The Woods
February 18, 2020
Recently, I walked past a little ravine in my neighborhood where a pack of coyotes had reportedly made their home. I stopped and looked at it, crummy little in-between place that it is, and thought that there’s exactly where I would’ve played as a child. There weren’t any kids playing in it and I’d never seen any, but I hoped that they did. And that they fell and hurt themselves and played intricate made-up games together and went home tired and dirty and hungry.
I grew up roaming the woods, most often barefoot. I can remember to this day the feeling of tearing across a field—I ran everywhere—and stepping on a snake. The sensation of that thing slithering out from under my foot is something I’ll never forget. The woods towered right up to the back of our house and were so thick you could barely see the setting sun through them except in winter. Behind our house was a spring, a creek, a dead tree with a flying squirrel living in it, caves (or at least ones that felt like real caves to us), and infinite opportunities for building forts. On the back side of the creek was the Matson’s farm. The Matsons lived in a tumbledown house and we bought our eggs from them. Their corn field was so full of quail that Daddy could walk down in late afternoon and bag a few for dinner.
On the other side of our house was a farm with a tenant house that was always full of kids so I was never without a gang of fellow adventurers. The farm, the woods, the world was our playground, and we had the run of every last inch of it. We played crazily athletic hide-and-seek in the barn, throwing ourselves off the loft to the ground. We went exploring, fished, skated on the ponds in the winter when they froze over (just in our boots since nobody had skates) and barreled down the hill in sleds when it snowed. Something was always going on. We ventured further and further out, to abandoned houses, even all the way on the other side of town, places our parents never knew we went. I would leave the house after I’d done homework and disappear into the woods. When dinner was ready, Mama’d step on the back porch and yell out “Jaw---weeeeeeeee!” That was my name, in South Georgia speak. And I’d run home.
When I went off to college, I did my best to get outside as often as possible, running or playing field hockey, but it wasn’t the same. It was the city; it was tame and sanitized. I missed home a lot; I missed my family; I missed the woods. But I threw myself into the life of a student, staying up late, studying like a maniac, drinking instant Folgers.
My first time back home was for Thanksgiving and I hadn’t been home long before I headed out to my friend, the woods. I retraced all the familiar paths, trying to revisit the feeling of being at home with the trees, the pastures, the ponds. But something wasn’t right. I didn’t feel at one with the living things or welcomed; I felt separated, alienated. And then a very strange thing happened. I suddenly had this sensation that I smelled. I smelled like a foreign substance, like the inside of a building, too much studying, too much coffee. And I knew that’s why my old world was not welcoming me or even recognizing me. I was no longer part of it.
That day, I experienced myself for the first time as separate from nature. A thing apart from what I loved the most. And what a sad day that was.
©2021 Joy Cunningham