I was first introduced to the Watchung Reservation when I was fifteen years old by my new high school friend. She took me there as a place to escape from the rejection from the rest of our peers. Somehow these woods came to serve as a playground for the alternative lifestyle we decided to lead away from the normalcy of the forced suburban American dream. It was where she and I could escape the demeaning eyes of the surrounding hubbub, the cackled whispers of pimpled teenagers, the suppressing expectations of others to be a cookie cut out Barbie doll wonder.
At this point while I growing up I needed this kind of place like a toddler needed its parents. Being encapsulated into a suburban whisper squelched my free spirit. I grew up in a place of picket fence perfection; houses lined up in a row with exact precision of space, trees ripped from the ground to build build build, animals forced to flee so far away that they never returned. In my school Caucasian was the majority with a speckle of color or difference found in the crevices. The “different” kids were tormented and pushed from the school because of their dandelion ways. We were outside of their fences and growing around it like ragweed.
I ran to the enigma of the Watchung Reservation as often as I could. It served most of the purposes I needed. The beginning years of our relationship were that of a child’s awe and discovery. Ali and I would bring our mediums for expression in our quilted corduroy backpacks and recreate our surroundings. We would fumble with a blanket and hide in a quiet region of land away from the possibility of people. This allowed our creativity to be wild, free from the world of judgment. We would observe the cadence of the leaves change with each season and gather inspiration from them. We would become the clouds in the sky and listen to the meditative rustling as the wind passed through the trees.
Being home made me feel like I was locked in a Mason jar and stored in a cellar. There was always constant noise of some kind hissing in the background like static; the buzz of a lawnmower, screaming children playing outside, a party across the street, an unruly barking dog. This was maddening next to the proverbial peace of the Reservation’s open space. There was constant intrusion from windows on top of windows-neighborhood nosiness lurking in the corner. I felt eyes glaring and faked flaked smiles chipping off the white painted fences. Whenever I went for a bike ride I was choked from pollution pushed down my throat. I called for my mother in choked sighs.
My relationship became deeper with the woods as I got older. She was always reliable to my thirsty spirit. I could use her and she wouldn’t care. I would stampede through her dirt, lie on her grass, cry in her soil, hug her bark and she would silently comfort me. My family would repeat in their worrisome tones, “You should never go to the reservation alone. There are a lot of crazies out there. Always bring another person with you.” Yet, I felt safer in the woods then anywhere else. I did not fear her; I trusted her. People hurt me more then she did and while I was there her haven would protect me.
As I got older I became more aware of the noise and pollution like a poison that radiated my skull. It gave me pain behind my eyes or made me feel like a disparate child. I felt separate from this world, like an ancient mythological theme in a textbook. Everyday in class we would read about it and shut the book on my life. I wanted to crawl out and relive my buried world. I felt out of place in this metropolitan haven of noise and crowds, pollution and television. I just wanted to run around in the woods like a warrior and live in a modest hut. I wanted a tribal life of relying on the biorhythms of the Earth. I broke and broke and cracked every time I saw pollution and waste and marked trees. I was not of this time or this world.
Her fortress was my escape to solitude. Life outside of the woods was hellish and when I entered her walls it was my time to be of her once again. I did not want to be a part of hustle-bustle, noise and buy. I was earth, air, fire, water. I was not in the chains of society’s labels, driven by the mass to separate and judge. I was carbon. I wanted a freedom to be whatever I wanted, see whatever I wanted, love and live however I wanted. So I laid myself down on the carpet of her leaves and blended into my surroundings; to give to the Earth, to be of the Earth. I was the Earth.
As I got older I began to just go to the woods and drive through the wild curving streets. I would open up my window, turn my music off, stop in the middle of the woods and shut off my headlights. I would just sit in the absolution of darkness and listen to the sounds of emptiness. I would hear my breath wheezing back at me, feel the air touch my body like a lover, and smell the season like a perfume. I would feel my heartbeat in fear of another car crashing at a racing halt into the back of my car. At those moments I wanted to be one with the innocence of the night. I wanted the Earth to take my body and transform it into a floating particle. One night in mid-November I got out of my car in a wind storm. The evening was ominous and the trees were full of wisdom as the blustery winds murmured through them. There were rain speckles hiding my own tears. I was full of woe and needed to become one with the energy of the storm and let it singe my pain away into the freezing air. I roamed in absent-minded sobs around the lake while a full moon guided me deeper into the woods. I treaded and she comforted me like no human could.
The woods have been a shell that has grown around me and I live in her like a hermit crab. If I chose to leave to another home, I will, but this shell has wrapped around my body so tightly that I feel one with it. I left for a little while and I felt like I forgot who I was. I am the Earth, the Earth is me.
Nuisance Tripping
9 months ago
