The Forest

The forest seemed to perfectly capture my own indecisiveness. Like myself, it knew exactly where it was going, but didn't seem to know how. The last traces of summer were draining away from the vibrant woods, yet the green still stuck on the leaves, hesitant to leave in favor of the brown and orange hues yet to come. The whole of nature, really, seemed to be in a state of transition. The sun had begun to set in the distance, drawing the day to a prompt close, but the twilight had not yet set in. Not to say that it would be particularly noticeable, as the sky was so overcast that the possibility of stars was rather nonexistent. The moon, however, had begun to shine its halo through the dense cloud covering. The sky was, with the setting sun, a perfect shade of slate gray, but simultaneously showed no sign of rain. The air wasn't right for it. A cool breeze blew halfheartedly between the trees, winding its own serpentine path through the foliage, much in the same way as I did. I had chosen this time to walk for its somber aesthetics and its subtle beauty, and had chosen my route entirely arbitrarily. The forest was encroached by a rapidly sprawling suburbia. It was once vast and grand, an endless sea of greens and browns, but the city was closing in. A free spirit cannot be constrained within boundaries of asphalt and concrete. It needed a release, an escape, but none was evident. Its future was certainly extinction, the passing of the seasons just a small part of a certain future: minor details, like the rank of a fallen soldier. In the end, death was death. I was desperate, and the forest was my final solitude.

It was a seemingly simple path. Why shouldn't it be? Aesthetics and beauty rely little upon complexity, and it was the simplicity of the forest that drew me, how it worked without trying, flowed without movement, and devoid of any effort drew itself simply into immaculate complexity, perfect and organic and simple and infinitely interconnected, as the freeways and airways and railways and alleys and networks of cables and signals only dreamt of. How different was it from the Labyrinth of Daedalus? A prison with no locks, but nonetheless impossible to escape, manmade and awe-inspiring but nevertheless a terrible death trap, all left to starve and die to feed the minotaur of progress.

This was open, and it was pure, and it was free. I could hear the rush of a river in the distance, and I continued along my path, sometimes well beaten, sometimes cutting through foliage, never caring. The path didn't matter, this forest, this freedom, was already my destination.

The trees at last thinned and I came to a cliff. Below me I could see the river winding its way around the rocks and between the trees, the tops of which flowed and swayed with the wind, echoing the ripples and the rush of the river amidst them. The open space consumed me, and the air rushed around me and through me, into my lungs, through my blood, stretching to every limb and organ, every part of me open and free, one with the endless expanse that surrounded me. I closed my eyes and felt the freedom, opened them again and saw it stretch before me.

I was eager to join, ready to ease myself in with the nature around me, organic, flowing, free. I stepped to the edge, sending a handful of rocks crumbling down to join the river below. My left foot reached forward, and came down to rest firmly on the nothing between myself and the valley. Standing now, with one foot in the swirling breeze and the other firm on the ground, I felt no fear whatsoever. I reached out my other foot now, struck it down on the void. Several more, and with each I felt myself further away from the cold, concrete world and more ingrained in the flowing life of nature. There was a good 10-foot divide between myself and the cliff, and I looked down and saw the tops of the trees pointing up at me, the flowing river oblivious to my presence. Across the valley now, I could see the endless expanse of forest, stretching through hills and mountains and glowing and green beneath the gray afternoon sky.

I took each step slowly, not out of hesitation, but savoring the freedom around me. At last I reached the far ridge. Looking back I could see the spot where I had stood, and far behind it, above the rising trees, the faint hint of a skyscraper. Ahead of me, though, was nothing but nature. And, directly before me, a singular path, cut through the underbrush.

At first it was very narrow, and I could hardly walk it without being assaulted on either side by the rogue tendrils of various shrubs and bushes. This narrow section didn't last horribly long, and the path soon widened considerably more than I had originally expected. I heard the fluttering of wings overhead and a large shadow passed over me. Looking up I saw the silhouette of a bird, black against the already mostly darkened sky. A feather floated slowly down and landed several feet in front of me. and I examined it with curiosity. It was much more colorful than those of any of the birds I recalled seeing in the region, and much larger as well. I decided to examine it in more detail later. I was free from the world I had once been a part of, now a part of the organic network that surrounded me. I would have all the time I needed.

The grayness of the late afternoon had only intensified since I had crossed the valley, and the sky held an even deeper level of melancholia than it had previously. I reached into my pocket and palmed my watch, which gleamed brilliantly as I removed it. A family heirloom, with in all probability very little monetary value but still a good deal of emotion vested in it. As I brought it out into the light, however, I didn't hear its ticking. I checked it, and the hands had stopped, frozen against its ornate background as though they had merely been painted on it. It was an old watch, and this wasn't the first time it had given out on me. No matter, I returned the watch to its rightful place. I glanced briefly at the sky; I had time to go a bit further before night would arrive. Sleep, besides, was of little importance.

I walked further, noticing that the fauna around me was growing much less vibrant. Indeed, the further I walked, the more the plants appeared to be dying. I stooped to examine one of them: a simple shrub, with a single leaf hanging from its deadened form. It felt extremely brittle, as though any slight force would snap it in two.

Looking back towards the path, I noticed a tree sitting in the middle, several yards ahead of me. Thus far the carefully woven path had managed to evade any trees, and there was ample room on either side of it upon which it could have gone, but the tree remained directly in the center. Something about it troubled me. It was leafless, a dull, gray-brown, with a form that sprung up from the earth as though it were trying to uproot itself. Its wretched limbs twisted nightmarishly into the air, as if in a cry for relief from its terrible shape. In the summer months it would no doubt be quite lovely, but as it stood, leafless and eerie, it inspired in me a sense, not of fear, but of sadness. Sadness and pity for the grotesque form of the tree that stood before me, set at the focal point of attention at the very center of this very peculiar path. Where the nature around me had previously woven effortlessly into a tapestry of awe and beauty (even the dying trees and bushes around me flowed together in uniformity), this stuck out shockingly.

As I passed it (with reluctance, in all honesty, due to its peculiar nature and its disheartening and agonizing form) I could have sworn I heard soft, gentle weeping. I looked up into its twisted branches and saw nothing. The sound lasted but a second, so I assumed I had just imagined it. Trees, after all, don't make much a habit out of lachrymony, even one as pitiful and twisted as the one that stood before me. Troubled still by its sight, I passed by, and didn't feel altogether comfortable until it was a good several paces behind me.

I came suddenly upon a grove of them, clustering either side of the path, each one more hideous and somber than the one beside it, crying out an intense but very personal pain. The air felt hushed, as though I had wandered into a room that had suddenly fallen silent. The quiet was deafening. The twisted limbs of the trees stretched over the path, creating a canopy of deadened branches that scattered the remaining sunlight and complimented the gray skies with a pervasive sense of gloom. I felt my own spirits gradually begin to sink, which felt entirely natural in such company. This wasn't the forest I had come to for release. It was certainly free of the slow push of suburbia and civilization against its boundaries, but it wasn't natural. It didn't flow. It wasn't free to simply be and exist, it was instead enslaved by the aura of self-loathing that surrounded it.

The silence was suddenly broken with the horrible sound of shrieking from behind me. An intense agony at once filled the air, carrying with it the deepest level of pain imaginable. Choked sobs and terrific screams of unimaginable torture wove together in an otherworldly symphony of horror and damnation. The cacophony hit my ears with such powerful dissonance that I had to steady myself from reeling backwards. I heard the heavy beating of wings and turned to see a monstrous figure flying towards me and up into the monochromatic sky. With the sun at its back I couldn't get clear enough a view to make out its features, but it looked much like the bird I had seen earlier. Like a bird, at least, in that it had wings and talons. Its figure, from what I could make out, was much less like that of a bird and much more like that of a man. Or maybe a woman. Needless to say I had no further desire to stay in that grove of death any longer, so I turned back in the direction from which I had come. I knew, at least, that the forest there was what I had hoped for, dreamt for, thirsted for in the dead of night when the only sound I could hear was my own heart beating and steady breathing, and yet the strains of civilization still crushed me.

As I approached the tree I had seen earlier, I noticed something was amiss. The ground was littered with oddly familiar feathers. I retrieved from my pocket the one I had discovered earlier, and found them to be similar in size and color. The base of the tree still twisted in repulsion, but bore deep scratches. I reached to examine one of them: it was about an inch deep in the knotted wood, three slashes running parallel to each other. All up the bark and even into the limbs of the tree the same pattern ran. It was as though a flurry of strokes had been taken against it. I withdrew my hand from the gash I had been examining and found my fingers covered in a thin red sap. Stepping back a foot I saw it running in a stream from the wounds and pooling gently on the ground, carrying with it the oversized feathers and dyeing them a bloody shade of crimson.

I stepped back further as the foul stench of death filled the air. Disgusted and disturbed, I hurried back along the path. I attempted to do so, at least. I didn't get more than twenty feet before I felt my crushed and battered legs squirm and twist. My broken feet burst through my shoes and stretched, pointed and writing, before digging into the earth. As my roots burrowed deeper into the hard ground, I strained and pulled up to free myself, but it was to no avail. My torso, I had failed to notice before, was shattered. My ribs pierced bloodlessly through my skin and rose to dislocated shoulders at the base of my splintered and fractured arms. I felt my body freeze, pulling up and reaching to escape the grasp the ground had on me or, more specifically, the grasp I had on the ground. My arms stretched and pointed, and more sprouted, first from between my shoulder blades, then from the back of my head, then from my heart, reaching and straining for the sky, for the sun lying behind the dull gray clouds, which carried a mellow glow while growing darker and darker.

My bruised and crushed face flattened and my socketless eyes scabbed mostly over. My mouth was frozen almost shut as my tongue solidified and snapped in half. The roof of my mouth turned to bark, and my broken teeth melted into an ivory sap that crawled slowly down my throat, resting in my wooden lungs.

You no doubt saw the figure of what I was at the bottom of that valley, as you too took your first feeble steps to the other side. Look down and see yourself for what you are: broken, shattered, and finished. Feel the scars deep and sticky in my ashen bark. Do you hear the beating of wings in the distance? The air is moving, flowing around the pummeling feathers. You can run, but they aren't coming for you. Not yet, anyway.

Even if you could hear these thoughts, it would scarcely make a difference. Your roots are already writhing and digging. The more you struggle, the more wretched and horrid you'll look when it's all etched in solid bark.

Look! A new traveler on the road, joining our fertile corpses at the bank of the river, and sprouting now across the chasm in this grove of the damned.