The Heart in the Woods
Oh, the things we find in our walks in the woods.
Now retired, I have to keep moving. Not forward as in accomplishments and life choices, but literally moving, as in one foot in front of the other.
On nice (and not so nice) days I do a daily walk in Duke Island Park in Bridgewater, New Jersey. On one side of the park is the Raritan River, and weaves through both open fields and wooded paths. There is a children’s playground in the middle, and paths lined with numerous wooden benches, each with plaques dedicated to someone, or couples, who have died.
It’s nice, and depressing, at the same time. Not all the benches lived to a ripe old age.
To combat the cold weather on these walks, my ensemble is always the same. Top to bottom: baseball cap, sunglasses, ear buds (to listen to True Crime podcasts), black hoodie (either Rowan University or Allentown Police Academy), gray TCNJ sweatpants, and dark green Sketchers walking-shoes.
My head down, I move through the park focused on the trail more than my surroundings. This led to the following one night at dinner.
My sister-in-law (on my ex-wife’s side) told me that she and a friend walked right passed me one afternoon, as I never looked up to see them.
“What! Why didn’t you stop me?”
“You were so engrossed in your podcast,” she explained, “we didn’t want to bother you.”
With that said, what happened on another afternoon should come as a surprise.
As I moved through the back trail, furthest from the entrance, I passed a tree on my left without notice. However, on my return trek, a small, red cloth caught my eye as the wind pushed it in semi-circles as it hung from a branch.
Stepped closer and noticed it was a small, patch-work heart with a note pinned to its side: ‘I Need A Home’ and a small heart drawn at the bottom.
Never one to leave a heart in distress, I removed it from the tree and took it home. I hung it on the door of my pantry (yes, I have a pantry) so the end of the story.
Except, it isn’t.
For no other reason that’s its there, I searched the internet for Quilted Heart and I Need A Home. Imagine my surprise when I came across a website named ‘I Found a Quilted Heart’.
Could it be more right on the nose?
Opened the website and was utterly dumbfounded to see my little quilted heart was actually part of a world-wide cabal.
From what I read, a group of people found a quilted heart in Nevada back in January of two-thousand-and-fourteen. They never found out who left it, but it sparked something in them and, over the years, they prompted people to leave similar hearts all over the world. There are very strict rules as to what should be left, and where. If someone finds a heart they are asked to report on their websites. The finder can either keep the theirs (which I did) or put it back out into the world.
What amazed me as that I went from finding a quilted heart on a tree in a park in New Jersey only to discover that it was part of an international movement (non profit, by the way) that just wanted to make people feel good…
...be still my heart.
