Lost in the Woods

Lost in the Woods by David Waggoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

I know it’s barely a week since my last Substack but something happened last Monday. Waggoner’s poem points to it but it feels important for me to tell the full story of it here and now. (Incidentally Lost is a Deep Cabaret adaptation of this poem that was on the band’s farewell live album ‘Decomposing’)…

…I go out to the Land to walk to the top of my local mountain. As I park up, here come two runners, finishing. I know one of them! Anna from XR. We have a chat. About the weather, brilliant now but rain due. They drive off. I start my walk.

At the threshold, a particular Birch I call Gate, it occurs to me that I see this sort of hike as being quite separate from offering Service. I’m not sure why. I wonder if I can make a walk on the fells an act of Service. I offer this intention to Gate, asking for some guidance. As so often ‘you already know’ comes. And I do - do what I do, just in a different place.

So I take the path that goes along the duckboards, up through Rowton Brook Woods and onto the open fell. And suddenly realise I haven’t got my walking stick! Left it in the car. Must have been distracted by Anna and her friend. I’m only a couple of hundred yards out so it’s not a problem to head back.

Second start. Stop and sit on the boards to spend some time with the bog. Not long finished Alys Fowler’s Peatlands which has re-ignited my love for this land. Most of it is managed for the benefit of grouse shooters but recently some small changes have been made, just here, that seems to have allowed this couple of acres of moss to re-wet itself. I sit looking for dragonflies and newts but catch only a few waterboatmen doing their herky-jerky skater’s dance.

Carefully detouring round some very boggy bits of path I head into the woods. An ‘aristocratic’ Peacock butterfly flutters by. Then stops. Sunbathing for a few moments before diving deeper into the bilberry bushes.

Where the brook forms a small pool I skip off the path for a wild wee. As I’m finishing I see a little kid approaching. Quickly put myself away and climb up the path towards him. Just behind are his adults. I know one of them. It’s Dan from XR! Not seen him for ages. He updates me on some sad news. We talk for a while before the children run off and he needs to go.

I continue on, thinking about what he’s told me. His situation resonating with difficult experiences of my own. Up ahead the path gets boggier again, but last time I found a way that avoided all of it. Yes, over to the left there. Just need to hoist myself over this gloopy spot.

And, for the second time in less than half an hour - where’s my stick? Not in my hand?! Oh shit. I think of my wild wee and the boy’s sudden appearance. That’s where it’ll be. Just have to go back to the pool.

Confidently I retrace my steps. It’s not there!!! Look and look till it’s obvious there’s no point in scouring the same spot any longer. I wonder if Dan and his kids came across it. The scene plays out so clearly in my head Daddy daddy can I keep this stick. I still have his number in my phone. I text him asking if he’s seen it. Whilst I’m waiting I decide to re-retrace my steps, scanning carefully, back up to where I was, then back to here. If it doesn’t turn up I’ll go back to the car park. Maybe it’ll be standing next to the car. If not, chuck it all in and go home.

I begin to really realise how much this stick means to me. I got it when we made the beWILDer project out at Middlewood. Rod Everett carved it out of a willow branch that grew on the land there. It was something he did a lot of and we bought bunch of them to use in the show.

I chose this one because it was light but strong and had a lovely, whorly ball of a handle. I carry it with me every time I‘m out on the land. It’s useful for testing out soft ground or investigating decaying objects. And I’ll admit it gives me extra confidence on very uneven land.

Truth is I bloody love the thing and I’ve lost it. I thought it would be at the pool and it isn’t and here’s Dan’s reply and he’s sorry but he hasn’t seen it! I am really letting myself feel this loss now, amazed at how bereft I’ve become.

And suddenly the words from Waggoner’s poem come to me ‘the trees ahead and bushes behind you are not lost’ Of course.

I ask the woods to help. Do you know what’s happened to my stick? Can you help me find it?

By now I’m at the place I was at when I realised, for the second time, I didn’t have it. That’s that then! Didn’t expect to find it up here anyway. I turn round to to head back to the car park…..and there it is. Two yards away lying on the ground, at the foot of a dead oak.

I am delighted and incredulous. Can this really be? I ask and here it is. Surely it was there all the time and I I just didn’t notice. But it has no business to be there. I had no reason to put it down there. It does sometimes slip out of my hand, sucked away by the mud or dropping into a crevass, but I’m always aware of that. I’ve never not noticed it happening.

I decide to accept Stick’s return from it’s lost place. Found! I sing praise and thanks to Oak and the woods and Waggoner’s poem. And go on my way. Up. Clear that I’m not going to the top now but do want to visit a Hawthorn I know that sits on it’s own just above the tree line. For reasons I can’t properly explain it reminds me of Moses’ Burning Bush from the Old Testament. Until recently I thought it was a gorse bush and under that guise it even makes an appearance in My Many Companions.

Maybe an hour later I’m on my way back, the lost and returned stick still working on me. I wonder about how often I feel gratitude on the Land yet don’t have a song/prayer for that. I repeat the word gratitude to myself attending to where it takes me. And this phrase comes ‘This is a testament of my gratitude to you’

At the same time another/the same Peacock butterflies into sight, lands on a rock three feet away and spreads it’s two-winged, four-eyed spectacle before me. I repeat the phrase listening as if to someone else as it shifts each time like rolling waves. All the while the Peacock suns on the rock. Here’s a snatch of what that sounds like.

I sing again at the dead oak, and the pool and at the duckboards. At Gate too. Where gratitude expands to include all beings and, finally, Mystery itself. As I record this version sitting with Gate, a chaffinch joins in and then a willow warbler. I am so excited to have got that recorded. When I listen back, though it didn’t feel like a windy day, the sound of the wind is so strong, the recording seems unuseable. I listen again and hear the birds and the wind clearly. My voice sounds fainter and fainter till I am lost. And somehow that seems fitting.

I tell my partner the whole story when I get back and my great friend Sarah Hymas, the next day. Each time I felt a litttle coy, embarrassed even. A version of the same resistance, powered by objectivity, I felt at the time. Am I really saying the Land took the Stick and handed it back?! Really?

Now I realise I need to tell the story and keep telling it to understand and acknowledge what it means to me. Which at the moment is that this stick , which I keep in the boot of my car so I don’t forget it when I need it, is one of the most constant, unsung and dearest of my many companions. And that I spoke out loud from my loss and was heard. And that telling, and listening, to stories is a vital part of what we’re all doing here and foundational to the possibility of change.

My Many Companions : The Tour - May dates reminder

Sunday 10/5 2pm Storth, Cumbria with Sarah Hymas

Sunday 24/5 2pm Ulverston, Cumbria with Amy Clouds