FOREST FOR THE TREES

Steven S. Long

 

Every forest has its guardian, and often those guardians extend their protections to humans who treat the forest with respect and care. In Roman mythology, Silvanus is the guardian of the woods and fields. Silvanus protects the woods, but he also protects the fields and orchards that bounded the woods that the cattle that grazed nearby. Anyone who dealt kindly with the forest could count on Silvanus to protect his or her crops and kine.

 

In Germany, the forest is protected by the Waldgiest spirit. Like Silvanus, the Waldgeist has a reciprocal arrangement with travelers in their woods. The Waldgeist protects those who enter the forest with a pure heart, and people hang carvings of the Waldgeist over their doorways to obtain protection for their homes.

 

Meilikki is the Goddess of the Hunt in Finland. Like Silvanus, she extends her protection to cattle and to hunters and gatherers. Meilikki is a healing goddess who heals animals and people alike. In Hinduism, Aranyani can be heard walking through the forest because she wears tinkling bells on her ankles. She feeds people and animals and is described in the Rig Veda as always wandering but never lonely.

 

Some places have guardians that chase everyone away and that guard their locales with single-minded ferocity. But other places, like the forests of Finland, Rome, and India, reflect a gentler relationship. The forest can be a place of menace, but it can also be a source of sustenance and shelter, especially if tended properly through the centuries.

 

***

 

Today’s the day. The thought made Dylan smile for the first time in… months? Years? He wasn’t sure how long. Now that Cutler had finished and filed the final changes to his will he didn’t have a good reason to wait any more.

He yawned and stretched as luxuriously as nausea and pain allowed. He didn’t normally sleep in so late, but today of all days, why not? It wasn’t as if he had anywhere to go.

He got up, moving slowly and carefully, the way he had to these days, and put on his clothes. Then he made his way into the bathroom to comb his hair and brush his teeth. He didn’t really need to—he’d look pretty disgusting by the time someone found him regardless—but somehow it offended him not to.

After he finished his morning routine he opened the medicine cabinet and took out an amber plastic vial. Unlike the dozen other pill bottles in the cabinet, this one had no label. He twisted the cap off and dumped the contents into his left palm. He laid the pills out on the counter, one by one, in a straight line, evenly spaced.

Twenty-four pills, each carefully bought at the price of six hours of agony. Once the cancer had become so advanced that he didn’t have any hope despite what the doctors kept telling him, he’d held back one painkiller here and there whenever he could tolerate it. He had no intention of withering away in slow torment like the people he saw at the clinic every week. His time was up, for all intents and purposes, so he might as well check out and see what awaited him on the other side.

He didn’t know the best way to take them, though. Just swallow all of them with a cup of water? Grind them up and mix them with some food? The thought of eating made his nausea worse, so all at once it was.

As he reached for the blue plastic cup he glanced out the window and saw the woods half a block away. The early spring leaves had come out. He left the cup on its holder and went over to the window for a better look.

The woods. He’d had some sort of dream about them last night, but he couldn’t remember it. In the usual way of dreams, it lingered in his mind as a vague memory, growing ever more vague as the day went on. He used to struggle to remember his dreams, even keeping a notebook and pen by the bed so he could write them down when he woke up. These days he didn’t care.

He hadn’t gone down to the woods in a long time—not since that kerfluffle with the Homeowners Association Board several years ago. But now, of all days, he felt the old call again, the one that had enticed him under the trees to play nearly every day when he was a kid.

He looked back at the pills on the counter and shrugged. He could take them this afternoon. Why not indulge his fantasies now?

#

Even in his current condition it didn’t take long to walk to the edge of the woods. Clambering down the hillside through the trees to the forest floor was a little trickier; the last thing he wanted was to fall and break a leg. He stopped several times along the way to lean against a tree, catch his breath, let the pain die down. The hill hadn’t seemed nearly so steep when he was ten.

At last he made it to the level ground near the creek, where the trees thinned out some. He stood there for a minute, just looking around, hearing the water rippling over the rocks, invigorated by the forest smell of loam and leaves. A flood of childhood memories accompanied the sensations: playing with his friends; fishing for minnows; watching birds and squirrels; bringing home feathers, odd-shaped stones, and other treasures only a boy could love. He used to keep them in a cigar box Dad had given him and look through them on rainy days sometimes. He’d thrown the whole collection out decades ago, too stupid as a twenty-something to recognize its value.

Barb Phillips and the rest of the people on the Board were idiots! Selling this plot of land to a developer would have been a tragedy. He didn’t regret one penny of the money he’d spent to outbid that guy, though the stack of Past Due bills on the kitchen table back home argued that he’d made a bad decision. But what was done was done. Now that the Nature Preservation Trust owned this little patch of woods, no one would ever replace it with houses and lawns.

As he looked at the creek he realized it was… wrong. Something was off about it somehow. He stared at it for a few minutes, and walked up and down one section of the bank, until it hit him: the meanders through the forest had changed shape over time, obeying the immutable laws of erosion and water flow. God I’m old. I’ve lived here so long I can measure my life by geological processes.

“Hi,” said a young voice behind him.

He turned around, slightly embarrassed that someone had found him wandering in the woods. Ten feet away stood a little girl in a green dress. Eight years old, maybe seven—or ten? He’d never spent much time around kids.

“Hi,” he responded neutrally, looking all around. “Where’s your mother?” he asked, all too aware of the presumptions people made these days about men found in the presence of small children.

“She’s around,” the girl said, stooping down to look at a bug. “She’s always around.”

“Maybe we should go find her. You don’t want to get lost.”

“I could never get lost here,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Dylan,” he said, smiling just a bit in spite of himself. “What’s yours?”

“Sylvie.”

“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Sylvie. That’s a pretty name.”

“Why are you down here? No one ever comes here but me.”

“Just… reliving memories, I guess. I used to play in these woods every day when I was your age.”

“For real?” she said, skepticism that he’d ever been that young plain on her face. Part of him shared the sentiment.

“It’s true! I know a place where there’s a pirate ship, a castle, a race car, and a space cruiser.”

“No way!” she said, looking all around for them.

“Want me to show you?”

“Yeah!”

“Come on, it’s this way,” he said, gesturing east down the flow of the creek. It wasn’t as easy a walk as it used to be; he had to make a few awkward hops from bank to bank or bank to rocky shoal to avoid patches of poison ivy or fallen branches. Sylvie practically skipped along, skirting the obstacles almost as if they didn’t exist.

They rounded a bend in the creek and came to one of the long, straight parts of the stream. “See? There they are.”

“Where?”

“Right there,” he said, pointing.

“That’s a log,” Sylvie said, leaving the you silly grown-up part of the sentence unspoken.

“Don’t look at it that way—look with your imagination,” he said, squatting down so he could talk to her more easily. “Close your eyes and dream. It’s not just a big log that crosses the creek like a bridge. It’s the deck of good Captain… Morgan’s pirate ship. He’s going to fight the wicked Captain Crook. Draw your cutlass and prepare for battle!” Sylvie leaped into action, drawing a pretend sword. “En garde!” she said, giggling.

“Or maybe it’s a castle. From the tallest tower the Princess Sylvie looks out at a fearsome army of trolls preparing to attack. You have to defend your people and save the kingdom!” Grinning, Sylvie shifted stance and mimicked drawing a bow and aiming.

“Sssss—thunk! You got one of the biggest trolls with that shot!”

‘Yay!” she said, dancing around.

“See what I mean? With your imagination and that log, you can go anywhere and do anything.”

“Yeah!” she said, running over to the log. She had a little trouble getting to the top—it was still a huge log, despite the passage of decades—but once she did her imagination took over. Dylan looked on as she pretended to drive it, ran back and forth along it while monsters chased her, or simply sat and watched the creek flow underneath it. It shocked him to realize he hadn’t thought about himself or the disease for at least ten minutes.

But even the biggest fallen log in the forest couldn’t hold a child’s attention forever. “What else is there around here?” she asked, jumping down onto the creek bank. Dylan winced a little, thinking how that kind of stunt would hurt his ankles these days.

“Want to know where to find the best mud for making mud pies in the whole forest?” he said.

“Yes!”

They continued east down the creek. In a few places branches and silt had clogged up the stream, slowing the water and creating deep pools. Maybe I should bring my rake down here and clear some of that gunk out.

“See here?” he said when they reached the spot he remembered. “That part of the bank is perfect: soft mud, and no tree roots in the way. Anytime you want some mud, this is the place to get it.”

“Okay!” Sylvie said.

“Hey, check this out,” Dylan said, crouching down for a closer look. “Do you know what kind of animal made these tracks?”

“Uh-uh,” she said, shaking her head. “Squirrel?”

“No, squirrels’ feet aren’t that big, and they don’t weigh enough to leave such deep marks. They’re raccoon tracks. You know what a raccoon is?”

Sylvie nodded.

“People think they come down to creeks like this to wash their food, but really they’re just foraging or playing. This raccoon was probably trying to catch himself a crayfish for dinner.”

“Yuck!” Sylvie said, making a face.

“Well, raccoons like ’em,” Dylan said with a grin. As he watched her play by the creek a little piece of her sense of wonder settled into his soul, bringing with it a tranquility he hadn’t felt in years. This is far, far too fine a place to leave behind, he thought, then realized to his chagrin that he’d stolen from Dickens.

“This is for you,” Sylvie said, holding out a water-smoothed stone. She’d carefully washed it in the creek, then dried it on her dress. He took it in his hands. Green, smooth, cool to the touch, it looked and felt nothing like any of the dozens of stones he’d found down here as a boy. “Thank you,” he said softly. “I’ll treasure it.”

A flash of red caught their eyes. A cardinal with some strands of grass in its beak flew past them and landed in a nearby tree. “Look, he’s building a nest!” Sylvie said.

“He sure is. That means there’ll be some baby birds soon.”

“I can’t wait to see them!”

“Neither can I,” Dylan said, surprised to discover that he meant it. He stood there for a moment, thinking about those birds… and the fruit on the blackberry patches later in the season… and the glorious tapestry of colors in autumn. It’s things like the woods that make life worth living despite the pain.

Like a demon summoned by his thoughts, the pain chose that moment to stab him in the gut. He hadn’t taken any painkillers since late yesterday.

“Are you okay, Dylan?” Sylvie said.

“I’m fine, sweetie, but I need to get home. Can I take you back to your mother?”

“No, I’m gonna stay and play some more. Will you be here tomorrow?”

“I will,” he said with a smile. “We can look for turtles. Would you like that?”

“Yes!” she said, jumping up and down and then giving him a hug.

“See you tomorrow, then. Be careful down here, okay?”

“I will.”

Dylan climbed back up the hill, sometimes holding onto trees to get past the steepest places. At the top, before he left the forest and walked up the street to his house, he turned and looked back at Sylvie. He waved, and she waved back. He smiled and headed home.

#

When Dylan had gone, Sylvie walked over to a huge old beech tree, one whose roots reached many feet from its thick trunk. She put her hand on the silvery-grey bark—and slowly faded away, like a dream upon waking.

The leaves of the beech tree rustled as if in the wind, speaking a language no human had ever understood or ever would. This man has given of himself to save us. Now we will save him, and the circle be maintained.

Throughout the woods, all the other trees rustled their agreement.