In the Woods

Abstract

In the Woods Diane Glancy (bio) Once, when he was a boy, he was playing by the edge of the woods and wandered too far and could not find his way out. He knew not to call out, in case an enemy tribe was hunting somewhere. He listened to his fear. He knew bobcats waited in the trees. He felt his heart pound. He could hear it in his ears. He could see the pulse beating in his eyes. He knew he trembled. He looked to the trees above him. They gave him their hand. For the first time, he felt himself one with the woods. It breathed as he breathed. It was the first time he remembered being outside himself. It was the first time he felt the fear leave him. He felt it step outside himself and walk away. T’du-se remembered not being himself, but part of something larger, subsumed by the woods. Taken into his surroundings. There was no boundary between it and him. The woods accepted him and he was one with it. He stood silently remembering that holy time. He had felt as if someone had their hand on his shoulder. It was an unseen spirit. Maybe there was more than one. Maybe there was a tribe of spirits. Maybe it was the spirit of the woods. He remembered the green and the light and shadow. He was part of something absolutely huge. Surely his father knew the feeling. Surely the other men knew. After a while, T’du-se heard his father’s whistle. It sounded at first like a bird, but it was his father. He followed the sound and came out of the woods where he father waited. His father looked at him. “I heard it,” T’du-se said, but his father knew by the look on his face. Whenever he crossed through the woods, there were moments he was unsure of where he was, but he trusted the woods to draw him through. [End Page 46] He walked a path that no one could see but someone who had been one with the woods. Who had been taken into it and had become part of it and not himself. It was what it was to feel holy. To know the Maker. To be one with the shadows of the woods. To feel them across his face and bare chest. To be one with the shadow world. To know it was a real place where he was, and he would spend his inner life walking in the margin between the two worlds he knew. [End Page 47] Diane Glancy Diane Glancy is professor emeritus at Macalester College. She is still working on the story of the 1838–39 Cherokee removal to Indian Territory. In 1996, she published Pushing the Bear. In 2009, she published Pushing the Bear, after the Trail of Tears. Now she is working on The Unsettling, which is a manuscript of life for the Cherokees around 1820, before the Trail of Tears. She is also the author of three other novels, two collections of poetry, a book of essays and a story collection. She considers herself an undocumented Cherokee. Copyright © 2009 Berea College