what I found in the forest

... and so I walked into the woods, as oft I do, a glance beckoning me towards soft light falling amidst the tall leviathans. I grab gear and venture but a short distance from the road, set the equipment down and start to wander, surveying the locale, listening, smelling, kneeling down to touch the earth; why am I here?

After a few moments of silence, I realize that I am far from the bustle of the world. Look: faeries dance, ravens cackle, and old snags drift lazily in the evening swell wagging their forms against the twilight. Orcs and goblins peek from behind distant trees, shapes move, figures play with the edge of my vision: I am alone in the dark woods and find myself brushing up against primal fears in my mind. A snapping twig: was that a footstep? My posture stiffens, no one is here yet I am intimately aware of all the sounds in the woods around me. My spine requires it, the vestigial reptilian inside me ensures that I am on heightened alert here. These are just the woods, my educated brain says: no one is here, no mountain lions, no bears, and yet the sense of wild pervades even though I am but mere yards from the road.

A dark wooded ravine runs down into the deeper woods, and my mind plays with thoughts of what walks there while I sleep. How oft we forget that we are but animals, and beneath the layers of civility, the same terrified primal outlook of a deer resides in us. Occasionally we remember, and this remembrance can exhilarate, terrify, or awaken a wanderlust to seek out the primordial in ourselves.

Photo: Wizard's wand, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

lost coast

The north coast of California is the edge of the great migration, the final shore upon which the waves of westward seekers washed up. But it is a formidable country: rugged, incessantly damp, covered by thick forests of redwood, Douglas fur, and western hemlock. So after the logging slowed, most went their way to sunnier climes where the living was easier.

According to the occasional roadside attraction, Bigfoot lives here, his visage along with other denizens of the mythic stand in mute testimony to the back recesses of time and our psyche. We need there to be wild places,where man is but a seldom visitor at most, where the mind can still believe that mystery lives.

Photo: Wild coast morning, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom