Catie Byrne
Features Editor

Generally, I don’t like exercise, excessive perspiration or unnecessary movement, but as fall leaves crinkled with each step into the woods of my neighborhood, I was struck with the compulsion to keep walking.

These woods were haunted by a decade of my footsteps, but for the first time in many years, I walked this familiar trail alone.

I was walking through a valley of death: the grave of the dead guinea pig my friend buried years ago, a more recently decayed cat skeleton, and of course, the death of a much simpler time in my life.

Initially, as I faced the entrance of the trail, I felt a sense of hypervigilance.

The house leading into the trail no longer belonged to my friend. A decade had passed, and unfortunately, these woods were no longer ours to wander in.

I still, however, feel connected to these woods. After hours spanning days and years worth of exploration, through rain, snow and blistering heat, how could I not?

Against my better judgement, I entered the woods beyond my neighborhood playground, parallel to my friend’s old house and across the horse pasture connected to a barn.

Upon seeing the trail for the first time in years, my heart sunk.

Parts of the trail that were originally marked for horse riders had all but faded or disappeared, and the once stable landscape had eroded to little more than a collection of leaves, tree limbs, mud and rot. Time had ravaged the trail, rendering it unsafe for those unfamiliar with its terrain.

I continued along the path I always followed, but I was nervous.

It was the same old trail, but the safety mechanisms I used to rely on to navigate it, had all but disappeared.

The rope that used to connect the divided halves of the trail across the creek was nowhere in sight. The prominent rocks I used as stepping stones in shallow parts of the creek had gone, and the stable logs I used to walk across parts of the creek, had all but rotted.

Driven by stubborn instinct, I trekked along the considerably more dangerous trail.

Trudging through a never ending slew of cobwebs, briar patches and tree limbs, I walked across the mushy sand and mud that fed into the rocky creeks and giant ant hills. Deer pounced past me, squirrels scurried away with acorns and birds chirped and cawed; I felt, for a moment, at ease.

This was, unfortunately, a temporary feeling.

The moment I heard a low growl, my senses awoke. My eyes darted from the house of my friend’s old neighbor, to their two large German Shepherds. I was impressed that after more than a decade, the dogs were still alive, let alone able to aggressively chase me.

Somehow, unlike years past, the dogs were able to bypass the invisible fence that previously contained them.

Their presence was a keep-out sign, and I felt suddenly aware that outside the context of my nostalgia fueled quest, what I was doing was actually very weird.

In order to avoid the dogs, I quickly jumped across a creek bridge of muddy sand and rocks, my knees and back absorbing the rough impact.

I scaled the giant, vertical mud hill until reaching a stable land plateau.

I smiled at the untouched, enormous fallen log that stretched across the entire vertical length of the trail. Its exposed tree roots, an intricate monument of ant hills and mud, as it always has. I was glad that at least one land marker remained untouched by time.

I was tempted to walk across the length of the log, but thought better of it. The few attempts I previously made to cross the log had almost always ended in disaster.

I decided to instead, continue along the hill to a more open, down-sloped clearing.

As I reached the bottom of the hill, another divide between hills revealed a small meadow that deer previously occupied. Unlike the rest of the muddy, leaf trodden trail, this clearing was eerily pristine.

The area was covered in long, bright green grass; no other natural element touched the clearing. It was almost entirely barren save for a decaying old bench covered in moss. I remembered sitting in the bench, years ago, when the trail was alive. But now, not a single tree, leaf or animal existed in this space. A part of me never wanted to leave.

I regret not trekking to the far end of the trail, but if I had, as I have before, I would have walked enough miles to end up in a distant neighborhood.

Begrudgingly, I picked up my pace and started moving in the other direction. As I faced the opposite direction, I began to realize that exiting the woods was considerably more difficult than entering.

Jumping, sliding, maneuvering, climbing, ducking and balancing across dead logs were only some of the methods I employed to make it across both halves of the trail to leave the woods.

My prior reverence and nostalgia were quickly replaced by an instinctual sense of direction and reflex. I was, after all, out of practice in such acrobatic and calculative forms of complex movement.

As I neared the entrance of the trail, I found myself sweating, not from exercise, but fear.

The two German Shepherds started to howl again, and it appeared an even larger dog had joined them in their hunt.

While I was able to skillfully navigate the area in a way that prevented another chase, I was reminded that this place would never be quite as romantic as I imagined.

As I stood at the fenced entrance of the trail, drenched in sweat, I remembered that although my previous adventures through the trail had, more often than not, been good memories, time after time, when I left the woods, I left exhausted.

In reality, there was no longer anything particularly spectacular about this trail in the woods.

The elevated, massive mud hills, winding creek and continuous trail of nature that used to endlessly excite me, now left me hollow.

Of course, there had always been a certain charm to the elements that made up the woods, because everything had a story: from the dead trees that started rotting after lightning struck them down, the abandoned treehouses left to decay after their owners moved away, the bones of buried house pets laid to rest and the smell of dirt and leaves blanketing the area to signal the change of seasons.

But I felt as though that history was gone.

Ultimately, I think what bothered me the most was how suburban the fringes of the trail had become. While houses had always existed near the trail, their presence suddenly felt suffocating, a barrier between myself and the surrounding nature.

Few parts of the trail remained untouched by civilization, but deep into the woods, there was seclusion, a sense of privacy that can be hard to find in big cities like Raleigh.

Although my trek was solitary, the remnants of past landmarks followed my every move like a ghost. In every dead tree, trail mark, pond rock, animal and discarded item, I saw a rambunctious 10-year-old running around excitedly, unaware of the future and unable to grasp their good fortune.