The Forest

The Forest

I wanted to escape to the forest, not to find my shadow but to escape from it. The murder had been so shocking to me that it awoke in me a fear I had not felt for a long time. For a long time, I had tried hard to bury my emotions deep down inside of me, and I thought I had succeeded, but then the world around me started to unravel and old wounds that I thought had healed, once again burst open.

One night I got a call from a friend, “Hey did you know that they just killed Johnny out on the Venetian last night.” Johnny was a friend of mine who had lost his job like I had, and we had gotten to know one another at the airport Uber/Lyft Lot in Miami. What I found out was that Johnny had picked up a passenger on Miami Beach and was driving him to Wynwood when all of a sudden, the passenger pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Johnny. I had warned him many times not to drive late at night, but he was desperate for money. He was divorced, his wife and family had disowned him, everyone around him had turned their backs on him and he was drowning in a mountain of debt. The gunman pulled the pistol on him, telling him to drive somewhere in Miami Gardens where he then took his phone and his wallet. The gunmen told Johnny to get out of the car and then shot him square between the eyes. It was several days before they found Johnny, dumped in a trash heap. Dogs had been feasting on his corpse and what the dogs didn’t eat soon was devoured by the maggots. There was nothing left but bones and tattered clothes.

I went to the funeral, where a lot of people showed up. I felt like throwing up. Here were the same people who had turned their back on him, telling each other how much he was loved and was going to be missed. “Yeah,” I said, “if you loved him that much, how come you treated him like such dirt.” They all looked at me as if I was crazy and the look they gave took on a menacing spectral look. It seemed as if those faces had been lit from underneath and had taken on the form of ghosts that had risen from my past. I soon heard the taunting songs; every punch in the face; knock down; every unkind word a teacher uttered “you deserve to be bullied,” soon echoed in my head. I started to break out in a cold sweat, and I fainted. Next thing I know, I woke up in the hospital with a panic attack and right then and there I decided I had to escape.

I went to the local sporting goods store and bought myself a backpack, some camping gear and a compound bow. I was resolved to escape from whatever it was that was pursuing me. I got into my car in the middle of the night and pointed my car north and kept on driving until the tank was almost empty. I was at the foothills of the Appalachian trail. I grabbed my stuff and started hiking on the trail.

The first week was good. It was peaceful. I found good campsites by bubbling creeks, and I was able to fish and trap my food, mostly small animals like wild rabbits, gophers and chipmunks. Whenever I heard the distant sound of other hikers on the trail, I would go and hide behind a tree and camouflage myself by burying myself under a pile of leaves. For the most part it worked. Johnny’s murder had awakened in me a fear of people. The fear was so dreadful that I had stopped Uber driving for a month and locked myself away in my own house and now here I was free from the world that I felt had treated Johnny and I cruelly until I stumbled upon something mysterious.

One afternoon, I came across one of the shelters that was on the trail. It was by a bubbly brook. It had an outhouse and a stone fire pit with iron grating. I laid my sleeping bag inside the shelter and lit a fire in my heart. Sitting before the fire, I fell asleep, and I had a dream. I dreamt that the devil had come into my camp in the form of the gunman that had killed Johnny. He stole all of my camping equipment and my clothes and left me to die. I was shivering with cold and had nothing to protect me. I don’t know how but the next morning I awoke, in my own sleeping bag, to the smell of bacon cooking on a camp griddle.

There outside the shelter was an old man. He was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. He had a beard and also wore a brown fedora hat, like the one Harrison Ford wore in Indiana Jones. He was tending to the fire and was cooking bacon in a griddle pan. He looked up at me and smiled. “Good morning,” he said, “hungry?” I nodded my head as if to say yes. In addition to the bacon, he had a camping pot of coffee and some biscuits cooking in a cast iron pan. He had cracked some eggs on the griddle and was frying them in bacon grease. “Sunnyside up or over easy?” he asked. “Over easy,” I said. He placed the eggs on a plate along with some eggs and some biscuits.

I had forgotten what eggs had tasted like because it had been a while since I had eaten eggs. The bacon was thick and crispy, and I used the biscuits to soak up the egg yoke and the grease. “What are you doing out here?” asked the old man said as he poured me a cup of coffee. At first, I didn’t want to talk but then he seemed so kind that I opened up in a way and confessed, “I wanted to get away from everything; from the world.” The old man pulled out a cigarette from a pack he had in his pocket and offered be one. I quit smoking many years ago but, I accepted it gladly. I suddenly felt the rush of smooth tobacco smoke calming my nerves and I smiled remembering simple pleasures I knew as a youth when I ran away into the woods to hide.

“You’re a runner,” the old man said. “I have a cabin,” he said, “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want.” The cabin was in a clearing by the river. It wasn’t a terribly big cabin. It had a bed by an iron stove in which there was a coffee pot and a pan. The cabin was warm and cozy inside and he offered me a corner where I could lay down and sleep.

I stayed there for several days. Every day, we worked in the tiny garden that he had. He had a small vegetable garden with mostly potatoes but had other things such as cabbage. He kept a small chicken coop as well as some sheep, goats and pigs from which he got milk and meat and by the cabin there was a small smokehouse where he kept smoked pork meat such as ham and bacon. Also, we would go out hunting in the forest and go fishing in the creek. Life at the cabin was idyllic. It seemed as if this stranger had found paradise but his statement that I was a “runner” troubled me.

One night as we sat outside under the stars in front of a campfire outside the cabin, the old man took out a couple of pipes and a pouch of tobacco. He offered me one of the pipes and we sat there smoking our pipes in front of the fire. Streaks of light would fly by above in the sky and then he spoke. “Every once in a while, I come across a runner just like you over there at the shelter and they think that they are running away from something, but ultimately whatever it is that that they are hiding from turns up at that shelter. They wrestle with it, but ultimately it beats them down; takes their stuff and leaves them naked, cold and alone. Whatever demon you think you are running away from, you can’t outrun it. It will always catch up with you sooner or later and there ain’t no job, no woman, no car, no amount of money, no fancy job and not even these woods that will help you hide from it.”

Suddenly, ancient spirits arose from the woods. They were dressed in skins and their faces were painted white. They had long black hair in braids, and they started dancing around the fire. There were the sounds of drums nearby and ancient chanting. They picked me up and carried me away towards an opening on the side of a hill. It was a cave, and it was dark and scarry. “You have to go in there,” said the old. “What’s in there?” I asked. “Your shadow,” he said. “I don’t want to go inside,” I said but then two wolves appeared by the old man. He took my arm and said, “You will not be alone. I and the wolves will go with you.”

We entered the cave, but then as we got deeper into the cave, the inside of the cave began to transform itself. I found myself inside a hospital ward. I remembered everything. I heard some loud screaming and there I was. I was three years old, and I had just had an operation. I was inside a crib which was more like a cage. A nurse had tied my hands and feet to the bars and was forcing milk down my throat. I felt like I was drowning. My parents were nowhere to be found. “What are you thinking about?” asked the stranger, “Go ahead, ask the question ‘where is God?’” I stood there with tears streaming down my face looking at myself in pain. I felt alone and abandoned. Suddenly, I felt one of the wolves licking my hand, “Talk to him,” said the stranger, “tell him that everything is going to be alright.”

“But that’s just it,” I replied, “nothing is going to turn out alright.” The room was transformed into a schoolhouse and there I was a child, slightly older but still very young. There were kids standing around me in a circle singing “fatty, fatty two by four.” There was a little girl with a handful of Valentine cards, and I heard her say, “no one will ever give you a Valentine card,” I saw my box empty of Valentine cards and a teacher standing over me saying, “you will never amount to anything in life because you are stupid.” The inside of the cave transformed rapidly as the years flew by. Grade school turned to junior high school and then high school and college. I saw my life flash before me in an instant. All of my failures laid bare before me. I tried to hide my face, but the old man grabbed it and forced me to look. I saw the ghost of Johnny in his final moment before he had been shot dead and the gunmen had stolen his car. “Johnny’s death was not your fault,” said the old man, “Stop blaming yourself for it; stop blaming yourself for all of your failings and misgivings. You can’t heal,” said the stranger, “but you can celebrate the fact that you are still alive. You can celebrate the fact that you made it.”

As we exited the cave, I sat there weeping uncontrollably. The old man had wrapped his arms around me, “I know the pain that you have carried these many years. You’re alone but you’re okay.” That night at the cabin, I returned with the old man. He took out a drum and started beating it. The beat of the drum matched my heartbeat. We were in the middle of the forest beating a drum, chanting and dancing under the stairs. As I danced around the fire in joy I started spinning in circles and I felt the spirit of different animals close to me.

That night I had a dream. I stood before a solitary tree in the middle of a lush garden, I was naked, and a woman was by my side. In the tree there was a serpent that had been talking to the woman. She was about to pick one of the fruits from the tree when I said to her, “Don’t.” The woman looked at me confused, “but the serpent said that we would be like God.” “He’s lying,” I replied. I grabbed the serpent by the neck. He had the look of the demon that had robbed me and left me dead in the forest. I looked into the eyes of the serpent, and I threw it to the ground and stomped its head with the heel of my foot killing it. The old man stood by and watched and smiled approvingly.

The next morning, I woke up. I was at the shelter. I was wrapped in a foil blanket and surrounded by park rangers. “What happened?” I asked. The park rangers responded, “some hikers had found you here in the shelter. It looked like someone had robbed and beaten you.”

“But I thought that was a dream,” I said. I told them everything that had happened to me over the last several days. “What stranger?” they asked, “What old man?” I was taken to the hospital that day. A group of my family and friends were there. When I ran away from home without telling anyone, they called the police and put out a missing person report on me. They found my car parked by the side of the trail and then they followed the trail until a group of hikers told them that they had found me. They thought I had had a mental breakdown and that was the reason I had run away to the woods. Maybe I did, I don’t know.

Some of my friends seemed angry at me. They usually are. No one really understands me but what is the point? I went home back to Miami and started Uber driving again and it seemed as if I found some new confidence. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.

Many years later I went to the zoo and sat down in front of the chimpanzee enclosure. A chimp was just sitting there looking calmly at the food that it was just given. We locked our eyes for a moment and then there was a familiar voice. “It’s incredible how they are so much like us.” I turned and I looked over. It was the old man; the stranger who had fed me breakfast; who had taken me to his cabin; who had taken me to the cave and who I danced with. I saw that he had scars on his hands. “Don’t tell me who you think you are.” I said with a chuckle. “All these years you sat in your little box silent with your hands folded and all of the sudden you want me to believe that you found me mysteriously in that forest. Okay, why?”

The stranger smiled and then he looked at me. “Do you like stories?” he asked.

“You know I like stories,” I responded.

“For several days,” he said, “I’ve seen you at the library racking your brain, reading all sorts of books, newspapers and God knows what and I thought that maybe I needed to interject myself somehow into your head. You saw an email from a friend and then another one asking you to write a story and you did, and you told a good one, I think. The forest is real. You ask why? You ran away to a forest to run away from your shadow, and you surrendered, and you won. I gave you a second chance in life and by the same token I gave humanity a second chance. You don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to throw hail and brimstone, and God knows what at all of you and yet something always happens that I have to give you a second chance.”

I looked at him and asked, “God, is this the end of the story?” He looked at me and said, “Not really but if you are ever in trouble and you need to lean on me from time to time, you can always go back to the forest. The only difference is that you won’t be running away.” I took a sip from my coffee and stared into the eyes of a chimp and meditated on a forest and a journey. The chimp stared back at me. We locked eyes and it appeared he was peering into the foundations of my very soul. I didn’t see an animal as much as I saw a person, a distant relative. The old man or God, who ever he may have been had disappeared into the mist.

I took another sip of my coffee and thought to myself, “I’m not a bad person,” and with that I walked away never looking back but remembering what I had been through to get here.

“Hence one is always coming up against the prejudice that such and such a thing does not happen ‘with us’ or ‘in our family’ or among our friends and acquaintances, and on the other hand, one meets with equally illusory assumptions about the alleged presence of qualities which merely serve to cover up the true facts of the case.” C.G. Jung The Undiscovered Self

THE END