I was hiking in the woods one day when a large dark cloud passed over the sun, rendering the woods full of shadows and foreboding. I had to remind myself not to be scared, that I loved this trail, and would not want to be anywhere else at that moment.
Sure enough, soon the cloud passed and the sun pierced through, turning the beech trees into solid gold. Pure alchemy.
This got me thinking: Why had I been so suddenly afraid? Why this idea of forests being foreboding places? Was it left over from childhood stories of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood, where woodlands were made to seem inherently dangerous, rather than inviting?
This also got me thinking that maybe there were truly dangerous things we were overlooking.
I’m not sure why, but when I was a kid, quicksand was the most perilous thing. When I rode my bike in my neighborhood park in the Boston suburbs, I knew to stay on the path because if I went off, I might plunge into a deadly pool of it, which I envisioned as an all-consuming pit of Cream of Wheat.
If that happened, I knew you were to stay very still because struggling only made it worse!
Needless to say, there was no quicksand in that park. There were trucks with vats of pesticides, however, that they sprayed into the park to kill mosquitos.
I loved those trucks and would ride my bike as fast as I could to keep up with them, to immerse my lungs in that toxic cloud. They were a thrilling novelty and drove slowly enough so you could keep up, as if tempting us to try. I don’t remember anyone warning me to stay away from them.
There weren’t any dense forests in my hometown, either. They’d all been clear-cut for houses and malls. No one at the time found this alarming. Pavement was a positive thing — a sign of prosperity.
Now I know clear-cut forests have led to decimated populations of insects, amphibians and song birds. Have led to an increase in floods and droughts. To truly terrifying consequences for our planet.
So the next time I’m in the woods, instead of being fearful of the forest, I think I should be fearful for it.
Commentator and writer Susan Johnson can be found walking in the woods near South Hadley, Massachusetts.
