The Woods Out Back
(Hey guys. Progress on my newest articles has been slower than I anticipated this month for several reasons, which I’ll discuss in the author’s commentary. For now, though, I’m digging back into the well of my old college essays and presenting you one of my earliest creative nonfiction pieces from all the way back in my sophomore year in September 2016, waxing poetic about the wilderness behind the North Country farm where I grew up. Enjoy!)
Nostalgia is a funny thing, isn’t it? One day, you’re just enjoying the life you’re currently living, reveling in the discoveries you made in your teenage years as you crossed the bridge from childhood to adulthood. But then there inevitably comes a time when you start to miss those things that used to be dear to you back in those carefree days. Like that stuffed animal you gave to charity. Or that Saturday morning cartoon that was canceled ten years ago. Or maybe those weird games you and your siblings used to come up with that perplexed your parents so. Indeed, I’ve been caught in that phase where I’m rediscovering why I loved those old Disney movies and Nickelodeon TV shows so much when I was younger. But I was also very close to nature in my younger days, mainly on account of being in a hunting family. While I never became a hunter myself, spending time in the woods with my dad, preparing tree stands and looking for his latest kill, left a lasting impression on my young and impressionable mind. But I haven’t actually taken a trip down the four-wheeler trails in years now, and that nostalgia bug is calling me back to that place among the pines.
I remember there being three main sections of the woods on my father’s property. South of my house are the woods and cornfields bordering a large, swampy area. To the west are the more expansive woodlands between my neighbor’s house and Big Sucker Brook. Directly to the north of my house is the Three Stone Pile Field and a former cattle pasture that is more open than the surrounding area, sparsely populated with pine trees scattered throughout.
It’s not as grand or expansive as the Adirondack Mountains, but it was still where I grew up. I can remember the healthy deer population it had and all the other animals that passed by at one time or another, including coyotes, porcupines, vultures, red-tailed hawks, kestrels, cottontail rabbits, foxes, moles, woodchucks, herons, geese, owls, weasels, raccoons, turkeys, etc. While it didn’t happen on my property, I remember one incident where my mother, brother, sister, and I drove past a doe that was giving birth. I also remember another time when my dad took me back into the woods to shoot what he thought was a porcupine, only to discover after shooting it a few times that it was actually a large bird’s nest. I remember my mother seeing what she thought was a coyote attacking a deer in the field right in front of our house, only to realize, upon getting a closer look, that it was a wolf. I also remember one time my little brother came home from a hunting trip in tears because he mistakenly shot an owl (I forget what species they were actually hunting).
Speaking of my brother and sister, the interesting games we played during our childhood were also an integral part of my experience with those woods. There was a small cluster of pine trees on the trail to the Three Stone Pile Field, which we designated as our secret hiding place. There were the berry bushes where we would pick blackberries. There was a time when one of my sister’s friends came over, and we ended up running from the Three Stone Pile Field in terror because she convinced us that an evil wizard was waiting in the woods to attack us. And there were the other times we fled the woods because of the overpowering sensation that we were being watched.
There are times when the woods can be a scary place. But, if my experience with city life is any indication, it’s worth a scary moment or two. My experience with large metropolitan areas has mostly come from trips I took with the History Club in high school, as well as a family vacation to Washington, D.C., in 2008. I honestly don’t see why anyone would want to live in a big city like New York other than for purely pragmatic reasons. They’re polluted, crowded, and often swarming with criminals. But if there is one thing above all else that I cannot stand about the city, it’s all the noise, especially from the thousands of cars that line the streets every day.
I am most definitely a country mouse. I may have a desire to explore the world beyond my usual stomping grounds. Still, if I do settle down, I’ll most certainly do it in a sparsely populated area where my children will have plenty of wilderness to make memories of their own in.
Author’s Commentary
So, yeah, reading this essay over again almost a decade later, it’s definitely a little simplistic. Still, I think it gets the job done by painting a picture of the kind of landscape I grew up in. Some of the parts of the paragraph where I bash New York City as a crime-infested hellhole are a little cringeworthy to read in hindsight, especially since I learned that overall crime rates have been on a steady downward trend since the early 90s (indeed, compare the number of recorded murders in the city in 1990 (2,245) to the number of murders in 2024 (377)). Still, I definitely agree that I would much rather live in a rural area than a noisy urban environment like New York City, if I could help it.
I also have a companion piece to this essay, documenting the first walk I took in the woods out back in years at that point, which I wrote later that month. This piece goes into far more substantive detail about the unique features of the woodlands on the Dominy family estate. I may be persuaded to add that to this blog as well.
Speaking of the blog, though, I should probably let you know what the holdup is on my regular pieces. I originally started this month with work on my review of Jurassic World Dominion, finally restarting the retrospective that had lain dormant for so long. But then my autistic brain told me that I should start that “1001 Animations” series instead, so that ended up consuming much of the second half of April. That will most likely be the next article to appear on this blog, which won’t be a college essay, likely sometime next week.
In addition to my indecisiveness, real life has been getting in the way of my writing ambitions as of late. I spent much of last week cleaning the house with my mother to prepare for our annual Dominy family Easter dinner, and next weekend I will be traveling out of state to Worcester, Massachusetts, to attend my great-aunt’s funeral. What can I say? Shit happens.
I’m really hoping to get the Jurassic Park retrospective back on track next month, one year after it started. However, there’s also the 2024 animation retrospectives I need to worry about, and my website analytics tell me that the “Cryptids of North America” articles are my best-performing on this site, so I’m feeling pressure to start the next one (on Pennsylvania) as soon as possible. But I can handle those challenges as they come.
Happy belated Easter to everyone who celebrates!
