"Is that a body part?" - At night alone in the woods
Who walks voluntarily into the forest at night? I think as I sit between the trees and watch as it gets dark. It's the middle of the week and I decided, instead of lying comfortably in my bed, to spend the night in the forest. That makes me probably the most behavioral person from here to the next psychiatric clinic. But instead of myself, I'm afraid of everything that might lurk in the dark: wolves, criminals, body parts. Being in the woods at night is the scary idea for me.
I wonder if that's because my grandma told me Grimm's fairy tale. The evil lurks in the forest: the wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood", the witch in "Hansel and Gretel", the robbers of the "Bremen Town Musicians". But these fairy tales are old. Had I lived several hundred years ago, I would probably have been denounced as a witch myself. What am I actually thinking about? Burglaries are more lucrative than raids in the forest. But wolves, they really do exist here in Saxony.
"I think of Keiler with her tusks that could slit my stomach"
"Yes," says Christian Klepper. He is a forest educator and, so to speak, my supervisor. Because who deals with his fears, that better not do it alone. Klepper brings under the name? Waldzauber-Saxony? People are closer to the forest. "A wolf pack," he says, "needs at least 250 to 300 square kilometers as a hunting ground." The forest through which we walked is so much too small. There are only wild boars. I think of Keiler with her tusks that could slit my stomach, but Klepper waves away. ?Very unlikely. Wild boars are hunted, they stay away from humans. The most dangerous animals here are probably ticks that transmit Lyme disease and meningitis.
While I'm afraid of the forest, I learn from Christian that the forest is not only a recreation area for stressed urbanites, but also a sanctuary for the animals that live in it. Just sleeping in the woods? That is not allowed. At night, when most animals are active, people should stay outside. In Lower Saxony, for example, you have to leave the forest around an hour after sunset, for example, and you are only allowed to go in just under an hour before sunrise. Depending on the state, other rules apply. In Saxony, where I am lucky, I am allowed to spend the day and night in the forest. However, it is not allowed to build a tent, because rain water should reach the ground unhindered. Also fire-making is forbidden of course. In short: A night in the woods means at most to take a sleeping bag and a rain jacket as a base.
Two hours ago, Christian walked deeper and deeper into the forest with me, from the gravel path to a small well-trodden path, through an icy cold liquid, up a slope to a kind of plateau. It is not visible from below, but offers a good view of the tree landscape from above. If I were a robber, this would be the perfect lookout.
TEST OBJECT: A big city kid who does not mince words.
TEST ENVIRONMENT: A dark forest in Saxony. Has it just cracked?
MISSION: Overcome a night and overcome your own fears.
The test of courage protocol allows me to stay alone all alone in the forest for an hour, and then decide whether to really sleep in the trees. It's 5:53 pm. At 18:13 is sunset. Christian promises to come back at 18:53.
"No bones, no teeth, no human remains"
Now I am alone and trembling. It's not that cold at all. A few birds chirping, the air smells damp. Slowly the world loses its color, first the blue of the sky disappears, then the few spots of green on the trees. Every minute it gets quieter. My heartbeat is the loudest sound. Slowly, the individual tree trunks merge into a large shadow. Is there something moving? Who is hiding in the dark? Only you, I tell myself. You and your imagination. I force myself to stand up and run my little kingdom. Look under each stone, look at each leaf, give names to the trees as if they were friends: Hugo, Daniel and Mathilde. It is a meditative exercise of repression. As long as I concentrate on the close environment, I do not have to stare into the darkness in the distance. Under my feet old leaves crumble to dust. No bones, no teeth, no human remains. Anything that looks suspicious, I pick up. I collect branches that I could trip over in a small pile, as if I could tame the unpredictable, the unpredictable, the uncanny. I want to make this plateau my home, where I know my way around, minimize the unknown, erase it as a scary component. Only this does not work. At 18:34, I give up wanting to have everything under control. Not only is it almost completely dark, it is also completely silent. There is no wind, the leaves do not rustle.I hear my blood rushing in my ears and guess the gurgling of the river through which we have been wading. I sit down, lean my back against a trunk, want to merge with the environment, be invisible, take root, become part of the forest. At the same time, I just want to run, drop everything, through the river and out of the forest, back to the parking lot, back to the city. There is a tingling in my limbs, points of light dancing in front of my eyes. It's in my ears. Shock or flight?
Or climb into a tree?
After all, we are descended from the monkey. But would I really find security up there? This has to do for the monkeys not only with the height, but especially with their horde waiting there for them. My horde is sitting nicely together at dinner. My body chooses immobility. I feel as if I am not involved in this decision, as if I only take note of it. My subconscious mind is over my senses. ? Huhu! Huhu !? A tawny owl? Christian? Or mere imagination? The fear obscures my brain. How was that at war? My grandfather was a refugee and ran from Italy to Germany. Alone for weeks, in barns, in freight trains, in the woods. He was so close to the fear of death that all other threats would shrink to nothing, I suppose. On the other hand, I have so few problems that I go alone into the forest to prepare some.
"The city, I think, is much more dangerous than the forest."
As I ponder how likely it is for criminals to wade through a river and climb a hill to steal the sleeping bag, I see a flashlight wandering through the darkness. Robber? No, Christian. "Many people are afraid in the forest," he says, "only those who grew up with him, who could get used to him, have lost them." He keeps talking, but as he speaks, I get tired. With Christian's presence, all my tension stops, and he too is a stranger. I met him two hours ago, which also means we exchanged our names. Why can not we just assume that all other people we do not know are nice and good-natured? Well, I do not think most people are bad guys, but which guy walks in the woods just before sunset? Probably just a criminal. Or someone who had late duty. Someone with jetlag. Or someone who challenges his fear.
At 1:18, I wake up. I sit up, look around. Between the treetops I see the moon. It is quiet, even in my head. The fear has disappeared. Just because. I wonder, but then I think that their existence was as illogical and irrational as their disappearance.
When I arrive at home the next morning, I stand in front of our cellar door? broken up. The robbers were here, and they had plenty of time. The city, I think, is much more dangerous than the forest. Only I have gotten used to it for a long time.
