Glowing on Beseck ridge like rosy lantern mantles in oak and pine shadows, lady slippers are no hiking boots. But the delicate, purple veined pink pouch above a pair of oval ribbed leaves stops the most determined lug-soled trampers in their tracks. Growing singly or in clumps, these ethereal blooms seem too beautiful, too frail to be real. They never fail to lift my heart.
With a puffed-out petal appearing like the toe of a shoe, they’re called moccasin flower after the footwear of Natives, and squirrel sneakers for growing where the bushytailed creatures antically collect acorns. But they’d be too soft and silky for hiking, even if they came in my size. Despite their seeming fragility, these orchids grow along woods roads and in patches of humus on mountain slopes enduring the cold, wind, and rain that keeps me and my boots indoors. These shoes won’t walk, but stand their ground.
no shoe for hikers
too small and dainty for trails
perfect fit for eyes
(Haibun is a marriage of prose and haiku. It was first practiced by seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho who perfected the form in a journal he kept on a trip to the remote regions of northern Japan. Gary Snyder, James Merrill, and Jack Kerouac are among American interpreters of the genre. Haibun best expresses the spirit of the New England Trail because it combines clear-eyed prose descriptions of people, objects and places along with poetry that awakens the imagination. To travel the entire New England Trail with 90 haibun go to https://www.ctwoodlands.org/blue-blazed-hiking-trails/half-million-footsteps-journey-through-poetry-the-new-england-trail)
The New England National Scenic Trail, a unit of the National Park Service, runs 215 miles from Guilford, Connecticut to the Massachusetts/ New Hampshire border. The trail is maintained by volunteers of the Connecticut Forest & Park Association in Connecticut and the Appalachian Mountain Club in Massachusetts. For more go to https://newenglandtrail.org/
