Patrica,
When in search of winter nocturnes, I often find myself accompanied by thoughts that have been placed in my head and remain in my heart.
Fleeting light and mysterious shadows and the uncomfortable unknown are made safe with the voices and images of my past.
Peter
That, Peter, is why I hate having to have anything at all to do with forests!
Yes, on a
practical human level they may be generally safe (in western Europe) from death by tooth and claw unless you wander through ferns, eating wild mushrooms and stand on snakes, but there is a spooking of the mind present nonetheless - for me.
Blair Witch Project illustrated it perfectly or, maybe, created a recognizable form of what I had formerly known only as a shapeless sense of menace about the disorientation those places engender.
It's not reserved for humans. When we came out here to live (Spain) we eventually brought our Alsabrador with us - mainly Alsation - and she had the biggest teeth I ever saw on a dog. A hundred yards behind our home there is a hill covered in pine forest, with a road winding up to the crest, on the sides of which road were markings where houses were allowed to be built. Most, these almost forty years later, are still not built. Anyway, a great place for a walk with the reward of a magnficent view overlooking the Bay of Pollensa, right across to the next bay, the Alcudia one. But, that dog was straining against the lead every step of the way. She did not want to be there. I was to discover later that one of my neighbours who also had a dog, experienced the very same reactions with his. He told me that he'd once wandered off the road into the trees and came across a dead dog hanging from a branch. Who could do this sort of thing?
But dogs do more than sense by ear and nose. The predecessor to the above dog was a lot smaller - pretty much like a fox, she was; I would sometimes be in the front room playing my records whilst the family were in the next room watching tv or whatever, the dog with them. I would hear her bark, and then I'd look out the window to the road and see a chap and his dog come strolling down, about forty yards away. Now how, with music and tv on, could that dog know that this other animal was on its way? No chance of scent shooting ahead of the dog and into the house, and I can't imagine it could hear above the ambient sounds already in the house. Yes, the dog was a regular on the road, but the timing was not regular.
It's things like this that convince me of a hereafter, of the existence of so much of which we know zero.
But back to the forests: as you admit to the emotions they inspire, I'm surprised you actually seek them out. I thought you loved the woods... however, this new revelation puts another layer of meaning onto your paintings, widening the conversation one might hold with them.
