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The woods is a dark and eerie place to be at the best of times, as a city dweller I feel like an unwelcome stranger on this untainted and sacred ground, I feel like a disease that this ancient body aims to flush out, the paranoia kicks in and the trees start to form faces around me, the faces begin to stare, some instinctive part of me is telling myself that they don’t want me here Murderer! Burner! They screech, the horrible sound of wood grinding against wood. Down turns to up in the shape of a diamond, I turn to run and trip over a gnarled root, I realize it was no accident and sprint away only to be blocked off by the trees. They’re moving now. Purposefully blocking my way. I try to outrun them but I’m blocked again they’ve formed a circle and they’re moving towards me. Slowly. Slowly. I can’t escape. Slowly. Slowly. They keep coming, I scramble up a trunk frantically aiming to pry myself free but I’m flung off, I have no choice but to brace myself to be crushed into oblivion, I curl myself up and cover my eyes, nothing happens. I open them again, slowly. Slowly. The trees have organized themselves into a seemingly endless pathway, there is nothing for me to do but follow. I tell myself that they are going to let me go but I know it’s not going to happen, they want me gone; they’re going to kill me. I follow the path for what seems like weeks but it could be minutes, my perception of time has become mushed up and fuzzy I can’t seem to decide whether things happened seconds or minutes ago, I sometimes see things in between the trees but I know they can’t hurt me. They are neither evil or Loving, they are neither happy nor sad I don’t even know if they’re alive or dead, they just are. The frames of my reckoning slip and I’m simultaneously walking down this path as well as facing the tree. Has my consciousness been split in half ? No that’s impossible. Or is it? I can’t seem to remember any more reality has become one big grey area. All I know is there’s this big tree and somehow it’s connected to all the others like one big consciousness with thousands of different perspectives. I’m completely taken by the urge to embrace this tree-mother, the instant I make contact I’m consumed and in that long drawn out second I see and feel everything that the forest does from all of its thousands of perspectives all at once, from the pain as my many limbs are sawn off for firewood to the beautiful tickle of the breeze as it ripples my leaves. Then complete darkness. I wake up on the floor of the forest just me again, the same in every way but one I’m no longer the stranger in a foreign land, I’m a guest.