A guest post by Sarah Richman
This is the sort of forest that makes you wish your hemline matched the
trees – long and belled at the bottom.
It makes you want to dip your toes in with reverence, chilling them in
the stream: deep cut and lined with ferns, gracefully still and falling without
any movement.
But the forest though appearing still is not. For still the air trembles with magic and
songs you feel compelled to sing, not because it cannot awe you into silence,
or it needs noise and beatification, but because it would make you happy to
sing here, and this one wood doesn’t care.
It makes you want to go barefoot, connecting to the magic red earth, red
trees, red all in a green wood. The lighting matches the mindset, and the woods,
though crossed with smooth paths, cut with holes through huge trunks, seem
timeless and untouched. And what does it
matter if they are touched in this wood, because even time stands still while
rushing happily within.
There are bear, but here you don’t fear them. The wood shelters you without
closing in as shelters we build to keep out the rain and cold do, but
sheltering like an empty cathedral when you have been good, and even bad, for
the wood loves and pleases you, so you can love and please it with an unromantic
love. It is not a wood of feelings, but
a magic fairy wood that is so huge it is small because you only size what you
understand.
