Hello From The Dark Woods

I know myself well enough to realize that I get this way sometimes, and I'll eventually find my way out, but I have been floundering around in the dark woods for several days now, and I haven't felt like writing about it. It starts with the backdrop of the news, the economy, the environment...a steady barrage of overwhelming problems that leave one feeling both helpless and deflated.

For example, the other night I read an article in the New York Review called "Can Our Species Escape Destruction?" and believe me, the answer is not necessarily yes. It was not a good choice for a bedtime story. When I finally fell asleep, my dreams were nothing but anxiety distilled, and I was either lost or drowning.

Naturally I am caught up daily in questions about existential meaning and personal accomplishment, but only in a passive, useless manner. I think I am becoming stupid. I can't focus on my reading lately. I can't sustain ideas for writing. My head is fuzzy. I am just thrashing about in the woods, wasting time, uselessly depressed.

On Sunday evening I rode my bicycle up the canyon towards Margaret's house just to get some exercise and say hello. The heat had finally subsided and now the wind was howling instead. At one point I was startled by the sound of a wild pig, and a rather large one at that, foraging around by the creek; he ran off when he saw me. The trees cast ominous shadows, and I felt as though I were a child entering the realm of a Grimm fairy tale.

In my head I was hearing the lyrics to a haunting song called The Forest (album cover image above) written and sung by a young woman named Holly Mae, whose Berlin-based band is called Holly Mae and the Painted Room, and who happens to be the daughter of one of my best friends, Cornelia. I love a lot of Holly's songs, but that one in particular seems to speak to me lately. It's dark and dangerous in the wild, wild woods...

So I made it through the shadows to the crest of a hill still-sunlit, shared a nectarine with Margaret, and rolled back home through the glow of dusk. A hawk screeched in the distance. Cows crashed about in the brush. Not exactly a perilous passage.

The next morning I went for a hike with Cornelia up to Gaviota Peak. We talked incessantly, as we always manage to do, and probably loudly, and we briskly strode up to the top, surprising ourselves. It helped a bit. We looked out at hazy sea and mountains, and the gold and green of the sweet familiar hills, and we were very glad to be there.

When I got home, there was a letter from Mr. Harbor in England, whom readers of this blog have met before: here, for example, and here. Gosh, I hadn't realized how often the dapper Mr. Harbor has made an appearance. He shows up here too. And we first met him here.

Anyway, Mr. Harbor is 91 now, and still fond of trains and the sea. He talked in his letter about the Bristol Channel and a village called Pill. He also told me he has traded in his car for the convenience of an electric scooter. Then he asked me what I think of the social and political situation these days.

"It is difficult to maintain a positive view," he confessed, and I certainly understand.

But he also enclosed the photo above. And it made me smile.

Hello out there, from my own dark woods... whose tangled paths may well adjoin with yours.