A Visit to the Woods Out Back
(Remember how I talked about a companion piece to my “Woods Out Back” essay I shared with you yesterday? Here it is now! I wrote this for the same creative nonfiction class, in the same month I wrote the other essay. I won’t bore you with a lengthy preamble. Let’s jump right into it!)
It is a quarter past noon on Sunday, September 18th, 2016, when I finally get a chance to return to the woods I used to roam back in my childhood. I’m still wearing the outfit I wore to church that morning, although it’s nothing that fancy: just a cerulean blue shirt with dark grey dress pants, plus I’ve swapped out my dress shoes for a trusty pair of sandals. I’m walking over to the Three Stone Pile Field via an ATV trail that runs on the edge of a wheat field, grasshoppers scrambling to escape my trampling feet. I’m mainly going on this excursion to maybe resurrect a few old memories and maybe remind myself just why I love the natural world in the first place.
My first stop is a small grove of pine trees that my younger brother, sister, and I used to use as a “secret meeting place.” It’s nice and sheltered, and in the center is a rotten piece of firewood that probably served as a seat, although I’m not sure why there’s only one when there were three of us. On the other side of the ATV trail is what basically amounts to a mini farm equipment junkyard. The equipment is probably a holdover from the days when the farm we live on actually was a farm. You see, where I live now is my mother’s childhood home, and it used to be a dairy farm run by my maternal grandfather. He died from a heart attack when I was only three years old, and we sold the cows shortly afterward.
I walk on, and soon come to a small field (which is actually bigger than I remember) bordered on the south side by a copse of knotted cedars which look very much like they could possibly be holding some horrific creature so ancient that it was there even before the Native Americans came to this land. I am just about to enter the strip of forest that separates the Three Stone Pile Field from the smaller field when I happen to come across my first major wildlife specimen- a common garter snake. These serpents are harmless to humans, as their venom is weak and they have no teeth with which to deliver it. As such, this one simply prefers to slither under the pine needles lying on the ground rather than try to confront me.
I walk the final stretch to the Three-Stone Pile field, and as I enter the closed forest space for the first time, I begin to get that sensation of being watched. My siblings and I are very familiar with that feeling, to the point that we would sometimes flee in terror from the woods rather than face that imaginary threat. My father says that sensation is good because it keeps you alert and aware of potential dangers. Of course, being a hunter, he surely knows more about the woods than most people. Of course, now that I think about it, it’s probably not as scary if you imagine that voice as Mother Nature saying, “You kids get off my lawn!”
As I enter the Three Stone Pile Field at last, I am reminded of another incident in which we fled the woods in terror, only this time it wasn’t because of the whole “being watched” thing. My sister had brought a friend over, and we had decided to take a walk in the woods. No sooner had we reached the Three Stone Pile Field than the friend told us to run. She said that a dark wizard was waiting in the woods for us. Of course, one might say that she had been reading too much Harry Potter lately and was playing around with us, but looking back, she seemed to genuinely believe what she was telling us. Was there something wrong with her?
Speaking of somewhat painful memories, I take a detour into another grove of pines at the south end of the field. I pause over a basketball-sized rock, half covered in orange pine needles, where we buried our first cat, Buzz. Buzz was a black and white shorthair who lived with us for four years until he got chewed up by some farm equipment during the harvest season. Our next two cats would end up disappearing after only a year, most likely to the local wildlife. We learned quickly that the area where we live is not hospitable to housecats. The two we own now we keep indoors.
We also have a dog. I had considered bringing him along with me on my walk, but decided against it. I’m glad I did, because if he had come along, he probably would have scared away the white-tailed deer that came along as I stood over the grave. I stood still for what was probably ten minutes as the deer grazed in the field about twenty yards away, not wanting to scare it away. I can tell it’s a he because he has antlers, although he’s still no more than a “spike horn,” which is what we call deer that have only two points. After ten minutes, I finally get the courage to raise my pencil to the clipboard where I have been recording my thoughts and observations. When I look up, the deer is nowhere in sight. I move to reenter the field, and notice an orange mushroom as I reach the edge of the grove. The thought of maybe using it for a psychedelic experience doesn’t cross my mind, which is good because I find out later that it is most likely a fly agaric, which is highly toxic.
I stare down the west side of the field past the line of stone piles that gave the field its name. They are relatively large piles of stone surrounded by pine trees. I realize that, for some reason, I have the song “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” by The Beatles playing in my head. I’m not sure what that song has to do with the woods, although it is about a specific political subject that I care deeply about: LGBT rights. I could go on a tangent about none of the arguments about the “sinfulness” of same-sex relationships based on specific Bible verses hold any water when you actually examine those passages from their historical context, but that’s not really relevant to the subject, so I’m just going to move on.
I enter a trail that leads back into the main body of the forest. Some of the leftover summer mosquitoes try to get a quick snack, which is answered with a slap.
I’m not sure which tree it was, but I do remember an incident around this location where my dad thought he saw a porcupine up in a tree and, not wanting it to damage any trees, picked up a pellet gun, meaning to shoot it. I accompanied him on his mission. Funny thing was, though, after he hit it a few times without any apparent ill effect, he figured out that it was actually a large bird’s nest. Around the curve of the path is a grove of blackberry plants, which we are often quite happy to take advantage of.
That feeling of being watched comes over me again. Despite my love for the wilderness, I can definitely see how they were seen as desolate and forbidding places before the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, being a mythology and folklore buff, I’ve read about any number of terrifying woodland beasts from legends all around the world that would make even the biggest grizzly bear look like Winnie the Pooh; the wendigo, the hidebehind, the Jersey Devil, Grendel, etc. Truthfully, I feel sorry for all those generations who were too scared of the woods to appreciate its inherent beauty, although I can’t say I don’t sympathize with them.
Returning to the woods of my childhood also evokes a sense of wanderlust in me. I’ve always loved seeing other parts of the world during summer vacations, even if I haven’t gone much farther than Washington, D.C., or Maine. Unfortunately, money has been tight in recent years, so my family has limited their vacations to campgrounds in the St. Lawrence River Valley. Not that I don’t have fun on those trips, but it’s too familiar. I don’t like taking refuge in the familiar. I want to explore more of the landscapes that this country has to offer, such as Olympic National Park, Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, and Yosemite National Park. I’ll admit I’m not as keen on Yellowstone. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful park, but I kind of feel like I’d be too paranoid about the 240 cubic miles of pyroclastic death waiting to break free.
Anyway, by this time I have circled back over to the smaller field and started on my way back home, sending more grasshoppers fleeing. The bird and cricket song reminds me of another song, “Close to the Edge” by Yes. This nineteen-minute prog rock opus begins with a cacophony of nature sounds collected by frontman Jon Anderson. Indeed, the song itself was apparently partially inspired by a dream Jon had of “passing from one world into another…yet feeling so fantastic about it that death never frightened me ever since.” Indeed, passing from one world to another is pretty much what one does when one enters the woods. It is land that man has not yet tamed and built houses on, where human morals are replaced by “survival of the fittest,” and where you must always expect the unexpected.
The last major incident to occur on this walk happens when I spook a pair of birds who flee into the shelter of a bush beneath a pine tree. I don’t get a good look at them, so I can’t tell what species they are, although they are obviously some type of songbird. I peer into the bush, probably looking to them like a Japanese kaiju in the vein of Godzilla or Rodan in the process.
As I reenter my backyard, I check my watch. It’s around twenty minutes after one. I’ve been away from civilization for about an hour and five minutes. I must say I had fun, although I must admit that being in the forest is much more enjoyable for me when I have a companion. I really should do this again sometime. Maybe I’ll bring the dog next time and see what happens then.
Author’s Commentary
I don’t have much to add here that I didn’t already say in the commentary on the previous essay. Like I said there, you can expect the first entry of my new “1001 Animations You Must See Before You Die” series sometime after I return from Massachusetts.
A few things do stick out to me in retrospect in rereading this essay. My present self, who has taken up birdwatching in the past year, is somewhat disappointed that my college-age self didn’t talk more about the birds beyond the passing mentions, like the nest that dad mistook for a porcupine. I do have to wonder what kind of bird made a nest that big, though (Osprey? Bald eagle? Turkey vulture? Great blue heron?)
Speaking of my dad, though, I remember him asking if I could read my essay around the time I first wrote it. I hesitated to show it to him, though, because I knew he wasn’t the biggest supporter of LGBTQ rights, and I was worried about how he might react to the part that talks about “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” In the end, Dad ended up forgetting all about it, and I never showed it to him. I can’t help but wonder if keeping it to myself was a mistake, and that it might have been better to talk about my leftward-drifting politics rather than keeping it a secret for so many years while he keeps drifting further into right-wing conspiracism (“Trans women are men! Global warming is a hoax! The great replacement is real!). I know one thing, though: if someone in my family asks what I think about RFK Jr’s performance as HHS Secretary while I’m in Massachusetts this weekend, I definitely won’t be keeping it to myself.
But anyway, I hope the rest of you have a pleasant weekend. I’ll be seeing you next week. Thank you, buh-bye!
