Sylvan

Introduction and Acknowledgement

The word ‘“sylvan” refers to all things associated with woodlands and forests including the forests themselves. Often this is used to describe the beauty of forests and to evoke a sense of peace as a quality of pastoral and woodland images.

For a few years, I have been assembling the ingredients of a story and in recent times I have had the great fortune to have become acquainted with people, writing, and along with experiencing the wilderness and forest areas of Australia and in particular Western Australia, I am now more confident in creating this story.

Story creation can be simple and probably that is the best kind. The raw spontaneous creation that can be told, written, or seen. What appears simple on the surface is actually complex like the tip of an iceberg, what is visible is only a very small portion of the larger submerged body of ice below the water. So it is with story creation, what appears as a “rolling off the tongue” spontaneity, is actually the product of imagination that has been fuelled by experience and time. I am now able to bring together the main ingredients of my story and hopefully, I will be able to tell it in a way that will engage you and leave you transformed (even if only a little bit).

I want to acknowledge Dr. Eduardo Kohn, Associate Professor of Anthropology at McGill University. A man I do not personally know and have never met or spoken to. I am now in the second reading of his book HOW FORESTS THINK Toward an anthropology beyond the human. I came upon Eduardo’s work accidentally while researching material to assist with narrative content for my photography. How could I not be drawn in by the title? My first reading of Eduardo’s book unlocked a whole new way for me to view and relate my presence in the world and how it is inextricably connected with everyone and everything.

HOW FORESTS THINK is controversial as it describes the ability of non-humans and inanimate objects to participate in a community of thought. If you are interested, HOW FORESTS THINK is available as an audiobook as well as in hard copy. There are also various YouTube videos of lectures given by Eduardo at various Universities. Here is a link to a YouTube video that will introduce both Eduardo and his HOW FORESTS THINK, https://youtu.be/mSdrdY6vmDo

What follows is a representation of an idea. It is not a finished product but, in itself, it is story-like… more like a recipe that has not yet been tried.

Sylvan

Walking a well-trod path, the dense forest on either side of me, I have tunnel vision. I am on this journey, forever vigilant, scanning the water-eroded gravel edges of the track for an orchid or one of the wildflowers that flourish for a brief time during this season. Recollecting this journey and biased by my exposure to Dr. Eduardo Kohn’s HOW FORESTS THINK, I do my best to search memories for feelings and thoughts experienced on that trip. Over time those intimate memories fade, anything I say now is mostly fantasy, I can’t pretend to describe anything other than the most vivid motes of memory dust about that time.

What can I tell you…

I can tell you about the pull… The enticement to leave the track and penetrate the dense forest. I look into the forest and the forest looks back at me. I am invited to walk in the spaces between trees, tread the untrodden leaf litter, and be caressed by leafy bush and grass. There are small windows between branch and leaf letting in the light of a blue cloud-flecked sky… tiny patches… nature’s patchwork quilt.

At first glance, I see nothing but plant life so dense it hides the earth in which it is rooted. The sky backlights the canopy of tree branches. Looking more closely there is a life of another kind. A skink poised in stillness on an exposed rock warmed by a stray ray of sunlight is startled by a shift in the air and the crack of a twig. It is gone, just a fleeting ghost of a skink.

Ants are everywhere, marching in their own organised and seemingly planned direction. Unseen cicadas chirp their mate-seeking song. The forest is very much alive… it is not just the forest that looks back at me but all of its creatures also look, listen and taste the air with tongues and noses. They hear the voices of each other, the voices of air moving and vibrating the leaves alive and desiccated, suspended by silken threads of the spiders who wait for entrapped prey. The forest is alive with voice and song. Birdsong is everywhere… I have to search for them, they remain unseen until they take flight when for a moment, they become seen as well as heard.

Somewhere the rhythm section of nature’s orchestra provides the beat of tympanic percussion and the rushing melody of water from a nearby stream.

On that still spring day the voices of the forest were neither loud nor subtle… more like an atmospheric vibrance, a warm bath of sound in which I am immersed.

Reflecting on this I recognise my conscious separateness from the forest and all of the living things I was engaged with on that day. I see this as a contradiction… surely my presence makes me as much part of the forest as everything else. It is only my consciousness that marginalises me, my ability to be aware of myself as distinct from everything around me. How can I know that the forest is also self-aware?

Awareness, as a skink, I am aware of the warmth and the absence of warmth, of movement, of the scent on my tongue of prey and danger. A change in the pressure of the air, a vibration in the rock… I am quick to move… I am the colour of grass and stone. I am absent from your sight.

Awareness as a cicada. I am aware of my brothers’ songs. I have slept for so long in the damp earth sucking the sap of the tree that shields me from your sight… I am aware of you when you close the distance between us… I will stop my song in hope that you will not see me.

Awareness as a bird. I am watchful… scanning as you do for your floral prize, I scan for a morsel of food… you cannot reach me up here… You are flightless… you are not my enemy. I seek prey in other places… looking down I see all and hear my brothers and sisters sing their songs.

Awareness as an ant. The earth beneath me is continuously moving… I am moving with it… I feel the pitch more than hear it, a different tonal scale… a staccato, a different cadence, “go this way, my queen awaits…”

When I come back here I will know my place… I will accept and listen. I will forego separation for a time and what I will take away with me will be far richer than what I brought with me.

I am a visitor here… I have chosen a different home full of artifice and pretense or is it a much deeper thing? I leave nearby parcels of your wildness where I build my home to assuage the guilt of my trespass.