Take Them to the Wood

How to describe a place to someone who has never been there, how to set the scene. Because it is vital that they feel as I felt when I was up through the wood, anything less is a failure. To see exactly how I saw, without me abdicating responsibility to an image so blinding and precise. How to paint for a thousand colourful blinking eyes, whole rainbows of thoughts and perspectives. The only shade to use is purest grey - for general terms must suffice. 

I cannot even say the wood was wild - for the good readers will differ in their understandings of the word. In any case, it is an imprecise and blunt tool - some will read it and be unmoved, while others will scoff at the cliche. To still others, it will conjure nothing at all, description reliably blunt. The wood was wild, of course it was. Wild is out the window then, where it belongs, wood alone can remain. 

“It was a wood,” I could begin. Yes, I believe it. A simple statement is best, I might be sure. The wood was the wood, that’s all there was. I can’t describe it, for I can barely name it with any confidence. All I can do with any truth is describe the mornings and afternoons that I was there - I’ll leave the interpretations and imaginings to you. I can say that parts of the wood wove their way into and around me like a deadly weed. Though I might attempt to unroot it with a trowel, that would require that I sever an artery or splice a ventricle. By necessity then, I let the weed sit, pulsing gently in time with my own beat. While I don’t weep at the thought of it now, my heart will fill up at the thought of the wood, and the weed will tighten and convulse. 

For the wood was shelter and companion, an introduction to birds and to mushrooms and peace unbounded and complete. To sitting on a bench and looking on a lake, no, the lake, the lake, the only lake there is. That will suffice for description - anything else would be a disservice. I could attempt to say how it sparkled, and how the sunlight of mornings skidded off it when it was bright. How it was cloaked in a mass of huddled cloud on some days, or the finest veil on others. How on freezing mornings in December, it was harsh and resilient, strict schoolteacher ensuring its own survival.

But I will not say these things, for the lake was the lake, that’s all there was. I can do nothing but encourage others to come forth into the light and see for themselves. Yes that’s right, do not describe, for all description is reduction and compression. Best then instead to lay a trail… lay a trail, lay a trail, lay a trail - of breadcrumbs, hair, wire and dust - and take them to the wood.