tripped and fell down a steep slope, banging his head. He awakened to pitch blackness - blind and unable to tell day from night. He crawled around for an indeterminate time, gradually focusing on his other senses, particularly touch and hearing. He began to hear what sounded like a high-pitched conversation happening quietly, some distance away.
Unable to make out what was being said, he crawled toward the sound. After an arduous crawl, through puddles and over fallen logs, he sensed proximity and reached to see if he could feel the body from which the sound originated. His hand came back with a handful of what once was a tree and now was almost soil. He realized he was sitting in front of an old tree stump.
He began to hear multiple voices from the stump. His hearing acuity sharpened. He heard more voices - on his left, on his right, behind, ahead.
He was hungry now. He crawled toward the sources, the voices growing louder as he approached each one. Syntax became apparent. Each time he reached out his hand in greeting, it came back with moss-covered, decaying stump.
His hunger grew painful. Choosing one stump, he sat for a long time. He was able to pick out a word or two, and the conversation began.
As he began to learn the language, he forgot about his hunger. By the time he achieved fluency, his hunger had been long forgotten.
Now he felt his sight gradually returning. Taking in the landscape that had become his world, he saw himself surrounded by villages whose inhabitants, despite his new communication skills, remained invisible. But as he was filled with a sharp vision of new life purpose, he arose for the first time in ages, returning to the realm of the two-leggeds.
Making his way stiffly across the Portal Bridge, the first human he ran into was ... guess who?
From the details we share he estimates he's been “lost” for over five years.
* * *
There you have it. I'm sure you can see why I've been so hesitant to share this story with the world. Not anxious to be taken for a gullible old fool, I've kept my mouth shut - except that I have shared it with a few trusted friends, and the second-through-fifth graders who take part in the after-school program.
Some of them, particularly among the older ones, already successfully acculturated, have questioned the truthfulness of the story - same as you. But most of them have been sufficiently taken to volunteer to go in search of lost villages.
We go out to the woods, sit quietly, and meditate. Many of the students are already familiar with the concept of meditation and are, in fact, better at it than I. They learn languages faster as well.
Together, we have concluded that these invisible beings - body-less energy beings - have come here from another planet. They have come in hopes of once again being able to take bodily form.
They've chosen this planet because it has, in abundance, the one material, exhausted back home, that serves as a catalyst for the formation of life.
That material? Clay!
* * *
These days, we carry clay with us into the forest. Each student finds a village to sit by and to listen. When they're ready, clay comes out and beings are born, with students as midwives.
I bring a journal. If any beings wish to speak, the students interpret for me and I serve as scribe. We never know what these beings might say - sometimes they choose silence - and we have learned to ask specific questions, like “Who are you?,” “What happened on your home planet?,” or “What advice do you have for us?”
The sculptures get fired in my kiln and we repatriate them, now weather resistant, back to their villages, where unsuspecting dog walkers occasionally stumble upon them.
* * *
So now I'm out of the closet - or the overturned tree root, as the case may be.
Now that you know my story, you have a choice. You can turn me in, making sure I take medicines prescribed to bring me back to sanity.
Or - I write “or” even though there are always more than two choices - you can grab some clay and head out yourself.
Good luck.