narrative/descriptive (original)
While driving on forest roads with my last five dollars in gas, the car kicks up dust from the gravel below and the smell is thick and stale, almost like an old musty basement. The sun is setting and the trees cut up through a huge sky that fades from dark blue to purple to orange. Soon the stars will show and their light will bend through the clouds above, effortlessly reaching us from almost immeasurable distances.
Just past Stockfarm Bridge, I bring the car to a stop. I leave it idling calmly near the smooth, dark flow of the Chippewa River, and walk back to the bridge. The bridge itself is long and narrow, set atop ancient pilings, its deep brown wooden road surface smoothed from decades of use. There aren’t many of these old bridges left, even on the other remote forest roads. The structure is wide enough for only one vehicle, and too much traffic at once would likely cause it to splinter and plunge into the river below.
These antiquated bridges and roads are remnants of life years ago, when the land was still being stripped clean of its lumber. They were arteries from the heart of the forest, feeding humanity’s hungry expansion. Now they are neglected by most travelers, but they remain as a testament to the way so many men struggled to make a living, cutting down and hauling the huge trees out along dirt roads.
Tonight, no one else is here. There is likely no other human being for many miles. There are no power lines, no cell phone towers or other obtrusions. If not for the pines swaying and creaking with the wind and random unexplained sounds in the distance, the forest would be completely calm and still. Of course, the forest does not desire to explain itself or its noises. It simply exists, though continually changing, unable or unwilling to express itself through more than creaks and crashes.
No one else is here, and I am waiting to capture a certain feeling. It cannot be replicated on command, nor can it be described in much detail, because although it is universal in experience, the details are unique to each individual. It may or may not happen for me tonight, but the conditions seem right. I am searching for the feeling of being alive.
I do not feel truly alone in the forest at night. My senses awaken; all movements and sounds are exaggerated by the dulling of nightfall, and a certain connection can be felt. Although isolated from humanity, the connection that I feel is overriding and strong. A person may be reminded of late night childhood pseudo-philosophical conversations: We are one with the Universe, one with Everything. We are always connected despite our best efforts of isolation.
After the sun sets, the stars come out and the temperature falls. Half a moon rises, cratered from epochs of unfeeling abuse. The river below flows quietly, wide and slow, and gradually changing the landscape by moving the dark, loamy earth. It is languid in its role of erosion, if not completely uncaring and unknowing.
There are now night sounds throughout the darkened forest. Nocturnal animals are living out their night lives, and the general feeling shifts from peaceful to slightly eerie. There is not much to do but listen to the forest and look around, trying to find something real to focus on. Many shapes are blurred, lacking contrast and detail, but an overall composite of the forest can be drawn.
The ground cover is dense, as are the tall, slender pines penetrating through it. If trees could want, perhaps they would want the unobtainable feeling of being part of the sky. They reach down into the soil and have something firm to grab, to feel; they reach upwards but can never grab the stars or do more than sway with the wind.
The sky above me is so huge that I get the human feeling of being small and utterly insignificant. There are more stars than people, and there is more distance to cover between them than all of humanity combined will ever travel. Most will never travel the world. Many will never stare into a night sky and truly let their mind roam.
The experience of being alone in the forest at night is intense. There are layers of thoughts and emotions as my imagination fills the gaps of what my senses perceive. My mind is left to blend the abstract imagination with concrete reality, and as the night darkens, the line between the two shifts quickly out of focus.
The sound of light rain hitting the trees above becomes prominent, as does my realization of the declining temperature. My senses have fully awakened and work to gather as much information as possible, and the night is as dark as it will
become. Every sudden sound is startling because such a lack of light means no sources can be pinpointed. It is now very easy for my imagination to fill in the details, and every sound becomes a predatory animal stalking slowly through the shadows. Every bush or tree or stump becomes nondescript but dangerous, and the wind causes distant branches to move in threatening ways.
While the fear itself is real, it is a fear of something imagined and not real. It is extremely rare to see an animal searching for prey, even at night deep in the forest. The bears and wolves of this forest are not animals, they are merely branches moving with the wind. The sounds of the forest are similarly not of anything inherently dangerous, but rather trees creaking in the wind and the occasional brush snapping underfoot as a deer wanders by.
The landscape itself is not very dangerous, being that many predatory animals have been hunted to the brink of extinction. Yet my mind will not allow a feeling of peace and calm, and my imagination continues to fill in the bleak details. A battle between rational and irrational is being waged, with the rational mind temporarily keeping the imagination in check, but always with no clear winner.
After I hear a thunderous crash, my mind is quickly snapped back to reality. I do not know what the sound was, but it was very close. My heart races and I dash for the bridge, car still waiting. I had not wandered far, but I am out of breath. As I begin my escape, contemplating the noise, I realize that for one brief moment I captured the feeling I had sought out by coming to the forest: I felt alive.
