We went for a walk along a trail near the Wye marsh. I had to answer nature’s call and when I was done and had turned around, everyone else was looking, though not at me. They were looking up into the trees. I don’t know what they were looking at. For all I know, they might have been suffering from a shared delusion and thought the tree people were calling them. That’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.
In a sense, this forest is haunted. Since the glaciers receded after the last ice age, this land has been continuously inhabited by the people we’ve come to know as the Wendat. They’ve been passing through these forests for nearly 10,000 years. If you pause and listen, especially in the stillness that a layer of snow settles upon the place, you can feel their presence.
I believe in ghosts. Maybe not the ghosts of campfire stories but ghosts all the same. Our landscapes are haunted by people and animals that have gone before. We need only look and listen.
