The walk of July 4th 2020, in Canada By Frater Theodbald The road entering the cemetery is long and winding. After a darn good meal and a pitcher each, what is left to do but walk it off a bit before we take the car? My significant other and I cross two bridges until we come to the tell-tale gravel road. The only lights to be seen are the fireflies, and we guess where the path is by following the dark grey patch between the walls of blackness cast by the woods. Finally we come to a clearing where the tombstones lie up ahead. A loud though soundless chattering floods the atmosphere. It's like coming into a busy shopping centre, with no shops, and everyone's talking about you. Such a clamorous stillness; this intensity within the silence overwhelms our sense of spatial awareness. This does not feel of calm one bit. We understand why this air of wariness, though. We're near a college and an undergrad university, and we know drunk kids often come by to spook themselves, or for other disreputable activities. Not wanting to provoke the genus loci any further, we sit at the footsteps of where there stood a giant plaster crucifix. Given it was weathered and crumbling apart, we figure it was removed for restoration. We speak calmly, my love and I, in our usual gentle yet enthusiastic fashion. We philosophize and theologize, as we are prone to do, yet with a background intention of expressing what kind of people we are, showing that we wish only to discuss in the enjoyment of a cemetery's atmosphere of dark tranquility. Slowly, the chatter quiets down. The cemetery's heaviness lowers its vibration. The fireflies' activity softens from a strobe to their usual pulse. Peace hence returns as we acknowledge and respect each other, the cemetery and us. The conversation continues, "...people tend to look for big obvious signs of a haunting in special places, but I think everywhere is haunted in the sense that the world is filled with spirit life; I think that life extends to much more than pure biology, and can be experienced broader than what only biological senses and the corollary technological instruments can measure. The signs are subtle, and can only be felt in a way otherwise undetectable." "Actually," she answers, her scintillating blue eyes scanning the darkness, "have you been hearing this clicking sound?" I take out my flashlight and shine it around. Nothing but dew-damp tombstones and humid cleanly cut grass. I hadn't noticed the clicking. It sounds like the cracking of twigs beneath the feet, only one twig at a time, and at regular intervals. Click... click... click... It seems to get closer and louder. She sits near me, as I feel the warmth of her body, I also feel the warmth of her love. Still wondering what the sound could be, a comforting aroma of fresh thyme fills the air around us, coming from the right. A soft, cool breeze caresses us from our left as if to say, "hello, I can't talk like you do, but I'd like to communicate my presence, somehow..." I know she understands, but I continue mansplaining a bit to her, for the sake of communicating the obvious helps me put this unspoken phenomenon into words: "this is a classic example where synchronicity more usefully explains a situation than causality. We have no cause and effect observation to come to a conclusion, but our observations are of different events (sound, smell, touch) that happen at more or less the same time, and meaningfully come together to form a gestalt, or a more complete picture of what is actually happening." From this, I hypothesize we've been greeted by a Green Man, a nature spirit. As we continue our conversation, we see headlights coming from the long winding road in the distance. Security guards or the police, perhaps, come to tell us that we have no business here and that we should be gone? Loathing the possibility of an unpleasant encounter, we walk behind the trunk of a massive Silver Maple, perhaps as old as the cemetery itself. The car arrives slowly, inching by the tree. Another cool smell of fresh thyme envelops us as the car passes by, the red tail lights eventually fading off into the distance. We feel grateful for the spirit's assistance. We make our merry way out of the cemetery, guessing that if they only saw a brief glimpse of us, we may have looked like shadow people peering out of the night. Indeed, we dressed in black, wearing felt hats that cast umbrage on our faces. A spooky story to tell the kids, hopefully. Magical phenomena take up a huge amount of space, yet we mostly find them in the subtle, little things. We miss out so easily if we don't pay close enough attention. There was no thyme growing among the grass in the cemetery.