Thicket

Our back yard is bound by a chain link fence, and behind the back fence is a thicket of brush and trees. It's close to our garden, and sometimes when I'm out weeding I'll hear a tumbling ruckus in the thicket. I'll look deep into the branches, and see that one little bird hopping about is setting off a chain reaction of noisy friction and vibration. One little bird. As I type this I'm gazing out the kitchen window at a chubby bunny on the visible side of the thicket. The bunnies were thin last year; they disappeared for the winter, and are back, plump and plush.

One can see chimneys peeking over the treetops, and it was fun to imagine they were the tops of ruins buried in a forest... I was reading the fantasy novel Mythago Wood around the time I moved in, and its story of a mysterious forest probably shaped my way of looking at the thicket. Recently our cat escaped from the back yard and I went stomping around, trying to find him. I'd avoided the thicket, largely because I didn't want to see the other side and have my Mythago Wood daydreams scuttled, but now I waded in. Of course the other side of the thicket was almost a mirror image of our side, and the chimney-topped houses on the other side don't look much different from ours.

As it happens, all the chimneys in this town are non-functional relics of a time when they were important parts of the residents' heating system. They're all plugged up now. Every house has a fireplace that has been stuffed closed.

Anyway, the cat is home safe, and the springtime greenery of the thicket seems as lovely and haunting as ever, despite my glimpse of the other side.