The Woods Will Swallow You

(We just returned from a week-long camping trip in central Oregon, where we attended a weekend of trail skills classes, as well as a lot of hiking and s'mores-making. But before I dive into the details…)

It's frustrating to try to talk about being in the woods.

Being in the woods— really being there, taking in all the details, slowing down, noticing the birdsong, noticing your breath— is intense. It feels full and rich and detailed, unhurried, brimming with communication but devoid of words. 

You sit on a log by the Metolius River near dusk and feel the damp chill of the air, listen to the rushing water that's clear as glass, turning translucent in the gathering darkness. The log is bumpy and it hurts your butt and your back is sore from working all day, but you've come here for the show. You just have to wait, breathing in the smell of cool water and pine needles.

You watch the fly fishers, two teenaged boys in bulky waders, dipping and snapping their lines on the water, sometimes breaking the rushing silence with loud exclamations about the fish that almost took the line. The sky grows paler before darkness, and robins chase and scold each other in the nearby ponderosa pines. The fishermen gather their equipment and turn in for the night, but you're still there, watching the nearby bridge as the pines turn to delicate silhouettes above your head. And still the water rushes and babbles and hushes you. 

Then, in the corner of your eye, a flash of shadow— a flitting creature that vanishes when you try to look at it. You stare under the bridge, straining your eyes, shivering a little in the damp. Another one, zipping along the water, faster than the eye can track. Bats. Soon several of these small creatures are diving and whizzing through the air, skating across the surface of the water like phantoms, chasing bugs that dance along the skin of the river to tempt bats and trout alike. The bats chase and whir and occasionally wheel up into the sky so you can see their shapes above your head, then dive back down and continue hunting. 

At last you're shivering, and you feel the cold working up from the earth through your bones, so you tromp back toward your campsite as the first star of the night winks to life.

This only takes ten minutes, but it feels expansive. It feels like nothing is more important than the fly fishers and the pines and the bats. They held your attention, filling you up. I'll have so much to tell everyone when I get home, you think. 

Then you get home, and someone asks about it, and you say, "There was a pretty river." 

Then you wonder how something so simple, something so tedious to talk out play-by-play, can have such a profound impact on you.

Trips like this remind me why I was frustrated a lot when I tried to tell my friends about the Pacific Crest Trail. Because the woods are not something you can tie up with a bow and cram into your pocket. They are larger than you. They swallow you. They command and demand your attention, your self, your breath, your life. They nurture you and wallop you. They make you forget yourself, and remember who you are. They draw out your fears, they lay you bare, they touch the raw nerves, they wake you up in the middle of the night gasping because you thought you heard the paw step of a saber-toothed tiger. They make you cry while you wait for the sunset, and weep in silence at the rising of the crescent moon. They give you laughter and joy and strong legs that carry you deeper into them. They swarm you with bugs and heat and exhaustion and cold. They stand apart from you in brutality, they can kill you with a breath, but they are life-givers and healers and tender keepers of your sorrows and dreams. The woods give back, and speak to you, and hush you if you try to talk too much. So you sit in silence. And you listen.

Then when your journey spits you back into the center of civilization, when suburban houses crowd out the trees and cars rush around and screens— so many screens— and words— so many words— fill up your head, it either feels like a bucket of ice water in the face to wake you up, or like falling underneath the surface of a warm lake and drowning. You wake up, or you learn you can breathe underwater, but it feels odd. It feels comfortable. It feels numbing. And it's way, way too loud.

So as I attempt to describe the beautiful week that I just had, please keep in mind the richness, the heaviness of the memories that fall between the highlights like gem-studded sand. And maybe find some time to go out into the woods and just exist for a while. The woods have a lot to teach us, if we are willing to slow down and hear.

~~~