I write this reflecting on the way in which as a student I understand and learn through components, as I am currently studying natural science. And yet so much of my cultural experience determines my scientific understanding, and therefore the same phenomena is experienced differently by every other person, subject to their own powerful feelings and conditioned responses.
One particular emotion makes me think about this with regards to forests, and that is fear. From my limited experience and perspective, part of human tendency to suppress nature; to use and dominate it; cultivate it, is riddled with fear and apprehension of its exact nature to be uncontrollable and wild. Even if we cut and thin, plant and nourish and shape the wood, the experience of being in there, among large living things which conceal, create darkness and bar our way, in turn cultivates a little fear in our cores. This is the wilderness within ourselves - we can try to master it but it is very difficult. It can spring surprisingly, and it has a powerful effect. It is wilderness against nature. An ongoing part of our relationship with woods and forest as humans is fear.
Last year, I was in the Alpine town of Mount Beauty, a small village in the state of Victoria, south-eastern Australia. It is a rural town, built on the Kiewa hydroelectricity scheme in the forties, and now home to tourists and adventure seekers as well as farmers and retirees. Truly nestled in the shoulders of the Bogong Alps, on the hill road up to Falls Creek mountain resort, you are surrounded by gum tree forest. Facing north-west, you look out over the valley floor and see rural splendour; blue smoke hanging over forested hillsides, tilled land on the flat, and homes and farmsteads calmly being. Behind you to the south-east, your gaze ascends through the gums and acacias to snow-tipped hill shoulders.
While taking in the visual satisfaction was splendid, it was the combination of senses on the walk which I cannot forget. I was alone. I came off the road and followed some of the paths up through the bush. I was never off a path, never more than a mile from the road, and often had at least a 120 degree angle view of the rest of the valley at my back. Yet for most of the time I was walking, apprehension was developing in my gut. My own unusual quiet allowed for the noise of the bush to sink in. I began to feel my nerves switching on when I realised I was out of sight of anybody else, concealed by huge gums and paper barks. I was meandering through the trees and bushes, and in turn they were swallowing me. I paid attention to the movement and repeated appearances of white butterflies along the path, and looked nervously up and through the trees. My self possession ebbed slightly as I noticed the crushed and flattened plants where roos had crashed through the bush, exactly wherever they wanted to go. My environment was not within my control, and not even within my ability to fully anticipate. Therefore my level of fear was rising.
My friend told me of her time in Nigeria, and described a time where she made to go out of the compound where she was staying for a wander at the edge of the woods nearby. Her hosts told her explicitly, 'no'. No one goes there. You stay at the compound. It is inexplicable to have a desire to go to the woods. What was the reasoning for this? Witches. There are witches that live in the forest. This was the common belief of the entire community, impressed upon all its members. Occasionally the forest-dwelling people were spotted, and sometimes arrested for witchcraft. It seems entirely appropriate for people of many cultures that witches live in forests; by association with each other, both witches and forests are to be feared. Both can have unpredictable and undesirable effects on a person.
The sanctuary of the Australian road and of the Nigerian compound illustrate this battle of senses in our relationship with forests. The often-referenced fight to control fear is reflected by our fight to dominate forest and nature.
As I write this post and log on to Twitter, by strange coincidence, Paulo Coelho has just tweeted "The fact that the forest is silent doesn't mean it is safe." I'm not certain about the silence of forests but I'm certain they shouldn't be safe.
Peering into the wood
Stillness, and light
And murk. Was that?
Movement.
Green browns, and colour darkens
The furthest trunks blur, or flicker, or something
Reality, the known, the near
Anchors the thought
But like shadows in the wood
On the edge of sight
Are stories
An engaging scene occurred on a recent episode of QI, which made me think about landscapes. Each person around the panel turned to the person on their right and shook hands with them, telling them somebody famous whom they had previously shaken the hand of. So one might say "David Beckham" or "Ian McKellen", the idea being that, somehow, the glory and reverence attributed to that handshake was passed on to the current shaker. In that way, people on the panel felt a connection with somebody in whom their lives they had never met, or even been in close proximity to, or who had perhaps died before they were born.
In a similar way, our landscapes connect us to creatures and times of a distance greater than we could ever otherwise bridge. Landscape is the handshake to the cultures and wildernesses of the past, and forward to the unknown. We mould a little of it now, by step or sow, but that same little may also have been moulded by Mayans, or giant reptiles, or prehistoric fish swimming prehistoric streams.
I recently heard a story of a road trip through the southern states. A comically nondescript sign on the long road said "DINO TRAX". The trippers took the turn, anticipating little. And in the dusty, sun baked ancient land, manned by indigenous peoples, huge Tyrannosaurus claw-prints punctuated the terrain. Immovable. From another age. And as clear as the visitors walking all over them, their own miniscule imprints in the dust serving to strengthen the wonder at the colossal being there before. The deliberate Indians, explaining the history of the region, offset the curiosity of the episode. One land-tied culture explaining another, several million years later, on a bit of mineral just the same; maybe a little drier. How naturally weird.
This landscape handshake is perhaps also demonstrated by the fossil towns in Eastern Morocco. The tourist (you, or me) is dropped by in-league bus drivers to their preferred fossil emporium. Polished ammonites abound; made into bowls, necklaces, tables - striking, functional and another curious juxtaposition. Remnants of ancient life shaped into things I can wear around my neck in this century, warming them up to life-temperature with the heat coming from my chest.
Then you step outside into the bright yellow light and black shadows. You casually look at the tools and machinery used for carving, shaping and polishing the treasures from the rocks in the Atlas and Anti-Atlas. And behind you, leant up against the wall, is it - the showstopper.
A gigantic slab with trilobites immobilised forever in its rigid lattice, but looking as if they are swarming all over the rock, just as they were, two hundred and fifty million years ago. The Muslim fossil emporium owner steps out with a bottle of water, and he shakes it out over the rock to make the things glisten. The tourist looks up and out across the old dry landscape to the distant mountain slopes... thoughts swarming now too.
Someone might walk for several hours through a national park or reserve or even a wilderness, and reach a notable feature. It could be a tall and looming granite pinnacle, with scratches. It could be a pile of dry dusty gravel. It could be a rough circle of old tree stumps. It could be a grey cliff-top seat, worn smooth with sitting. They are intrinsic to the landscape and they are the messages left in it ... Hi! We were here once too! 
