Sometimes a path presents itself, opens as if by magic. It was almost 7:30 when I started walking. A cloudy night, the light fading fast. As I entered the dark passage, my eyes picked up the brighter green of a nearby field. A fox ran toward it, auburn and plump. It posed in a green corner, then skulked into a bordering thicket.

I followed the curved walkway, my feet moving fast on the downward slope. I asked the woods to hold me up, the path to carry me. I asked only movement, and in that movement absorption. If that is all I ask, I reason, the walk will give it to me.

And that is what happened. The path, so close yet unfamiliar, the day almost over, the slight sense of danger as I walk in the woods in what passes for darkness in this well-lit suburban place.