The Broken Tree That Felt Like a Doorway
On one of the first real adventures Rosey and I took together—just the two of us exploring without a plan—we wandered deeper into the woods than usual. The kind of quiet walk where the only sounds are your footsteps, a few startled birds, and Rosey’s tail brushing against low branches as she trots ahead like she knows exactly where we’re going.
We came around a bend in the trail and stopped at the same moment. In front of us stood this broken tree—split, twisted, hollowed out by time and weather. It wasn’t just a fallen trunk. It looked like something else entirely. The longer I stared at it, the more it felt like a doorway, the frame of a portal standing right in the middle of the Indiana woods. A threshold into whatever world you wanted to imagine.
Rosey stepped up to it first, nose low, tail still. She inspected it like she was deciding if we should cross through. Maybe she felt what I did: that strange mix of curiosity and calm, the sense that nature had carved out a moment just for us.
We didn’t walk around it—we walked through it.
I don’t know why. Maybe it was impulsive, maybe symbolic, or maybe I just wanted to believe that stepping through could change something in me. That this season of getting outside more, taking photos, slowing down, and letting myself reconnect with the world one step at a time… could start with simply choosing to pass through a doorway only the woods could build.
Looking back at the photo now, it still feels like that: a portal. Not to a fantasy world, but to a version of myself I’d been trying to find again. And Rosey—patient, curious, always ready—was the perfect companion for crossing that threshold.
If you want, I can rewrite this to fit the tone of your “Thoughts” blog or your photography page, or expand it into a longer reflective piece.
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