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.
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