Into the Woods I go. For 40 nights.

[BritKLR]

I ran across this new work on Substack and thought some on here may find it inspiring. Another way to look and experience what many of due.
Cheers.

"Into the woods I go. For 40 nights.

Please join me.

40 consecutive nights lying awake amidst the wild, its vast forest surrounding me as trees rise high to the dark sky. Why am I doing this? Because I must. Sometimes in life it becomes crucial to cast aside comfort and routine and so many unthinking mental accretions, cast them aside by doing something radically different. By shocking the mind, body, and soul into a vibrantly new awareness. And, in doing so, hopefully delve down deep into the truly essential. Into myself, yes, but even further, into that timelessly silent place underlying all existence. My own self being but one tiny facet, miniscule yet eternal.

I have no idea what to expect. What I will experience, those long shrouded hours stretching before me night after night, opening into that silent darkness that seems almost infinite, expanding throughout the universe and beyond, into the transcendent. I might sleep a bit, but that isn’t the plan. The night, the vastness, the solitary awareness, these are the aspects I seek, the experiences I crave. I desire alertness, a pure alertness unlike any I have ever before experienced. Myself, the forest, and the vast mysterious cosmos, all conjoining in those hours into something uniquely enraptured. Anything could happen.

About my experiences I will write. To share with you, in part, but mostly to process for myself, because that is what writers do. But to be very clear, I’m not going to write, nor process, beyond a certain point, because that would be counterproductive. A travesty, really. Because essential experiences, alternately enchanted, disturbing, illuminating, and gutting, shouldn’t always be filtered through modern rational thought processes. Sometimes an experience, epiphany, rapture should simply be allowed to exist, unaltered. Settling into the deeper being, beyond evaluation or reason.

But I will write some. About once a week, for the next 40 weeks or so, I will write a post that encapsulates in some hopefully essential way one night of my experience. (If you know of anyone who might be interested in these experiences, please share this free Substack with them.)

The plan. Across from my home is a great old forest, thousands of acres, somehow as yet untouched by developers. I’ve chosen a spot within in, about a half hour walk from my front door. Why this particular spot? I’m not exactly sure. I was ambling through the forest, looking for a location, allowing instinct far more than logic to guide me, a sense of quiet rightness, and when I came upon this spot, I just knew. It doesn’t look much different from the rest of the forest, and yet somehow it is. A small clearing covered with last autumn’s leaves, the remnants of winter’s snow having melted not long before, surrounded on all sides by tall trees. The coniferous spiky green, while the deciduous, bare through the long winter, are now vibrant with buds that will soon unfurl. Just to the west a stream, crystal clear water, rushes along, still merrily swelled with the last of the snow melt from higher climes. Its lovely rushing sounds blend with the greater forest silence. In this place I have anchored a tent.

Every evening for 40 days, about an hour before final darkness pervades, I will walk from home to this small clearing. Besides the tent, I will have only the following: a blanket, a bottle of water, a knife, a little hand-held air horn, and a small shovel. Nothing else. At dawn the next morning I will walk back home. Each day I will traverse slightly different paths in walking to and from, because I don’t want to alter the forest by inadvertently creating a trail. I heartily wish I could stay in that forest for 40 days without returning home. That would be my ideal. But I have obligations of multiple kinds, happily so, as most people do, so created this alternative, which still pleases me greatly.

I am very specifically not taking a flashlight. Because I can’t think of anything worse than casting bright artificial light amidst cool dark wilderness. Because artificial light is a crutch, a way of casting modernity into the wild in order to reassure the self. And because it is amazing how human vision adjusts to a forest night, allowing a person to perceive what otherwise would remain hidden.

And I am very specifically choosing spring rather than summer, which would be more warmly pleasant. I don’t want pleasant. I don’t want seamlessly easy. Spring nights are always cool, and sometimes downright cold. There is something about that—being cold in darkest night amidst a forest—that appeals to me greatly. (I’ve been cold before, so am not romanticizing the experience.) The vital alertness I seek will be far better elicited amidst a chilled awareness than swaddled in cozy warm comfort.

I am excited, and also a bit nervous. I have rough camped many times in wilds of various kinds, but this will be an entirely different experience. A different experience, with a different intent. I can’t wait to get started. Tonight will be the first night. It is already expanding around me. Cool and mysterious."

Sarah Edmonds
Substack

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[dstefan]

Good for Sarah for doing this! It's an interesting project. There’s a lot to be said for deeply learning an area, be it your backyard, a favorite destination with too much to explore for a night or two, etc. Kinda like the Slow Travel movement that calls for visiting places for a week or two rather than a night or two. Some of my wife’s and my best “overlanding” trips have been ones where we make extended 2-5 day stops in on or two areas on a longer route.

As a photographer, it reminds me of subjects I return to over and over to see different aspects in different lights and times.

It also reminds me of a great photography book called Chasing the Light by Minnesota photographer Jim Brandenburg where he challenged himself to take one, and only one, film photograph a day for each of 90 days in the fall near his home in the norther MN woods. The results were pretty remarkable photographically as was the process for him as he describes it.

 

[BritKLR]

Part 2:

This isn’t camping. That is the first thing I realize when reaching my chosen clearing, as the last light glows lavender above the horizon. I hadn’t really thought about it, not specifically, the difference between regular camping and this plan They seem similar at first glance, a tent staked amidst the forest with trees rising all around, as a stream rushes nearby. But everything else is different.

If this were camping, it would go like this. We find a location for the evening, choosing a spot that is fairly flat though slightly sloped (allowing for drainage), amidst the trees (checking first for potential widow makers), not rocky, and preferably having a beautiful view. Once the spot is chosen, we remove any stones and other protruding objects from a rectangle of ground, and set up the tent.

I already did that part days ago, so every evening when I arrive, the location is already prepped, the tent anchored, ready to go.

How camping usually proceeds. After setting up the tent, we build a fire ring using rocks from the surrounding forest, gather fallen dried wood, and set the fire ablazing. We then cook good food, drink good drinks, and spend hours around that fire talking about anything and everything. While enjoying the breeze and rising cool and flicker-lighted surroundings, the sky darkly vast above us. Until finally, happily tired, we put out the fire, crawl into the tent, and fall fast asleep.

That is camping. This is not. Or perhaps a very different kind. No fire, no food, no company. Nothing specific to do, no tasks to accomplish. Simply me, alone, amidst the wild forest, with no objective other than experiencing.

So I do. Experience, that is. I sit on the ground as night rises around me. The warmth of the day recedes into coolness, as silver moonlight cuts through the trees, faintly illuminating. Enough light, just enough, so that the trees still rise individually around the clearing.

It is silent at first. Too silent for a living forest, and too still, no hint of anything beyond the rushing of risen creek water. I have caused this silence with my unexpected presence, a bumbling human walking amidst the woods, for a half hour from front door to tent. A bumbling, lumbering strange beast, trying my best to walk quietly, without disturbing, but the animals hear my movement, scent my strange human scent, so they pause, waiting and listening. Watchful and wary. Sitting there by the tent, I can’t see them, but I can almost sense them. Almost. Perhaps more fanciful perception than true acuity, but I know they live right out there, all around me. I can’t see them, but they see me.

I sit there without making a sound, making no motion. And slowly, slowly, living sounds begin reemerging. It takes longer than I would have thought. How long, I don’t know, having no specific way to mark time. But eventually I hear something scampering along a tree limb nearby, a few minutes later something else rustles through ground detritus. And other sounds as well, farther away. Perhaps creatures moving, perhaps branches creaking in the slight breeze.

On my person I keep the little hand-held air horn along with the knife. I’m not the top of the food chain out here, a truth that recurs to me with every noise I hear.

Sounds punctuate the rushing silence now and again, as scents rise from the area. It was warm during the day, sunlight shining down between deciduous trees still naked of leaves, heating the forest floor, so even now in early evening the air smells of the dried leaves and dried pine needles that carpet the ground. Underlying that is the unmistakable scent of flowing creek water. Its very own thing, fresh and clear and yet somehow also mossy, and fecund like black earth.

I’m trying to describe this forest evening, but explaining each aspect elides the holistic experience. I sit amidst a thriving, teeming, complex forest, sights and scents and sounds of many kinds all around me, myself the very least element among them, four senses fully engaged. Five even, because the air tastes of those dried leaves and needles, of that mossy clear water. As ground moisture evaporates all around me, cooling bare skin.

I sit at first, but the view is limited, laterally into the forest, so I lie down, the whole wide world opening above me. The nearly full moon is bright, but so many stars are still visible in the dark sky. Small stones press here and there into my back, pine needles tangle in my hair, as those branches spread against the glowing sky.

Don’t think, I tell myself. I am a thinker. So many thoughts of endless kinds continually arising, drawing me along unexpected paths of both reason and reverie. But not here, not on this first night. Thirty-nine more nights await me, nights during which thoughts of many and any kinds can flow through me. Tonight I want to simply be. Be present in the moment, in this forest, using those five senses to experience it. It, and nothing else. External.

Easier said than done. The monkey mind isn’t readily quieted, jumping from here to there and over yonder with gleeful enthusiasm. But I try to tame it. Every time a thought arises, quickly leading to another and another, I bring my focus back to this forest. Look and listen, observe every last facet. Observe without thinking particular thoughts about it. Exist here and now, nothing else beyond it.

Minutes pass, adding together into hours that here mean nothing. Here time flows continuously, unsegmented. And slowly my mind quiets, longer stretches without thought intruding, my lying there still and quiet, longer and longer stretches until I feel that I am indeed a small part of the forest, intrinsic to it. Perhaps like a smooth river rock or a fallen pinecone. One tiny aspect of something much greater.

Hours and hours pass, marked only by the arc the moon has traveled. Eventually, sometime in early morning, a lovely weariness enwraps me, so I go into the tent, zipping the fly behind me, pull the blanket over, and fall into a deep sleep, quiet and replete.

 

[BritKLR]

Part 3:

Spending 40 consecutive nights in an old growth forest. That is the plan. Opening myself to whatever happens in those long dark hours as I lie awake, thinking, searching, absorbing, being. Hoping to experience the essential, and perhaps the transcendent. For a fuller explanation of the plan, as well as its logistical details, please see Seeking the Essential- Part 1.

The wind has died down, I realize. During the half hour walk to the little forest clearing, wind rustled through branches and sent last autumn’s downed leaves skittering. Feeling more like fall twilight than fresh spring gloaming. But at some point as I lay there on the ground, the wind drifted away to nothing though I didn’t notice, because I was thinking rather than observing. Clouds pass over the moon, intermittent brightness.

Thinking about the most recent book I’ve read, Persian Fire, by Tom Holland. Fantastic book, despite its already extensively examined topic, the attempted Persian conquest of Greece in the fifth century B.C., including that most famous of battles, at Thermopylae. (Holland’s book Dominion is also an excellent read, exploring a more unique historical perspective.) Clear and concise, yet nuanced and textured, Persian Fire is the best kind of history, factually detailed while also elucidating specific people and peoples within their particular societies.

Upon finishing Persian Fire, I realized. This book encapsulates human history. It encapsulates human nature. If a visitor to this planet wanted to learn about humanity, this book would be an excellent primer. Not in the specific details, perhaps, but both in the sweep of events and in societal behaviors. This same general set of motivations and actions has recurred again and again throughout history on at least five continents.

And yet the attempted Persian conquest of Greece was also a pivotal and nearly unique moment in history, a tipping point at which the entire future of Europe (before it was called Europe) hung in the balance. Had the Persian Empire conquered Greece, it would not have stopped there. It surely would have continued west/northwest, farther into the continent, as far as possible until stopped, or not stopped, along the way. Europe’s ensuing history would have been radically different. Europe today would be unrecognizable, as would a greater part of this world, including North and South America.

And the odd thing is, the Persian Empire really should have prevailed. It should have conquered Greece. The reasons for its failure are clearly identifiable, and yet they mostly consist of elements that simply should not have happened. The emperor and his commanders surely knew better, and yet somehow failed at crucial moments in crucial decisions. Little Greece with its factious and fractious peoples managed to repel the invaders.

A nearly unique moment, joined by a few others, also determining the course of European history. Had the Moors (the Umayyad Caliphate) not been defeated at Tours in A.D. 732, and/or had the Mongols continued their invasion of Europe in the 13th century A.D. rather than retreating (for as yet unconfirmed reasons), Europe would be an entirely different place, from those eras forward, to this very day. Much of the world would be drastically different.

These are three examples of crucial tipping points. Others exist. They are well-examined and well-documented by some excellent historians. Even so, it is interesting and even vital to think about such things on a regular basis, to understand the past, its countless elements leading now to A.D. 2024. And to recognize how, for instance, a single battle fought thousands of years ago contributes to this moment. Not one of us exists as an isolated entity. We are all integral elements in a continuum that has existed for at least 100,000 years of human history, and continues forward into the future.

Another aspect. Had the Persian Empire marched through Europe, Christendom likely never would have existed. And had the Moors or Mongols conquered Europe, existing Christendom certainly would have been gravely damaged and probably destroyed. I don’t, of course, mean Christendom as religion alone, but as the entire political, social, economic, and religious fabric of European and Eastern Christian society. (Whether Christendom is considered a good or a bad thing depends on the particular person. I myself tend to agree with the thesis of Holland’s Dominion.)

So as I lie here in this dark forest, the air now quiet though redolent of pine needles, dark earth, and fresh, flowing water, I think about the vastness of history, a nearly infinite number of events involving billions of people. And I think about how everything that happened before me somehow led to my existence, to my lying here at this moment. If some unknown person in the past had turned left instead of right, made this decision rather than that, I wouldn’t be lying here now. I might very well not exist. The same is true for every single person alive today on this planet. We are all the result of everything and everyone who came before us

 

[gator70]

I have a 40 night plan. Yet it is on four wheels and exploring nature while staying at one location only 4-5 days and then and moving to the next. All boondocking. (the forest, the mountains, the ocean). I'm interested if others have a similar plan?

 

[RealTruck]

This is exciting! Very insightful read. I imagine that having that space in the woods to contemplate without interference is giving you exactly what you hoped it would. Thank you for bringing us with you!