May 5th
There is something deeply scary and unsettling and sinister about being in an unknown forest. Something that makes me look around every 50 or 100 meters to see if there is something or someone there. Something that makes me walk slowly and quietly and then suddenly speed up my pace like there is something or someone after me.
I have my forest, my local wilderness. I know all the paths there, I know all the shortcuts, I know where the special, unusual trees are, and where the places where I can find solitude are. I know where everything grows — depending on a season the flowers and shrubbery and new trees. I know secret woodland pools where frogs make their home, I know where to look for a woodpecker or where a fox might be sneaking across the clearance.
I feel comfortable in my local forest, I’ve been exploring this forest since I was a kid. It’s not big in an area, but I can still easily find my needed spirituality there. Only some other people who go there (or their dogs that they unleash there) might potentially be dangerous — but I don’t feel afraid or intimidated by anything there.
Over the weekend I went to Krzemianka nature reserve — it’s only a 15 minutes driver from where I live. It was the first time I’ve been there, and I was astounded by the raw naturalness of this place. It’s mostly a mixed forest in the wetlands with a lot of streams and small lakes and marshes. There is a footbridge over the wetlands, so I could get very close to trees growing there or trees that had fallen down there. There was no one else there when I arrived at the parking lot adjacent to this reserve. In that nature reserve there are also a remains of a 3000-year-old flint mine only a short walk away from the main path. It was raining and I felt nervous and uneasy. That is not my well known forest, that was something new to me, something threatening and maybe even evil. I am not superstitious, but I could feel some disturbing vibes in hat forest. Of course, I already made plans to go there again — I want to face this irrational fear and to make this forest mine.
