Samantha's Choice

There was an air in these woods, something that drew you in. Something that captured your imagination and took you places you felt you had never been. Between the trees, among the moss and grass of the forest, some say it was a kind of force, others a hint of something beyond oneself. Either way, it was intoxicating. One need not imagine much to glimpse the truth that many had lost themselves among these woods; be it fall or spring, summer or winter. They always beckoned. And there was always someone willing to heed the call and follow.

Samantha was perched on a ledge. Looking out over an expanse of plain. Contented, secure, Samantha. Perched above a familiar scene, the plain behind her development and the forest just beyond. Samantha was prevailing upon the scene, one might say, tempting, in her way, the forest beyond. She had surmounted the jagged street’s end, and gone past where others recommended she steer clear. “Bears,” they claimed, lived in these woods, and some “lions” even. This never scared Samantha in the slightest.

Samantha was bold, if unclear on exactly how far deep the woods ran. There was the tree line, which she could see currently, and then a ravine beyond, before the mountain range sprang up. It was all jagged angles and jutted rocks before the constant stance of the trees. “Don’t sneak out tonight, Samantha,” her sister Isabel had warned some few months past, and the warning had taken root in her mind and it hadn’t prevented Samantha from acting exactly as she always acted, but it stood firm. Perhaps her sister hadn’t protested enough.

Her parents had all but given up on trying to parent their errant daughter. She was always going around about the neighborhood meeting up with boys and discerning opportunities among the most wretched of situations. Pledging loyalty to one friend and hanging around their rival. Instigating fights among boys who fought for her affection. Mocking authority figures and castigating anyone who challenged her. She had become too difficult to handle. They needed to let go.

And here she stood on a rock. Solid. Firm. She turned around once, if only for a second, to look down upon the neighborhood she knew too well. It was a pliable place, porous even. She slipped all around it. She recalled the events that led up to today and found that in her parents’ tone of reprimand she saw no future and steeled herself only to reject that absolute stance they had taken in telling her that she would be “disinherited.” What else could they have done? They had reached the end of their tether. So she stood on the ledge, banking on the pull of the wind.

The first line of sight past the tree ridge was easy enough to fathom. Ninety feet of visibility in every direction. She did not pause for the small rocks and branches over which she strode. What did she care about the ivy and the rue? The moss was green. She heard the crunching of the sticks underneath her boots. She heard bugs chirping wildly and she imagined she must be stepping on some, but she didn’t stop to look. She knew she was getting somewhere. She was utterly surrounded by leaves of this and that sort, of every expected coloring.

The woods were densely forested, every cubic foot containing life. Absent from the forest was a path upon which to tread. If there were deer, they did not leave a trace. That’s not to say she could not walk in any direction she pleased, it’s just that nothing had been tread for her. She knew how to use her body to her own advantage. She knew what would start a fire. It was all silly wasn’t it? She would spend some time in the forest and, of course, she would return to her life. But not before she had given her parents one last scare.

And the afternoon sun faded to dusk with Samantha still engaged in the woods. She came upon the ravine that she had seen on the maps of the woods. It was a quaint enough sight. Water falling over stone and grounding the things around it, like parents. Samantha scoffed at the idea. What made it so vital to this environment? It was just the silliest stream. Samantha felt empowered to walk all over and around this ravine. To glimpse it from this way and that. But eventually Samantha got tired of the water and kept on walking.

And night fell, with Samantha still in the woods. She remembered her friend Kristy who yelled at her the day before that Samantha had gone behind her back and thrown her under the bus. She had learned that Kristy still kept up correspondences with Tony, a handsome boy at the school, so she told Tony’s girlfriend Megan about their dalliances behind the gym on Thursdays. This did not go over well with Kristy, but Samantha was true to herself all the while.

And then there was the previous summer, Samantha remembered it as she trudged through a particularly open expanse of the forest that had lots of tall trees. She had ventured into a wilderness camp and while there she disabused a fellow camper of her notion that her boyfriend was faithful to her, by deliberately getting caught behind the barn with him. The girl, Stacy, was aghast, but who did she have to blame? Samantha looked up to see a barn owl cry down to her, “Hoo.”

She found herself in a thorny patch. And she reflected on the fact that she couldn’t remember the last time she had hooked up with a guy in which retribution was not involved. Her sexuality was always a weapon. Was it fifth grade? She couldn’t remember at this point any other way. She was so purposeful about it. There was no pondering motives anymore. She just acted. Suddenly, Samantha turned around. She had heard something that did not sit well with her. Was it a growl? She could not see very far into the distance anymore now that the sun had set, but she knew she needed to keep moving, but she had lost her bearings.

It was a lot to try to keep inside one’s head: one’s bearings. If she hugged this rocky bank would that chart her back towards her neighborhood? Or would that take her deeper and deeper into this forest? She could feel the panic start to rise. She had left her phone at home. Would she ever find her way back? She turned around and passed a mossy rock and thought of her sweet younger sister Isabel, how she had warned her so! Did she tell her everything she needed to tell her? Or was there some thought still lurking in her mind? And now she realized she had well and truly lost her way.

Oh, who was she to know how best to navigate these kinds of situations. It was too much to be asked to know how to predict how these things might turn out. She was not to blame for what she had done. She knew this on some level that those men she had hooked up with were complicit. They were to blame as much, if not more, than her. She was only the object of desire. Still she was involved. And now she knew, walking this forest at night, that she had gotten herself into a tizzy.

She thought of the ravine, of the comfort it might bring. If she could find the stream there she may be able to orient herself back towards the town. That silly ravine! How she had scoffed at it earlier and now it seemed like it might be her only hope! Would it be too dark to even see? She stepped towards a small hill and heard a definite growl coming from behind a rock. She turned and ran. She ran away from what was behind that rock. She ran forward and did not look back. Behind her was danger and destruction. She must keep looking forward. She must be better. She must put all that behind her, she must move forward!

She ran and ran and ran and in the morning wan sunlight streamed on the forest at dawn. There was green moss on a rock. There was a parliament of owls. There were bear tracks. In the course of the night, there was a struggle. Cries, unheard by the town; painful cries. Now in the morning sun, all still. There were leaves distributed in sundry ways. There were insects and flowers all around.