I’ve always wanted a cottage in the woods ever since I can remember. I grew up in the rain forests of the Philippines and it was paradise to me. The only other dwelling on the 40 hectares of land my family owned was half a mile away where a family who worked for my parents lived. We traveled to the place via motorboat and it took us a day to get there. The meandering river to our place was filled with crocodiles, the trails to, in and around our house were shared by snakes of various kinds. I can distinctly remember a huge snake curled up on the path I was on. I stopped, said hello, asked permission to pass, told it to stay put and I tip-toed around it to pass. The snake never budged! I was smiling as I tip-toed around it!
There was a brook nearby, with a canopy of trees on each side surrounding the cool waters below. My siblings and I arranged some dead logs around a deeper section of the brook (stream?) and designated the area as our bathing place. I loved wading in the shallow waters of that stream where I used my skirt to scoop up fresh shrimps and such. I never kept them. I let them go as soon as I said hello.
My other favorite area in that rain forest was an elevated section of the land. You could say it’s a little hill maybe. I would run up to the top and talk to the birds. I never even considered that the birds may not understand what I was saying! To me, they did. And when they flew down and perched on my outstretched arms, that was confirmation enough for me that they understood. There was a tree up that little hill. I climbed that tree every day. I’d take my naps there. There was never any worry of falling off. I felt as if the tree cradled me in its branches and trusted implicitly that I was safe. I always said hello to the tree when I got up there and said goodbye when I left. To this day, I still talk to the trees when I go for walks in the woods. Except this time, I kind of look around if there’s someone nearby so they wouldn’t cart me off to the nearest mental health institution!
As we got older, our family moved into the next town where there were schools for us to attend. When we outgrew the place, we moved to the next town to continue our education. Availability of schools pretty much dictated where we lived. Each time we moved to more populous areas, I mourned my paradise in the woods.
Now I live in urban America. I’ve spent most of my life in this part of the ‘woods.’ I have a different forest to deal with now. And the variety of ‘wildlife’ is of a more complex variety. Plants and animals are much simpler than people!
The circumstances of my life has kept me in this neighborhood of buildings (instead of trees), cars and people instead of river boats, crocodiles, snakes, birds, bats and monkeys, to name a few. Every so often, I think of my ‘dream’ cottage in the woods. How wonderful it would be to live where nature dwells and talks to you. Lately, I’m beginning to think I can still have that cottage in the woods.
It’s time to let that cottage find me.
