a seventh story...'forest'

Sometimes, on the days I tried to write, I found nothing came to me.  Nothing stirred inside me.  So I would put down my pen, sit at my writing desk and look through the dormer windows to the pine trees and hills beyond.  There was something very solemn about the hills, their broad shoulders buttressing slate grey skies, ageless and old, but that was where I looked all the same.  I was drawn to them.

On the mornings when the cloud was low and the hills disappeared, I preferred to lace up my walking boots, leave the house and venture into the forest.  I liked the smell of damp in the air and the soft tread under my feet, the sound of the summer rain in the canopy, and the beckoning silence as I’d go deeper in.  Every now and then I would see a woodpigeon scurrying through the brush or hear a flock of birds rise from the somewhere nearby, but otherwise, you had to be still for a while to become aware of things around you.  The way I think about it now, the time spent alone in the forest made all the difference.  Things began to crystallise in my mind, and the story and the characters grew from this.

When I had a number of chapters written, I would sit in the forest for hours on end and read them back.  I would take a tin full of pencils, an eraser and a flask of black coffee, wedge myself in among the tangled roots of a Giant Redwood and dig my heels into the moss and earth.

It was on one quiet afternoon I heard the gunshots.  I was startled and got up from where I was reading, looking anxiously around me. There was another volley and then silence rang out.  I walked around the base of the tree I had been sitting at, but I couldn’t tell if there was anyone nearby.  I felt cold inside and noticed I was sweating under my fleece.  I waited, all ears, expecting to hear people coming through the undergrowth or for an engine to start up in the distance, but there was nothing, and in the end I gathered up my things and headed quickly back to the house.

After breakfast the next day I came across the tire tracks in the drive, and it got me wondering.  I called my sister and we both agreed it must be hunters, hunting illegally out of season.  But later I found the tire tracks went all the way to the lake, and then in the evening, as dusk was falling, there were headlights outside the window and the sound of pick-up.  Soon afterwards I found a bloodied lumberjack shirt and pair of shoes not far from the path into the forest.  It was time to close things out and move on.