Contrary to its title, this post is actually about being in the woods. Not in the woods in the sense of being lost, or of going deep into the backcountry, hatchet and compass in hand. As wilderness visits go, this one proved rather tame: I slept indoors every night on a comfortable mattress, I ate meals prepared in restaurants, and my time spent in the woods consisted of daily afternoon hikes on well-marked trails.
Even so, it was a far cry from my every day. The woods sounded different, smelled different, felt different. I deliberately walked slowly. Back in the city, I spent too much of my life moving quickly. Here I allowed myself to sink into the stillness. I looked around me. I paused enough to notice things. I tried to pay attention to what was small.
For example, the lichens, ranging from the palest grey-green to a color nearly as deep as emerald. The bright yellow of fern leaves. The way the sunlight hit the trunk of a hemlock, illuminating a sliver of the forest in transient brilliance.
I found myself surrounded by living things, yet it created the opposite sensation of feeling crowded. The trees afforded quiet company. We shared space, but nothing more. There was something soothing in their remoteness, a peace in being among creatures who asked me for nothing.
When I did encounter other hikers, I went out of my way to avoid them. Perhaps a part of me felt safer alone with the trees than I did in proximity to homo sapiens. Trees hold no ideologies.
The woods were quiet. At times, they felt almost unnaturally devoid of noise. If I listened, I could discern traffic or human voices in the distance. I heard an occasional call of a blue jay, or sometimes a chipmunk rustling among the leaves. Once I caught the sound of a crow’s feathers stirring the air as it flew overhead.
Most of these moments were mine alone, but I wasn’t always in solitude. One morning Peter and I sat on a large boulder next to the Clarion River. An angler walked along the opposite bank, speaking noisily with his companion, and we exchanged annoyed glances at the sound. Why did people with no sensitivity to nature insist on visiting it? Or perhaps the situation was simpler: humans are merely poor judges of the sound of our own voices.
I looked upstream. A bald eagle perched in one of the trees. As I watched, it lifted off from its branch and flew nearly directly overhead. I followed it with my eyes, breathless. I’d seen bald eagles in their natural habitats before, but never this close.
The situation I’d been lamenting only a moment before instantly transformed. I suddenly felt lucky to be exactly where I was. Sitting on a naked boulder, feeling the stone’s coldness leach through my clothes and its unyielding surface supporting me. But that didn’t matter: I was in the presence wild things. And I was glad, very glad, not to be “out of the woods.”