News from the Wood
Two years ago I moved to London, Ontario. Now it's two years later and I'm still here. This second year has brought with it the intrigue of repeat seasons. Two falls, two winters, and now two springs. Spring has been tripping around for a few weeks, peeking through windows and staging mock-drownings that always get a lot of attention, but she couldn't keep up the ruse and on Friday she made it clear that she'd stick around for a few weeks anyway. No promises. I celebrated the occasion with a return to the Wood.
In my early days here, all I knew of London was the Wood, some empty trailers across the tracks from the bus station, and a crappy all-night internet cafe on Dundas Street called Head-2-Head Games. While in Montreal, I had settled it in my mind that I required a beautiful idyll, and the Wood was predestined to be the terrain of my solitary capers. I made the discovery on my very first day when Ted sent me over there with Sky to transplant some plants back to his garden. He calls it the Wild Side, but I never did feel right about that. A Wood just isn't wild, it's something else.
In urban situations, I make a practice of identifying good Spots: accessible rooftops and obscure corners of ill-kept parks and the like. A good Spot is either a secluded nook or an unfrequented vantage, a natural location for small gatherings of more or less licit intent. Occupying a Spot conveys a delicious contradiction, that of being sheltered from the normal world while simultaneously in danger of being discovered by it. Transitioning to the sub-Urban environment of London, I made a magnificent discovery; not only are good Spots no less frequent and possibly more frequent, but there are other things too: Territories, Realms, Fields, and of course, Woods.
In my case, there was only one Wood (later I discovered a real Forest, but more on that another time). As to the geography of the wood, it occupies a space along the river between two bridges that has gone undeveloped because it lies in the flood plain. To get there, you follow a dirt path from the bridge behind some houses about three hundred yards, descending a slight slope to the level of the river. The trees break and there are some strange humps of earth whose origin I never could imagine. Cross a marshy field and a small foot bridge, and hang a right. Now you're in the Wood.
One of the chief attributes of a Wood is that it has a number of different Spots. Thus, in my wood, there was the Lightning Tree, where I built my Tree House, which was really more of a Watching Deck; the Swinging Tree and the Duck Pond; the Fire Grove; the Banquet Field; the Hidden Road; the Ruined Fort; the Jumping Ridge; the Bamboo Thicket; and most importantly, the Hollow Tree. It is beyond the scope of this short account to describe any of these places in detail. Continuing past the Wood, you get to a train bridge and the Hobo Fire Pit. Following the train tracks across the bridge yields a panoramic view of the entire Wood -- an essential feature for me its proprietor -- and eventually leads directly to the liquor store and the empty trailers.
In those early days at the glass studio, I was still living with my master and I had some money saved, so I didn't have to work a second job. At that time I was able to work late in the studio so I often spent my afternoons in the Wood, enacting the fantasies of Brother Fox (who has now retreated into obscurity), hiding out in the Hollow Tree, and building my tree house. It was hard work, dragging scrap two-by-fours and old palates back there on my bike and clamoring around the Lightning Tree. Eventually, through long hours of labor, I established my benevolent rulership of the Wood.
If the wood is enchanted, the source of enchantment is certainly the River. I discovered this in the spring of last year when the floodwaters receded. The flood had brought with it numerous marvels; foremost among them was the great snail shell bounty of 2008. In the fall I had done a window of a snail and subsequently discovered a quantity of snail shells in the Lightning Tree. I took this to be a token of appreciation from the snails and possibly an appeal for me to be their champion, a role I accepted gratefully. But nothing prepared me for what happened in the spring: thousands and thousands and thousands of snail shells, blanketing the ground all through the Wood. I gathered scant hundreds in a state of awe.
As if this weren't enough, the flood had restored to the trees their old leaves that had fallen in autumn. The first time I witnessed this and realized what had happened, I felt as though I were walking through a dream. For about fifteen minutes, anyway. Returning to the Wood on Friday, I again felt astonished by the sight of these elegant bundles of brown, tied to the branches with stalks of grass and bits of colored string and unspooled tape from old cassettes. The snails were there again, in their unimaginable abundance. It seems the Wood represents some special moment in their life cycle, whether it be cemetery or staging ground for unhoused snails. I must ask a scientist about this.
But not everything was as it had been. My tree house is gone. Not merely destroyed by Older Boys, but absolutely dismantled and carried away. Not a stick of wood lying around. They practically sowed salt into the ground, but I don't take it for maliciousness. The human tragedy is rarely so decisive, I can't imagine my little tree house merited such joyless attention. Rather, I think some little kid fell out of it and cracked his skull or broke his collar bone, and the parental authorities came to preserve future children from similar harm. I hope it was traumatic for everyone. I broke my arm when I was eight and it was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I like to imagine the concentration of the Dad as he heaved up into the Lightning Tree with a saw and a crowbar. It would be sombre, irritating work, and probably cold. He would have cursed Brother Fox, if he'd known, but the fox is long gone now.
In my early days here, all I knew of London was the Wood, some empty trailers across the tracks from the bus station, and a crappy all-night internet cafe on Dundas Street called Head-2-Head Games. While in Montreal, I had settled it in my mind that I required a beautiful idyll, and the Wood was predestined to be the terrain of my solitary capers. I made the discovery on my very first day when Ted sent me over there with Sky to transplant some plants back to his garden. He calls it the Wild Side, but I never did feel right about that. A Wood just isn't wild, it's something else.
In urban situations, I make a practice of identifying good Spots: accessible rooftops and obscure corners of ill-kept parks and the like. A good Spot is either a secluded nook or an unfrequented vantage, a natural location for small gatherings of more or less licit intent. Occupying a Spot conveys a delicious contradiction, that of being sheltered from the normal world while simultaneously in danger of being discovered by it. Transitioning to the sub-Urban environment of London, I made a magnificent discovery; not only are good Spots no less frequent and possibly more frequent, but there are other things too: Territories, Realms, Fields, and of course, Woods.
In my case, there was only one Wood (later I discovered a real Forest, but more on that another time). As to the geography of the wood, it occupies a space along the river between two bridges that has gone undeveloped because it lies in the flood plain. To get there, you follow a dirt path from the bridge behind some houses about three hundred yards, descending a slight slope to the level of the river. The trees break and there are some strange humps of earth whose origin I never could imagine. Cross a marshy field and a small foot bridge, and hang a right. Now you're in the Wood.
One of the chief attributes of a Wood is that it has a number of different Spots. Thus, in my wood, there was the Lightning Tree, where I built my Tree House, which was really more of a Watching Deck; the Swinging Tree and the Duck Pond; the Fire Grove; the Banquet Field; the Hidden Road; the Ruined Fort; the Jumping Ridge; the Bamboo Thicket; and most importantly, the Hollow Tree. It is beyond the scope of this short account to describe any of these places in detail. Continuing past the Wood, you get to a train bridge and the Hobo Fire Pit. Following the train tracks across the bridge yields a panoramic view of the entire Wood -- an essential feature for me its proprietor -- and eventually leads directly to the liquor store and the empty trailers.
In those early days at the glass studio, I was still living with my master and I had some money saved, so I didn't have to work a second job. At that time I was able to work late in the studio so I often spent my afternoons in the Wood, enacting the fantasies of Brother Fox (who has now retreated into obscurity), hiding out in the Hollow Tree, and building my tree house. It was hard work, dragging scrap two-by-fours and old palates back there on my bike and clamoring around the Lightning Tree. Eventually, through long hours of labor, I established my benevolent rulership of the Wood.
If the wood is enchanted, the source of enchantment is certainly the River. I discovered this in the spring of last year when the floodwaters receded. The flood had brought with it numerous marvels; foremost among them was the great snail shell bounty of 2008. In the fall I had done a window of a snail and subsequently discovered a quantity of snail shells in the Lightning Tree. I took this to be a token of appreciation from the snails and possibly an appeal for me to be their champion, a role I accepted gratefully. But nothing prepared me for what happened in the spring: thousands and thousands and thousands of snail shells, blanketing the ground all through the Wood. I gathered scant hundreds in a state of awe.
As if this weren't enough, the flood had restored to the trees their old leaves that had fallen in autumn. The first time I witnessed this and realized what had happened, I felt as though I were walking through a dream. For about fifteen minutes, anyway. Returning to the Wood on Friday, I again felt astonished by the sight of these elegant bundles of brown, tied to the branches with stalks of grass and bits of colored string and unspooled tape from old cassettes. The snails were there again, in their unimaginable abundance. It seems the Wood represents some special moment in their life cycle, whether it be cemetery or staging ground for unhoused snails. I must ask a scientist about this.
But not everything was as it had been. My tree house is gone. Not merely destroyed by Older Boys, but absolutely dismantled and carried away. Not a stick of wood lying around. They practically sowed salt into the ground, but I don't take it for maliciousness. The human tragedy is rarely so decisive, I can't imagine my little tree house merited such joyless attention. Rather, I think some little kid fell out of it and cracked his skull or broke his collar bone, and the parental authorities came to preserve future children from similar harm. I hope it was traumatic for everyone. I broke my arm when I was eight and it was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I like to imagine the concentration of the Dad as he heaved up into the Lightning Tree with a saw and a crowbar. It would be sombre, irritating work, and probably cold. He would have cursed Brother Fox, if he'd known, but the fox is long gone now.
posted by Mark Mann at
7:53 AM
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