ellen bell

The Norwegians are such a practical race. The forest has street lights and I so wanted to experience it in moonlight.

I am fearful of the dark outside. And entering the forest at night was, in the abstract, a big deal. Fears magnify in the abstract. Moving into the reality of them, more often than not, reduces their potency.

It was magical. I lingered, walked slowly, not wanting to go home. But my senses were none the less alert. Pricking. I saw something red, heard a rustle. Two people walking a dog. A mother and a child. Was it a child? I walked ahead and my heart leapt in alarm as someone suddenly ran past me. It was the child, a girl. She ran into my space, too near. Her running was chaotic, clumsy and flailing. She clearly had learning difficulties. A powerful body, singing to herself, stopping a dead stop and then jerkily running forward again, arms flapping. Her mother, or carer, trailed behind, calling to her now and again to slow down. Had she chosen this time of the day on purpose, to let her run free, unhampered by the need to behave appropriately?

Fairy-tale interpreters see forests as motifs of the wild pysche, a place in which we meet our feral selves. As we left the forest (my fellow walkers and me) the child slowed down, stopped running and began to drag her feet along the road. The large breath of freedom gone.

(Image courtesy of www.storytellersunplugged.com )