PROMPT: WALK IN THE WOODS

I Was Brought Up to Fear the Woods

Walking in the woods is not for me

A walk in the woods is not calming or peaceful for me. I was brought up to fear the woods.

My mother grew up in the woods, with a long driveway leading from the dirt road to the house surrounded by woods.

In my childhood, we drove there to visit my mother’s parents every Sunday. We attended church and spent the day on my grandparents’ farm.

The drive to my grandparents was on a long dirt road through the woods.

On the drive, I thought about fairy tales. The Big Bad Wolf. And the other stories that led to nothing good happening in the woods. My stomach ached and my toes curled in my shoes, waiting for something to go wrong.

Two roads led to Grandmother’s one paved, passing by houses, farms and lakes. We seldom took that road, except in the springtime, when deep ruts in the soft mud made the other road impassable.

We usually travelled on the gravel road with nothing but trees on both sides, tree after tree, deeper and deeper into the woods, making me feel as lost as Hansel and Gretel, with every turn taking me further away from our home by the sea.

Grandmother’s house sat on a hill above a lake, but the trees kept the water from view. My father had once taken my sister and me fishing there. That’s how I knew the lake existed. My mother and grandmother made such a fuss about us drowning, he never took us there again.

Not going to the lake didn’t bother me because I thought of the lake as nothing more than a large puddle, enclosed by a dark forest full of bears, wolves and evil witches. The lake wasn’t open and endless like the ocean. I couldn’t look to the horizon and imagine possibilities beyond.

Every Sunday, when we got out of the car at Grandmother’s house, my mother said, “Stay outta the woods. Bears and wolves are in there.”

I would stop and pause, afraid.

Danger

Danger, everywhere

I knew about wolves from the story of The Three Little Pigs, where the Big Bad Wolf ate two of them. Though the third little pig caught the wolf in a pot of boiling water when the wolf came down the chimney, I didn’t feel safe. What were the odds? I feared I’d be like the first two pigs. Not smart enough to kill the wolf. I shivered at the thought of teeth crunching my bones.

I also thought about Foxy Loxy in the story of Chicken Little. Even though he wasn’t a wolf, he looked close enough to be one, and he ate Turkey Lurkey, Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky, Henny Penny and Chicken Little, all gone — eaten by this horrible beast. What was I compared to them? I didn’t stand a chance.

So, I never went near the woods.

I especially hated the drive home in the evening, through the dark woods.

In the car my mother sat silent beside me. My father’s jolliness disappeared. With each mile we drove, he became quieter and quieter and my mother’s body grew stiffer and stiffer beside me.

I feared the dark, with our headlights the only light. The surrounding darkness crushed down upon me. My mind spun with the what-ifs. What if the car broke down? Or have we got a flat tire? We’d be alone on the dirt road, forsaken, not knowing when another soul might happen along. And who might save us? What kind of monster might be out there in the woods?

What if the headlights stop working? How would we find our way home?

If we had to sleep in the car. Bears might stomp from the woods, smelling us inside, their mouths watering. The bears might shake the car, rocking us back and forth, their claws slicing through the metal, reaching our flesh, ripping us into pieces of meat with blood everywhere, all of our blood running together into one huge puddle.

So, I hated that car ride through the woods at night, unable to stop feeling scared.

That anxiety from childhood has stuck with me. I only see the woods as a dangerous place.

Two stories I enjoyed from fellow members of Reciprocal.