| Into the Woods May 10th, 2005
Outfitted in a baggy t-shirt and oversized shorts, I journeyed down the familiar cracked sidewalk. With one year of college behind me and a three and a half months to think in front of me, I strode onward in silence toward self-discovery. On this particular occasion, not in search of who I am or am becoming, but in search of who I was.
I have passed many days under the sun in the woods surrounding my suburban home. Many of my old haunts -- the fields, acres of cornstalks, woodlands, and tiny creeks -- have been mowed over and replaced by housing developments. The one I made an expedition to stood directly across the street from New Groningen Cemetery. Cars fly past occasionally, curving around the bend on their way to this place or that. I would be surprised if any passer-byres ever noticed this place. It looks like an ordinary grove of trees hanging over a creek. It is just that, an ordinary grove of trees, but, through a child’s eyes, it is so much more. A decade ago my mischievous brown eyes spotted this plot of land like Balboa did the Pacific. They saw unlimited potential and uncharted territory
I stood at the threshold of my childhood, it beckoned, even teased me to enter. For the first time in my life, I thought before I went in. A very penetrable wooden fence guards the unruly private property -- filled with thorn bushes, annoying insects, and poison ivy. Besides the minute threats from the natural elements, it isn’t wise for a young woman to wander alone in the woods, no one knowing where she was, for a very good reason. Life experience has taught me that women shouldn’t be alone and vulnerable and that not all people, especially men, can be trusted. The adult world, the real world, is full of danger. Yet, was it wise for me to venture into the woods as a young girl? Certainly not. I was even more defenseless then. Yet I wandered in, oblivious to the dangerous world around me, blind to conventional wisdom, and with unparalleled freedom that I can never get back. Perhaps I’ve had too much life experience to be a care-free child again.
I stood on the mad-made bike-path in hesitation:
- Am I trespassing on something sacred? Should childhood be reserved to only memory? I couldn’t help but wonder.
Finally, I took the dare and stepped into my childhood. I half expected to see a frightening younger version of myself, nine years old, naively prancing through the woods, silently talking to flowers, and trying to help beavers dam the river, all with seven year old little brother mimicking behind. But I saw no ghost, I only saw what my eyes had beheld many years before. The scene was ethereal: sunlight poured in and drenched the fresh May leaves, the amber colored creek flowed like it always had, the birds sang the same song I have heard sung for ten generations of their family. The mosquitoes, lured by my perfume, were happy to greet me, poison ivy lurked behind every tree, and my freshly shaven legs were scratched by bushes, but I didn’t mind or notice, I was too busy chasing myself.
I spotted a two logs lazily draping themselves across the wide creek, barely touching in the middle. Immediately I ventured down the bank to accept their challenge.
- Are you stable? Probably not, I thought.
- Is anything stable in life? How can you know? You can’t. Sometimes, you just have to take a leap of faith, the two logs in unison seemed to say back.
I wobbled a bit. If I could have seen myself now ten years ago, I would have been laughing.
- I wonder how cold the water is…what if I fall in? I contemplated.
-Then you get wet, the water retorted.
That made me smile. I kept going, carefully placing one foot in front of the other. I got a bit more confident, stood in the middle of the log with my legs slightly apart, and gazed back in time.
- What would I have been thinking as a child crossing this natural bridge? I probably wouldn’t have been thinking I suppose, just enjoying myself. If I was thinking, I would have been daydreaming, pretending to be Laura Ingalls Wilder, a Native American, or a tiger. I would have been planning my next excursion, deciding which color crayon would be most appropriate to draw my new trail on the map with, contemplating a new fort building technique, or sporadically jumping into the water -- no matter how icy it was.
On the other bank, I continued my journey. An unnatural pile of branches -- perfect for fort building -- caught my attention.
- Was this where it was? Were these sticks once walls to my fortress? I wondered.
Further ahead, I found the spot I had been looking for. But I heard it before I saw it. Rocks neatly placed on a slight bend in the creek cause the water to make a pure, rushing sound; the trees are more spread out allowing the clear blue sky to be seen. This particular corner of the earth isn’t all that spectacular, but for some reason, I have always found it to be beautiful because it looks so happy. The amber-colored water bleeds into an olive color in the spots where the creek is deeper. I was tempted to go skinny-dipping, but was afraid of being caught or of getting some unsightly rash. Some things never change I suppose. After meandering for a while, I found myself thinking, leaning on a tree:
- Where did I go? Is she in these woods? The Stephanie from childhood? Slowly over the years, did she disappear? Leaving, giving, losing, and changing bits and pieces of herself along the way? Or is she altogether gone? Lost to history due to pain, experience, maturity, thought, and time? She was free, pure, and lived in a simple world. At least, purer than I am now. Yet, paradoxically, I am free now. I have the kind of complicated freedom that comes with adulthood, and with it responsibility, expectations, and reality. She was free in a different kind of way…a way I am having a hard time remembering. Maybe the child Stephanie is dead.
But perhaps the opposite happened. Maybe she stayed with me all along. Did she morph into what I am today? Is she hiding underneath layers of years, waiting to emerge? Is she in my subconscious, repressed by social norms, pressure, and expectation? Purity, once stained, can never become cleaner, but perhaps I can still find the freedom I once had. Perhaps if I dig deep.
My train of thought was suddenly interrupted because I saw her. She was staring right at me. The old Stephanie…perhaps I should say, the younger Stephanie. Draped on a tree over a river, one leg innocently dangled, her toes playfully lapped the surface of the water. I wasn’t sure if she was dead, or scattered, or hidden, or if she was a mere reflection of myself. It didn’t matter. Well, maybe it did just a little bit. She seemed to know what I was thinking. She looked up, and her all too familiar brown eyes smiled at me.
- Even if it does matter, don’t worry about it just yet, stop trying to figure everything out and enjoy life, her eyes seemed to say.
What she was doing said it all. She was doing nothing. Her freedom didn’t need to be searched for, it couldn’t be searched for. The first step to her kind of freedom didn’t require digging deep or thinking at all, just simply being. It is something one is born with and lose over time. I realized that with experience, I can never go back to her innocent freedom, although its spirit may be with me, my heart knows of deeper, darker things.
I envied the ghost lying on the tree, and from what I recall, she envies me too. Her eyes slowly left mind and were searching and waiting for something on the path behind me. I turned and looked too. Maybe there is another kind of liberation just up ahead, coming around the bend, a new kind of freedom that neither of us anticipates; another Stephanie that will walk down the beaten path some day, looking for us.
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