The woods, they call
Aug. 22nd, 2004 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeregenestA wood stretched behind just about al the houses I grew up in as a child, or at least all the ones I remember and those are probably the only ones that count. While different woods (separated in two cases by states), in my mind they often take on an overarching memory. One of wild hives, seed rattles, lost feathers, quartz fragments and the gods themselves materializing in variable forms: deer, fox, owl, bear, snake, hawk, stinkweed, and a treacherous mud with a will of its own whose depth in certain seasons could not be determined. This wood was a place where a lot of things happened to me, many of which, including the games we played, seem like rites of passage now. I think I always felt aware of danger in these places, both supernatural and actual, every time I penetrated the wood I crossed a threshold from one cosmic dimension to another.
I was rather pantheistic as a kid.
Those rites of passage take on a mythic meaning in my mind. Hunts of pigs (we had several young pigs that would constantly escape their pen and cause my sister and I to chase them for hours through the woods). Reenactments of the Arthurian mythos (what can I say). The hunt for mysterious artifacts buried by Indians in the woods (I doubt there were any). And I remember my first confrontation with death to have happened in woods.
As I grew older my relationship with woods changed. I started trying to control it. Building dams, tree houses, collections of every sort. I became an avid backpacker. A boy scout. An environmentalist. And then, at the age of 25 I turned my back on the woods and ran to the city. I’m not sure why. Oh, I have the rationalizations, but sometimes I feel called back. Like there’s unfinished business. I think this is why Jess ahs noticed more than once that I feel uncomfortable in the woods.
Or maybe it’s all just the remnants of the overactive imagination of my childhood.
I was rather pantheistic as a kid.
Those rites of passage take on a mythic meaning in my mind. Hunts of pigs (we had several young pigs that would constantly escape their pen and cause my sister and I to chase them for hours through the woods). Reenactments of the Arthurian mythos (what can I say). The hunt for mysterious artifacts buried by Indians in the woods (I doubt there were any). And I remember my first confrontation with death to have happened in woods.
As I grew older my relationship with woods changed. I started trying to control it. Building dams, tree houses, collections of every sort. I became an avid backpacker. A boy scout. An environmentalist. And then, at the age of 25 I turned my back on the woods and ran to the city. I’m not sure why. Oh, I have the rationalizations, but sometimes I feel called back. Like there’s unfinished business. I think this is why Jess ahs noticed more than once that I feel uncomfortable in the woods.
Or maybe it’s all just the remnants of the overactive imagination of my childhood.
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Date: 2004-08-22 04:06 pm (UTC)Interesting, though. I'll bet The Village held a lot of potent symbolism for you.
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Date: 2004-08-23 08:33 am (UTC)