Woodland gods
I miss living in the woods, their luxury, their overload, the simultaneous feeling of lawlessness and protection1. As children, we ran in the woods. While the saltmarsh was for solitude, the woods were for socialising. Even before we could overnight, we'd wander away from our beach-bound parents into the alder woods of the Sussex coast, and there delight in the hidden geography of old bomb craters and brandyholes2, surrounded by lianas and bramble3. We'd raise bivouacs deep in their hearts, enjoy the sickly smell of crushed ground elder, and prod tentatively at judas-ears on toppled trunks, always aware that the Sheriff and his men4 might appear at any moment and have us scattering through the undergrowth – for we developed young that quick-witted skill of running silent through uncleared woodland5 at the sound of the gamekeeper or the clumsy entrance of a farmer from across the fields, clag on their boots and a shotgun broke in the crook of their arm6.
Then, as teens, the vast woods of the Downs became our escape and our domain7. They were the site of first fumblings and the excitement of forbidden acts far from adults, but more than that, they were our escape from the broader world of the now into the timeless forever. We wandered them without aim, through dark owl-haunted nights and bright herb-scented days, enchanted by the soft birdless decay of the pine woods, with the sudden luminous green of a clearing of grass, or the wealth of the mixed woodlands, with their welcoming canopies of spring leaves and undergrowth rich with autumn fruit. When we did settle, it was for that primeval draw of fire, camped around an open hearth with the woodsmoke catching the last shallow rays of sunlight through the trees, and then starlight and wine. There can be little to compare with falling asleep in a huddled pile of five or six people you love, waking to the damp early dawn, and the smell of a smouldering fire and leaf litter. Possessed by the myths of the Downlands, we yearned for the light of other laughter through the trees, but we were that laughter, and late at night it was rare we ever saw anyone else even walking the footpaths – we had all the poachers with us. We learned rapidly not to use lamps, and to see by the light of the moon through the leaves, avoiding the rare late tourist coming off the hills with their noise and torchlight, sticking with the eerie green of glow-worms and the limelight of the chalk in the soil. However, willing our apparent singularity to be otherwise, at the turning point of the seasons – on a warm Midsummer Night, or a bright and star-frosted New Year's Eve – we'd drop acid and creep from our silvian homeland to haunt the numinous hillslopes and their entry-points: the chalkpits, dewponds, and flint workings, looking for Stig of the Dump or Pan or Oberon, and fall asleep on some tumulus high on a hill, waking a thousand years later to watch the rainbow-strewn dawn creep across the mist-covered landscape, feeling all the strength and bright isolation of young gods.
And now I am older, I've lost none of the urge for dappled light and a tarp thrown over pine needles or beech mast8. A while ago I thought I wouldn't make it, and every second of the day was an effort that required concentration to even take each breath, for month after endless screaming month, but there is, near our house, in a deep glen, a small stream crossed by time-worn stepping stones and an old carters' lane, the whole covered in a canopy of sycamore and oak, and there I would sit for a short time each day, eeking out the relief, worried that I would get used to it, or the thoughts intrude into that small retreat. At the time, these fears seemed very real, but I know now that I have survived, and that that small but perfect world kept me alive; that the divine elements of the woods will always welcome me, and welcome me beyond this wood or that wood, but instead welcome me to that larger wood that is all woods, the larger wood that is the wildwood.
06 July 2024
Notes:
1 It seems to me that the Robin Hood cycle must, in part, be based in some truth, for only someone who had lived in the woods could really understand their importance as a psychological space of both freedom and security. One of my favourite books as a child (and now) was BB's "Brendon Chase", and no one could doubt where Denys Watkins-Pitchford spent his childhood.
2 We grew up on a saltmarsh near an old WWII airfield, and the landscape around was littered with craters, apparently from injured bombers ditching their unused bombs before landing, though I have my doubts. Brandyholes were meant to be collapsed smugglers tunnels and stashes, though again, caveat lector; I place such things in the same world of suspended disbelief as the never-seen tunnel behind a one-armed bandit in our local pub that led to the Saxon church on the foreshore.
3 When I was a child, ridiculously, my father, who was of a generation with the same haunts but even less supervision, told me that as kids they used to smoke lianas, though I'm guessing any high came more from a lack of oxygen than anything.
4 You can't imagine how critical the show "Robin of Sherwood" was to us as kids. Every generation gets the heros they need, if only they look hard enough. We got Herne, god of the woods, all mist-bound lakes and pagan ambiguity. But what seems of equal importance now is that it combined adventure with humanism and fellowship (where now do we have a Muslim, albeit not played by one, not as a token character, but as the coolest character in an English myth-inspired series?). I still listen to the music now, which was astonishingly original for a TV series at the time. Together with "Excalibur", Robin provided us with all the religion we needed.
5 We don't talk enough about the amazing way humans adapt their, already unlikely, two legged locomotion to the environments they live in. I'm fortunate to have spent enough time in a wide enough set of places to cope well with the tuft-hopping of bogs, the quick-thinking parkour of the wood, the leg-tight lug through snow, the hyper-aware footing of old-mines, and the relaxed trudge of the tropics. One of the few walking styles I've never had the pleasure of mastering in its native land is the long distance "flying shaman" lollop of the plains of Central Asia described by Alexandra David-Néel in her book "Mystiques et Magiciens du Tibet" (1929), though I've tried it on long runs and found it very effective.
6 When, finally, and for a blessedly brief period, I lived in a city well known for its Mischief Night, I only felt sympathy and sorrow for the kids who set fires by the roadside or enjoyed running through the smoke of fireworks; we got up to far worse, with the considerable advantage that we were miles from anyone.
7 The woods of the Downlands seem to go on forever, and it is certainly possible to walk in them your whole life and still find new places, nevertheless they are but the thinnest fragment of the great woods of the Weald and Downs, into which you can now only pass by slipping through the mythopoeic gaps that sew them together.
8 I can still fall asleep on the most unpromising of surfaces, though whether this is a hangover from woodland nights or time spent dossing on floors (and the odd pavement) I couldn't tell you. The former certainly prepared me for the latter.