A Door in the Foret

A Door in the Forest

by Burgundie Miceli

I suppose I wouldn't have believed me either if I was in his position. I mean, why would you? Believe me that is. You wouldn't. Not unless you were a 7-year-old.

Curiosity and wonder, though, are strong when you're open to them. And clearly, I'm happy to say, he was.

Chris and I met in early November, so our first hike up Crazy Mountain was in snowshoes. When he had suggested the hike, I thought simply wearing my running spikes on hiking boots would suffice. And so that's how I showed up. Chris, an outwardly unemotional man with a tendency to underreact, noticed my footwear, said I could try to make the hike like that, he guessed, and shrugged. We stood at the back of his SUV with the hatch open twenty feet from the trailhead. He put on a knit hat that he pulled from a bag of miscellaneous Montana-wear held by a carabiner hooked on a D-ring back there. He pulled a pair of snowshoes out of a grey tote that I would later learn lived in his car from October to June.

"What are those?" I asked and pointed.

"Snowshoes," he said.

"I thought those weren't real," I chuckled. "Only worn by cartoon characters, like the kind who strap entire coal-burning stoves to their backs."

"Nope, they're real," he said. "Do you want to try on the pair I brought for you to wear?"

Maybe he assumed that, as a city-girl from the flatlands of Ohio, I would not own my own set of snowshoes, but I don't know if he assumed that I had never performed the activity before in my life. He had to help me put them on.

At one point along our hike, it occurred to me that these loaners from Chris had likely once been worn by his ex-wife. Maybe they belonged to one of his adult children. He didn't say. I didn't ask. Of all the things we had talked about, that was the kind of thing I decided to leave alone.

On that first hike, I shared more about myself with Christopher than I ever had in years spent with other men. There was something about him, his sad eyes or his tentative smile, that gave off an energy like a rescue dog. Being near him, I sensed I could trust him. Like a wounded pup, though, it would take time for him to come around to me. So it was important to be fully myself right from the beginning. Even if he wasn't sure what to think.

The hike that day was long. The sky was clear, the sun was bright, and the snow was up to my thighs. When we weren't discussing the similarities and differences between growing up climbing and biking around the Rockies versus driving around cows and corn, I could hear the crunch of our footfalls through day-old fluffy snow. In the silence between our conversation and my scrolling thoughts, I noticed that Chris' breath was only slightly out of sync with mine.

An hour in, we stopped at a place where we could look out across the valley, over yellow tamaracks and dark, barky ponderosas. An eagle soared past and landed on a tree branch, quietly disturbing a clump of snow. Nature, up here, was silent. Once my brain noticed that it, my inner voice, was the loudest thing, I felt myself grow quiet. Energy that had been swirling around me took a few moments and then eventually grew still. My heartbeat and breath, taking a cue from the rest of my internals, slowed.

With my inner self now calm, my outer self felt itself come alive. The skin on my cheeks and lips, thrilled by the chilly air and golden sun tingled. My toes wiggled, happy in my warm socks and borrowed snowshoes. An unfamiliar sensation moved over me. What was it? It felt good and something like happiness. But I came here with happiness, I thought to myself. That was already there. What is this? What is…

Oh. That's it.

Belonging.

And then a voice in my head suggested a sentence I had never thought before: I belong here.

How strange to only finally feel this two thousand miles from where I grew up and four decades after I was born. Strange, that I hadn't felt the tug to leave that place until a year ago. When I did, though, everything fell into place. Including meeting this man.

This man.

I looked at him a second before he spoke. He was already looking at me.

"Are you hungry?" Chris asked. He put his hand into his puffy jacket and pulled out a small green bag with two granola bars and two small yellow apples he had thought to pack. I nodded, took one of each and chewed while I watched him unwrap a bar for himself.

He's practical, I thought to myself. Maybe he won't understand. But he had to be to raise five kids. And he did raise five kids, afterall. I don't know if Chris saw me shrug in response to myself. Maybe…

As I chewed, I wondered what he would think if I told him more.

Maybe he could understand…

Chris was looking out over the trees, pointing to a far off spot I couldn't see. That is where we started, he told me. Way out there.

And now here we are.

I nodded to myself.

A few steps in, along the path back, it felt right to ask him if he'd ever seen a fairy door.

"A fairy door?" Chris repeated.

"Yes. A small door where fairies enter and exit their homes like you and I might." I used my hands to indicate how small of a thing I was talking about.

With no change in expression Chris said, "No, I don't think I ever have."

"Well then I'll show you."

We walked a bit farther, still taking big steps in our snowshoes.

"There's one." I pointed. We stepped closer, following the direction of my outstretched arm. At a large ponderosa I crouched. "See here. This moss, these rocks, and this knot in the trunk. That's a door."

"Because it looks like a door?"

"Because it is a door."

"Hm." Chris rightfully sounded dubious.

We stood and kept walking. The conversation changed to what we might make for lunch when we got back to his house and which path we wanted to take to get back to the car.

On the way down, I saw seven more fairy doors, but only pointed out two. One was to a home that was no longer occupied, though I didn't mention it. It felt like that was enough for now.

By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, my apartment lease had ended and Chris had helped me move my life into his house. The kids thought their father was moving too fast, and maybe we were, but at forty-something we figured when you know, you know.

After the big family holiday dinner, our first together, Chris and I announced we were going on a hike. As usual, he invited everyone to go. Everyone but me declined. As per a pre-existing family tradition, his (now adult) children stayed behind to fight over who would be Gooigi when they took turns playing Luigi's Mansion. We walked out the front as the oldest said he should get to use the new controller. By the sounds of it, he passed the old glitchy controller to the youngest.

Chris put his fingers through mine so we could walk holding hands - something he did a lot with me but a thing I'd never done before with anyone. He swung our connected arms as if we might frollick on our way to the path behind his house. We tried and decided we needed spiked shoes on.

"You know," Chris said as we started along the path, "I wasn't sure about you on our first hike." The path narrowed. He motioned for me to walk in front. From behind me, then, he admitted that he had questioned if I was entirely sane or partially delusional. "Because of the whole fairy door, thing." I turned to look at him every so often while he talked so I saw him use his fingers to make air quote bunny ears. "Something about you, though, seemed realer than anyone I had ever been with." By this point I was facing forward, not wanting to trip on rocks or slip on frozen snow. I smiled at what he said and felt warm about it. "That you're real intrigued me. Enough to stay."

"They are too, you know," I chose to say.

"What are?"

I used my fingers to repeat what he had said and how he had said it. "Fairy doors." It felt like a risk: pushing my luck. But to be "real" it needed to be said.

The energy from his skepticism and internal conflict pushed against my back while I walked. I didn't turn around, letting him have his space to doubt a little longer.

We turned a corner on the path and walked into a more wooded area, no longer someone's side yard. Public land, now. Protected. Up ahead was a tree I'd run past several times since moving here. I decided to point it out.

"There."

We went up to it and then stopped walking. Chris kept holding my hand. I pointed with my other one.

"Okay," he said. "It looks like a knot where someone removed a branch."

"It is."

"But so is that." He pointed to a knot in another tree. I nodded. "Well then, what's the difference?"

I couldn't tell if he was trying to poke holes in my beliefs but I decided to answer honestly. "It's mostly a feeling. Not just a gut sense kind of feeling but like a tingle in the air around it. A gentle push. Like the air around it is more alive. Like if 'sparkly' had a feeling."

He looked at me from the side. He did that a lot, probably more than just the times that I noticed. And he did again now.

"It's like how you feel love," I explained, though not really wanting to sound like a greeting card. "You can't see it but you know that it's there."

"But how can you know?"

I looked him in the eyes to see if he was ready. I could see from deep in his eyes that he was.

"Hold my hand tighter," I told him. And he did.

His palm was warm. I could feel his pulse through his finger tips.

He trusted me to show him and I trusted him to believe.

We crouched down. My knees crackled a little though I didn't know if he could hear it since it was inside my body, in my own acoustics.

My hand that wasn't holding his reached out, through the sparkles, through the magnetic push.

"I think you're ready," I said to him. "But are you ready?" Again, I looked into his eyes fully. And he looked into me, further than he had before. He saw past my eyelashes and skin into a place that felt adjacent to my soul. He looked past my facade, leaving his own behind. It seemed he found a thing he maybe had never seen.

He nodded. And his eyes smiled. His mouth smiled.

"Yes," he said.

Holding his hand, I knocked on the door. Still holding his hand, we paused.

The smell of sweet sage grew stronger around us. An earthy warmth enveloped us.

Chris looked at me with wide eyes.

I lifted a finger to my lips for him to stay silent.

He pulled in a breath.

A small voice spoke two words. "Come in."

I squeezed his hand, smiled at him, and then we did.