Pilgrimage to the forest

My eyes catch a brilliant flash of wings in the forest canopy. A Lourie flaps from branch to branch raising its alarm call ‘kok-kok-kok.’ It flies off in an extravagance of emerald and scarlet plumage. Marilyn is putting up our tent on the wooden deck under a network of trees. I am lighting a fire. It is the time of sunset and silhouettes, pinpricks of light shine through the foliage. I listen to the closing birdsong of the day – chorister robins, chattering bulbuls, cinnamon doves, boubou shrikes, sunbirds, forest canaries, warblers. We are their audience until the night curtains draw around the forest.

A white umbrella of overcast sky radiates soft and even light bringing colours and textures in the forest alive. Orange fungi, multitudes of them clinging to decaying tree trunks. Mushrooms, ferns, fronds, tree bark, roots, lichen. The earth underneath soft, spongy. It’s woody smell permeates the air. The forest is secret, enclosed. We are not alone. No matter how softly I tread I am aware of eyes watching me. Birds, animals, insects hiding in the lower and upper realms of this world. Although I cannot see them they follow me. My foot snaps a twig, panicked wings take flight. Insects are silent, monkeys move away from the trees above me. The light forever changing, shadow to shade, shade to light – blocks of shade, shadow, light hurtling onto the forest floor. We follow a path leading deep into the forest, walk over stepping-stones across streams heavy with reflection. This, a forest that has been here before KhoiKhoian clans inhabited the region. Before the Sao Goncales ran aground bringing with it Europeans who cut down its timber. Before the Dutch East India Company plundered it. European settlers exploited it, The Great Trek demanded wagon timber from it. Royal hunt’s massacred its elephants. Prince Alfred hunted elephants with an escort of over forty men. By1908 the forest elephants were faced with extinction, their hunting was prohibited except for members of the British royal family.
I look up, the crowns of the old monarchs; the Outeniqua Yellowwoods rise above the canopy, threads of bearded lichens cling to their branches. These trees germinated around the time when King John 1 attached his seal to the Magna Carta granting freedom from taxation by royal prerogative, freedom to petition the monarch, freedom to elect members of parliament without interference, freedom of speech and of parliamentary privilege, freedom from cruel punishments and freedom from fine and forfeiture without trial while they journeyed afar to rape the souls of primitive man.

My mortality is strongly felt amongst these ancient trees bean-stalking their way into the sky, I am a mere speck below them, my life an inconsequential passing. And yet my will to live is enough to draw from their life force. I breathe in deeply, hold my breath for a second, breathe out slowly. I am a parasite, I leach their oxygen into my lungs, draw it into my abdomen where between my small intestines a tumor grows. Smaller ones invade my peritoneal chamber, my lymph nodes. I seek among decaying tree trunks, logs, branches to find healing fungi. I pick them from mycelium beds, these fruiting bodies ready to spread spores on the forest floor. My will to live makes me no better than a poacher. My sister, wise in the ways of ancient healers, places milk, honey, bread on the desecrated shrine, gives thanks to the forest for their gifts of healing. I in my own way pay homage to this threatened system of nature clinging tightly to its remedies sheltering in the moist understory.
“The forest never gives up its secrets…it is like someone you can hear talking, but whose language you do not understand.” Dalene Matthee

It is raining, I can hear it beating against the tent, every tree is exhilarated, bowing to the wind, waving, swirling, tossing their branches, raindrops gathered in leafy pockets fall in unison, symbols, tambourines, maracas, tympani drums in percussive coincidence on canvas. Inside I listen to the breath of my sleeping sister. I think of us as children splashing through puddles on the farm dirt roads, chasing flying ants -new queens of the rain dance, Steaming earth, rainbows over mountains. I am transported back to my birthplace, a farm at the edge of the world; my mind wandering through poignantly random moments of my life.

The forest path is interrupted by a tannin stained stream flowing over water-worn stones. Above tree ferns cast shadows on pale rocks, their spiral motifs one of the most Delphic sacred images known. We cross to the other side, step over circled tree trunks between starbursts of sun on water. The path – the only sign of man’s mark on this forest, its strangled growth leads us deeper into this enigmatically primeval place. I sit on an uprooted tree trunk. I watch a butterfly land on a leaf; a moments repose – I, and the butterfly. I drink the silent energy of nature, feel it stir my inmost thoughts. Annie Dillard comes to mind
“In nature I find grace tangled in a rapture with violence; I find an intricate landscape whose forms are fringed in death; I find mystery, newness, and a kind of exuberant, spendthrift energy.”
Thomas Carlyle wrote
“All life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the tree of existence,
has its roots deep-down in the kingdoms of Death:
its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe:
it is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-Kingdom, sit the three fates – the Past, Present and Future; watering its roots from the Sacred
well. It’s bough with its buddings and disleafings – events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes, – stretch through all lands and times.
Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fiber there an act or word?
Its boughs are the Histories of Nations.
The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, onwards from of old. …
I find no similitude so true as this of a Tree.
Beautiful; altogether beautiful and great.”

I think of the fairy tales read to me as a child, still potent memories in my mind – The brothers Grimm portray forests as symbols of chaos, danger, mystery, wonder, introducing a mythological dimension between the forest, man and beast. Joseph Young describes how fairy tales shape our lives
“The darker elements in tales often reveal shadow energies in an action, an image, or even a setting. The deep dark forest is a common representation of the feared elements within. The monsters live in the forest. The forest can reflect parts of ourselves that are never entirely tamed, that are always somewhat dangerous and chaotic. These elements sometimes come up in nightmares. They are important parts of ourselves. In some ways, they are the most creative aspects of our inner world. We need to go into the dark forest. It is difficult and mysterious. Still, fresh energies and new ideas come from that place.”

Yes, I suppose subconsciously I chose to make a pilgrimage to the forest for those reasons. The dark malevolence growing inside me represents my innermost fears, this, my own monster. I need to go into that dark place to walk through my nightmares, come to terms with my nemesis, find “fresh energies and new ideas to cope with it.” At some level in both my mind and body I am excreting my metaphysical toxic waste, hacking through an avalanche of thoughts, the chill of death stalking me, the very air I breath seems filled with it, and yet it is not a smell of decay – it is a smell of rebirth.

The dark forest of my dreams is the archetypal home of my deep inner rootedness – a place where darkness is at breakpoint and can only turn to light.

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