It was recently, that while walking in a secluded place, forested and rich, I stepped suddenly into a spot of undetected deep shadow.  So jarring was the transition from light to dark, it was like waking in the middle of the night with no recollection of having fallen asleep during the afternoon, and it froze me in my tracks.  I stood, stone-rigid and feeling nothing, my balance reined tightly by an invisible tether; the soles of my shoes would not rustle so much as a single pine needle underfoot.  Even my breath, having been arrested, lingered inside my chest until the needs of my body forced me to silently release it, metering it slowly through my teeth, held lax.  I peered the length of my nose, seeing beyond the tip of it the deep well of shadow in which I stood and only inches beyond that, the well lighted forest floor ahead, strewn with the detritus of many seasons.  I was endeavoring to see the pale cloud of my breath, contrasted white and gossamer against the brief black space around me, but there was no aspiring mist; it was not even yet autumn.  Somehow, though, an impenetrable cloak of chill had wrapped around me; the shadow seemed to encroach fully onto my skin, and in the summer's dry air, I was damp with the feel of it. 
    A sparkling tension writhed within my frozen nerves, leaking anticipation like hormones into my veins and I felt my eyes were too large.  Is this, I wondered, how the deer feels, when it has heard the footfalls of the wolf but has not yet seen the beast?  Is this the last moment before panic a rodent feels when the raptor's talons have not yet struck but he knows in his guts something has gone unavoidably wrong?  Following the natural order of my breath, obviously the wisest part of me, I collected my reason and began to look around.  At first it was a struggle; a vague, nameless fear had settled in my neck, granting it an abnormal recalcitrance.  Even my eyes suffered a tiring resistance to the most basic call to motion, so I pushed back and forth, warming myself like clay.  As I slid my head side to side, and eventually higher and lower, I gazed about in all directions, but could not for the life of me find the source of the shadow.  No tree stood any closer or broader than any other, and in the boughs above, the sun came piercing through the canopy like shimmering swords.  While I stood in the midst of a shadow like coal dust collected in a chimney, the abundant life all around me bathed in the late summer midday sun.  Meanwhile, I could feel the cold etching like the points of frozen needles on the surfaces of my bones. 
    As the moment drew longer, the terror gave way to a bristling lucidity, an inundation of the surrounding world into my senses.  And though other impressions were more immediate, it began fully with the smell of the forest.  The earthy scent of humus, that life blood of all things arboreal, heavy with the fuel of that emerald fire, flooded into my nostrils.  I could then hear the varied calls of creatures small and smaller, crying out among the sheltered eaves.  The scrabbling of a myriad bodies filled the air, their wings, feet and claws churning among the leaves both living and discarded.  Predators of many sizes lurked in the cradles of the roots and limbs, unseen by their prey, but I could feel the electricity of their quickening impulse to act, each and every one.  Earth's Four Winds meandered the unmarked labyrinthine paths among the trees, but at every turn, I could detect them on my skin, like ripples on a lake.  My vision was overwhelmed by the dancing verdant wash of a billion leaves drenched in sunlight, the angular edges of limb and trunk punctuating the canvas in high contrast, the dazzling rusty dun of the forest floor etched, needle by needle in flawless clarity.  And yet, within this synaesthetic rush, I was absconded within a bubble of black, shivering in interminable shadow.  Mere feet away, a step or only two, the world was ribald and splendid, while I was lost in a moment, a timid tree dweller waiting to feel the puncturing grip of a falcon.  Though I did not move at all, not a muscle, I somehow stooped in the cold, the posture of the frigid and forgotten.
    Ahead, by only a short measure, where the cool woods opened into a wide dale, I could see the dander and fluff of a wind blown world, basking in the glorious midday, halcyon and pure.  Beneath me, my feet loitered in the black, skewed and oddly set, like a sad boy's feet.  They were only slightly eclipsed by the sight of my own hand, enveloped in the shadow appearing morbidly pale, even embalmed.  I looked up, against the weight of my own head like a massive stone, staring ahead at the promised world beyond the trees.  Dandelion feathers like faeries frolicked white against a crystalline sky.  My heart clenched, aching and terrified, beguiled by an unanswered question:  a cold sweat slid down my skin as I wondered sickly; Why Had I Not Yet Stepped Forward?