In the Dark

Growing-up in an urban (or more properly a suburban) area of the US in the '60s, it was always a bit hard for me to suss-out what all these fairy tales were talking about when they talked about how spooky the woods were at night.

I had been in the woods of course, the camping trips with the boy scouts to whispering pines; the walks to the end of Bird Road where it just sort-of petered-out into the everglades before Krome Avenue. But everywhere I can remember being when growing up except for a very few places, were always pretty well lit. If they weren't directly lit (because it was daytime or there was a road) then they were lit by the light pollution bouncing back from Miami.

Last night, I got a real appreciation for why the fairy tales go to such great lengths to discuss what a scary place the woods are at night. After game night, I got home as was full of energy. It was still before nine, so I decided to go for a ride. I took my fifteen mile route that takes me through Surbiton, Kingston, Hampton Wick, Hampton and around Bushy Park. When I was on my way home, I decided to add a couple miles to the route by doubling back through the park and going through Hampton Wick and Kingston a second time on the way home.

It was fairly clear, the rain having cleared away earlier in the evening. The glow of the city was visible on the horizon around me as I turned from Lime Avenue (which runs east-west through the park) onto the path that would take me through the woods to the south of the Woodland Gardens. Once I had started getting into the woods, the path became really hard to discern despite my light and the trees, already not much more than black shapes in the dim starlight became dark and menacing shapes looming to either side of the path. The stream that runs under the path (out of the western part of the Woodland gardens and off toward the Dianna Fountain) was a black mirror reflecting a star here and there.

My speed dropped to little more than walking speed as I struggled to identify where the pavement of the path and the mud to either side met each other. As I came into a clearing, the woods came alive. The herds of elk and deer, napping in the tall grasses off the path were startled by my sudden intrusion and got up to walk away from the path. Of course, it took me a minute to figure-out that I was seeing deer (or perhaps elk) getting up and moving, To me, it was as if the ground itself were rising and trying to reconfigure itself to make the path impassable.

Of course in the warm light of the kitchen this morning, this all seems a bit silly and fatuous, but at least I think now, I have a better understanding of the menace of the woods that the fairy tales talk about.

I hope wherever you are today, you have nothing to be afraid of.

Don Bergquist - 12 October 2006 - Thames Ditton, Surrey, UK