Out of The Woods

May 20, 2022 in Basalt, Colorado

We’re not out of the woods yet.

It’s a funny expression, “out of the woods”, as though being in the woods represents some sort of difficulty or danger, something to be avoided. Perhaps we should blame the Brothers Grimm for placing in our collective Euro-centric psyche the idea that the woods are a place where bad things happen? Those damn Brothers Grimm.

Rock on up to any group of passionate Eastern skiers between the ages of 6 and 16 on a powder day and ask them where they want to go, and the answer is “in the woods”. In your face, Hansel and Gretel! I often joke that in Colorado people may ski in the trees but in the East we ski in the woods. And if that reflects a chip on my shoulder, so be it. Take that, Little Red Riding Hood!

I, for one, very much miss the woods of the Northeastern USA. In Colorado, where I’ve been living full-time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit (speaking of not being out of the woods yet), I do spend the majority of my days surrounded by trees and in winter I do love skiing in the “gladed” runs on our mountains. Still, somehow, these places are not “the woods”. Forest, yes; woods, no. The distinction is a meaningful one that is a challenge to articulate and that sort of falls into a totality of the circumstances perspective. I’ll try to explain with an example.

For several years, I spent my shoulder seasons conducting outdoor education programs for urban school children at the camp I attended as a child. At first, the city kids would be a little freaked-out by the quiet of sleeping in tents in the woods. And then, in something that never failed to bring me joy and as though the transmission of their sensory awareness had shifted gears to being in the natural world, several days later the same kids would complain about how difficult it was to sleep given how noisy the woods are. Those woods in the mountains of Northwestern Connecticut (near my “home village”) are particularly noisy places, seething with life. Birds, bugs, frogs, and animals of all sorts constantly contribute to the cacophony, and even the wind blowing across the tops of our ancient oaks sounds like giant waves in the ocean. At times, it is as though the entire canopy and every bush is buzzing, chirping, whirring, waving or singing. And that’s before we even talk about the woodpeckers, nature’s greatest percussion section.

There’s so much more to the woods than merely the sounds of the birds and bugs. The fragrance of the air and how it changes from season to season, the temperature and texture of the air, the sensations of the earth under foot, the ever-present trickling of water everywhere. When I fill out the arrival form for New Zealand immigration and check “yes” to the question of whether I’ve been in a forest recently, I do very much enjoy explaining that I am from Vermont and that the whole state is dense woodlands. Can you tell that I am homesick?

None of this is to say that the natural environment here in Colorado is somehow lacking. There is a reason that people flock here in all seasons and that the ski industry is littered with ex-pat East Coast folks. After all, there are good reasons that you don’t encounter many Colorado natives on chairlifts in the East. The climate here is terrific (if not a bit monotonous), there is more sunshine in an average week in the mountains of Colorado than Vermont gets in a year, the snow is justifiably famous, and the wildlife can be pretty impressive. Cry me a river – I think I’ll survive just fine here in the Rocky Mountains.

Still, Eastern woods live on in my DNA, in my world view, and in my psychological need for the stimuli of the natural environment. I am quite content, therefore, to dismiss the Brothers Grimm, Hansel and Gretel, and Little Red Riding Hood, and to find delightful irony in the idea that normal people are trying to get out of the woods while I dream of getting back into them. Except where pandemics are concerned – I wouldn’t mind being out of those metaphorical woods for good.