Walls in the Woods

Behind my house, down the hill, across the highway, everywhere there are woods. And if you walk far enough into the woods, you run into walls. None of them are intact, all have crumbled. You could climb over any, or all of them. They are made of rocks so big and mismatched that there's no way to tell on the face of it if they are from 60 years ago or 6,000. Someone was here before us. They modified the landscape, inscribed it with anonymous monuments, then faded into it.

As early spring comes and the brook rises, moss emerges on the rocks in increasingly brilliant and varied colors. It looks insanely verdant, screamingly alive. But it's motionless and quiet. It's not that a place like this induces a state of contemplation in you so much as that entering a place like this, you catch it already in a state of contemplation. The landscape broods, not waiting for you. What's restful about it is that it comes to life so gently, still looking tangled, wrecked.

For months I've fantasized about a horror movie with a couple of rules reversed. Instead of emerging in darkness and silence, the horror manifests itself amid bright daylight, settled areas, crowds and noise. The protagonists are forced to flee to remote, dark areas: places with no lights at night. When they stumble in the dark they need to feel their way. But they're safe there.

The title of an Earth album came into my head as I walked: Hibernaculum. I didn't remember what it meant. It turns out it's someplace to hide. For animals, a hibernaculum is where you burrow in for the winter, to hibernate.

In botany, it's a protective pod the plant makes that can sink to the bottom of the water during the winter, preserving the plant til the spring. Then the hibernaculum enlarges, develops airspaces, and rises to the surface to return to life.

Literally it means little winter.

We see ourselves as fleeing to music or the outdoors as an escape, where nature or sound can weave us a cocoon. But doing this taps an inherent dimension of our physical existence, like sleep.

We forget our capacity to crumble and become green.

Earth, "Ouroborous is Broken" from Hibernaculum, 2007 CD on Southern Lord.