Delightful Terrors: Getting Lost in the Woods
Halloween is different this year; for one, it feels much more necessary to have a break from everyday life. It’s been an escape to watch scary movies and put on spooky soundtracks, a diversion from the uncertainty and chaos that this year has brought. It’s been almost a delight to worry for an hour about witches or curses or being lost in the woods. There’s been something cathartic about dealing with a known terror, versus the uncertainty and ambiguity of the present moment.
One of my favorite watches this year has been Over the Garden Wall, the story of two brothers lost in the woods, in a place called the Unknown. The Unknown is a strange and terrible place filled with pockets of wonder. There’s a lumbering woodsman with ambiguous intentions, a talking bluebird, and a creature called the Beast that haunts the woods looking for lost souls. The Unknown is a place where anything can happen after you turn a corner; where the forest both conceals dangers and reveals shelter. In short, it’s excellent Halloween season television.
Over the Garden Wall is far from the first show to use the woods as a metaphor for the absurd nature of reality. The woods are a totally believable backdrop for all the mystery, delight, constant discovery, and ever-changing nature of life that we experience; the woods are a setting that can fit the entirety of a story within itself. Forests are a safe space to take wild leaps of imagination about what’s around the corner. Every tree could have a secret door in its roots; the squirrels in its branches could talk. A walk in the woods can change your life.
Forests in our world face a very challenging and uncertain future though. The destabilizing effects of climate change are already being seen in PNW forests, with decreased snowpack leading to drier forests more susceptible to wildfire. There will likely be longer periods of drought in the future too, along with higher temperatures. Both of these will stress tree health too. The health of our forests is not guaranteed; it’s a prospect much more terrifying than most scary movies you can find on Netflix. The obstacles trees face could fill a haunted house.
Yet trees are valuable and precious, sustaining and adding to our lives in countless ways. We cannot afford to lose them. However, another thing I’ve relearned from watching movies this Halloween season is that all things valuable and precious have protectors. As protectors, we’d fiercely guard the wild spaces we have left in our city and embrace adding to our forests. We’d keep our trees alive, helping them in times of distress. We’d also show newcomers the wonder and magic that happens when you stumble on a small patch of wild so close to home, or all the small joys and discoveries that even a small patch of forest can hold.
To keep stories about getting lost in the woods scary, we need to keep the woods safe. The story shouldn’t be overshadowed by the loss of forests in our lives. So in the interests of future Halloween’s, we should embrace this identity of protectors of the forests. Let’s keep our forests and all it’s unknowns, the great and the small, safe and healthy for seasons to come--because we never know what experiences people will have inside.