The Wild Forest

I have always liked the spring and summer, and although a little winter is okay, I cannot live with the fire of life in my soul if the days continually drop below zero and the snow makes it hard to even look out of your window. Nope, winter isn’t for me. On the other hand, a Rhode Island summer in my eyes is an experience one likely would never forget. That reminds me of the time when I was camping out in our woods…..

I was a pretty big boy for ten and the woods were my second home. Actually they were closer to my first home. I would spend hours amongst them and they would bring me joy just from sleeping in the fresh open air and dozing to the soothing melodies of a bubbling brook. No, nothing could ever take the place of the outdoors in my heart. That particular night I had been meditating on the curiosities of dreams. I wouldn’t say that I was frightened, but my mind was working at a rate that otherwise I would have found tiring and not exactly desirable for sleep. Now, no one can really explain what dreams are, but at that time in my life I had decided that they weren’t just ideas that your mind came up with. Why did people just give up the ghost when asleep? Well, I was convinced of the fact that if you died in your dreams that was it for you. Now, I did allow that it would be ten times harder to die in a dream then in this waking life, but I still thought that it must happen.

Unfortunately, these were the thoughts which had decided to frequent my mind and somehow I found the whole business a little, well, nerve-wracking. At this point you may be thinking of me as an easily-frightened kitten, but if you have ever decided to sleep alone, deep in the woods, you may see why things that are otherwise normal can suddenly become a nightmare. This was the case with me. I could not sleep no matter how many frogs I counted in my mind, so I came to the fear-inspired conclusion that I would go back to the house to finish the night. I had no belongings with me except my sleeping bag and the ten-shot repeating rifle which I had acquired for the night from my father. I won’t say he forbade me to use it; I just decided not to take the chance of asking. I struck out for the house with a determined stride, heading through the woods at a steady walk. By this time the night had got the better of me, and I was consequently shaking in my leather boots. I’m ashamed to say that my rifle was a little too ready for use, and now I wonder where all my common sense had gone. By this time I figured that I must be close to home, but the house just didn’t appear. Now my legs were really shaking, and my imagination put me twenty miles from the nearest civilization. As I grew more worried I picked up my pace until I was fairly flying along – until I tripped on that cursed rock. As I picked myself up I swore an oath that I would never sleep in the wild woods again, if I ever got out of them alive. The fall had made me realize that my best chance was to take it easy and not to panic. So I settled down into a steady walk, trying to ignore the menacing dark all the while. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I found myself swimming in the brook. I scrambled out straight away and the shivers which wracked my body were now from more than just fear. The night air was very cool, and my urgency to find my way home created the need to run once more. But this time I watched where I was going as best I could, by bending over and peering at the ground before my feet. Suddenly I came in contact with something extremely hard and I saw stars. I lay there just gazing at the big dipper, wondering what to do. That is where I awoke the next morning. I arose and examined my surroundings. An extreme wave of both embarrassment and relief flooded over me as I gazed at my beautiful house.

In the years to come, I would break my oath never to sleep in the wild woods again; because, as I grew older the woody three acre lot behind my house didn’t ever look quite as wild as that night when I was ten.

- Fictional tale by Ben