Published in laJoie Journal, Fall 2008
“You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.”Saint Bernard
I wonder how many of us, when asked where we live, would answer: “in the forest.” For we live in the Tongass – at almost 17 million acres, the largest national forest by far in the United States. It is not only an immense physical reality. It is also an immense metaphorical reality.
From childhood, through fairytales, we come to understand the importance of the forest. We discover it to be a place where Hansel and Gretel wandered, lost, scattering breadcrumbs, and where Goldilocks stumbled onto a family home, and where Red Ridinghood walked toward a familiar destination. In all three stories, important lessons are learned in the forest, a forbidding place where danger appears suddenly; but then, it is as if those children become students there, learning to reconnect with the eternal part of themselves, an ancient part that knows everything, and eventually find their way back home more whole, with the new understanding acquired in that dark mysterious wild place.
We all have that eternal part within us, and perhaps we access it more easily when we’re in the forest. When we’re surrounded by those ancient beings, the words of William Wadsworth Longfellow make sense:
“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks…
Stand like Druids of old.”
When we are deep inside the forest, the presence of life is so very strong around us, as all of the plants are inhaling and exhaling as we are exhaling and inhaling, a beautiful mirrored respiration. For plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen. And humans, in perfect symmetry, take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide. How can we not see that we are bound together as one? But it isn’t always so clear. Dante knew that when he used a forest metaphor to express profound confusion and despair.
“Midway this way of life we’re bound upon,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.”
Before a time of illumination, there is always a period of chaos when it appears as if there is no way out of the shadows. And yet, waiting quietly and expectantly brings answers forth.
Even though most of us live in towns within the forest, the trees are there pressing against our houses, our fences, our roads, beckoning us. Those of us who continue to be drawn into the spruce and hemlock know that by living inside of this enormous forest, we are schooled, just like those fairytale children, and just like them, we may be lucky enough to acquire a wisdom and a wholeness that only a university of the spirit can confer.
