Skóggángr

Maybe you know this feeling: The woods call you, call you out into their solemn embrace. They call you in your everyday business, in work and leisure, and some of you listen. But the call grows more intense. You adapt to the woods, that is what you do and have to do, if you want to move swiftly and silently in their realm, and the trees grow into your heart and soul. You watch the animals and listen to the murmur of the creeks, and they tell you tales alien to mankind´s endeavours so far removed from the actual world. The wind in the treetops cradles you in its eternal lullaby, and something happens to you.

In ancient times in the North, people found guilty of severe crimes were banned from the community of man. In times when life was at bay at a blink of an eye, this was absolutely necessary to ensure a working community. They were deemed inhumane, called "vargr" (a grim connotation of "ulv", meaning wolf) or skóggángr (woodsroamer). Science is still going on about the term skóggángr, but it seems to be referring to someone deliberately leaving the community of men.

In our times something has happened. The tides have turned. While in former times survival meant to fight nature for survival, now we are faced with an altogether different matter. We as human beings have deprived the world of all magic, have exploited nature to an extent that the desolation threatens our own life. The seas are littered with toxic and nuclear waste, and it might be argued that the recent shift of the poles has something to do with the erection (pun intended) of super-high skyscrapers on critical balance points. No wolves roam the woods, and if a bear chances to come by, it is called a psychotic problem-bear and shot to mincemeat. We even try to kill nature in ourselves by domesticating and stupefying humans to an extent that many youth are not even capable of survival in a civilized surrounding.

But it is YOU who is called by the woods. They might be subject to forestry commission and business. They might be domesticated and seem to be tame, but believe me, they are not. Their call is violent, and tragedy and triumph happen every year, month, week, day, second ticking away not with the pulse of a clock, but the pulse of the almighty mother, earth. Spring and winter, summer and autumn are but a breathing in and out there. Your individuality does not tip the scales even a tiny bit, but your soul weighs heavy there. It coincides with the pulse and breathing of the dark, rich soil. It blossoms with the flowers and withers with the winter.

And you get a notion that this might be the real life after all.

Then you return to your everyday endeavours, a changed human being, and you notice the everyday wrongness of life. All too soon you notice all your energy you won in the woods is spent, and when you feel exhausted, you hear the call again. And you return, and the roots of ancient trees yet unborn grow deep into your heart. Alien you become to the ways of those cyborgs and zombies that call themselves human and that delight in preying on their fellow beings while preaching denaturation and trying to establish a peace that is no peace, but numbness, ignorance, and indifference. By stealing away all dream they try to become immortal in indifference.

But there is no immortality of the body, and dynamics and change is the immortality of the soul. Metamorphosis is the law of nature, never ceasing to grow and blossom. Violent is the creativity of that dream, unfathomable by the ways of the Grey God they pray to. And thus they make this world.

You try to fight them. But you cannot fight with their weapons.

And so again you run into the woods. Is this escapism?

I do not think so. In fact, I think that it is in the woods that we find the weapons to fight with. Roaming the woods, being banned from a society of zombies and cyborgs is no longer a sentence, but a privilege.

Into the woods we walk. Into a dream we walk.

But under the treetops, near the stream, the clover sprouts, and under the pillars of the tree´s stems, the dream prospers.

Pathways we walk, ostracized by mankind, to become something old and something new, over old hills and farther away than just the distance.

And this is what skóggángr means to me now. It is a mere word, but it is taking roots, slowly, but securely, in the dream of the forest in my heart.

The buzzard flies above this forest, scanning the ground for its prey. Wolves return from the exile. Oh, yes, they are dangerous. Yes, they might threaten the life of wildstock and tame animals and humans alike. Yes, I would not want to get on the wrong side of them. But then they are of my kind. As is the owl, that stealthy hunter in the night.

This is the essence of skóggángr: Being one with the hunters and the prey, with river and stream. With the wind and the storm and the shadowy mists in the night. With the sun shining warm upon the meadows and twinkling in the stream, but also with the piercingly hard and frosty starlight in the midnight sky.



And with both sides united in the shady twilight.

The sun might sink beyond the hills: Darkness falls. But there is no Evil lurking here, for the Evil man fears is not the truth; man in itself has become the worst enemy. So we unbecome human. So we dream another life. So we deliberately walk into the thrall of the forest´s spirits, for there is nothing to be feared but the utter void of grey. Skóggángr we become. Forest we become.



Behind the gates there is a spring waiting. Behind the mist-enchanted sun, behind the circles of passage spring dwells.

There is art in this hope, there is hope in this art.

This is a new way.

This is a war to be fought, a hunt to be feasted.

Run with the night. The hunter´s moon is rising.

Foraging / Dayhike with philosophy on top;-)

On wednesday I had a day off and made for the hills again. The weather was great, sun was shining and it was some 26 degrees C in the sunshine. I walked over the hill behind my home and was bound to collect some edibles, for this month is a somewhat meagre one again;-). Lesser Celandine (Pilewort, german: Scharbockskraut) is in blossom, and I got some for salad, and some roots for binding sauces and dressings. Lesser Celandine is rich with Vitamin C, hence the German name "Scharbocks-Kraut", scorbut-herb, for it was used as a remedy against scorbut in ancient times. After blossom, the leaves should not be used any more, for they get bitter and are under suspicion of being poisonous. The roots can be used still.

They are great as a nourishing implement, although you have to get a lot of them, being so small. Shot no photo, but they are like little, bug-like balls and not easily mistaken.

I walked for some hours on end towards my favourite lake. This is the view from atop the hill.

Collected some birch sap, but as it was, it was cool from the dew, and soooo refreshing, I drank it up for the most part, sitting on my favourite stump, which has a live birch protruding out of it.;-) Like an armchair, actually. I basked in the sun for an hour or so, had some more swigs of birch sap. Then I continued on my way.

Some more impressions on the way.

This is the woodbine sprouting. I have yet to try bushcraft basketry and this would be my material of choice.

I especially liked these woods for their light, yet twilit atmosphere. There is a certain heavy peace to them, breathing ever so slowly, so that your own heart beats slower there. There were birds singing and enjoying the warm weather like me. Again I did some stumpsitting and sunbasking;-). I did not sleep, but my conscience drifted away slowly, and I felt as if the blood of the trees ran through my veins, slowly and patient. My eyes drooped, and some strange calm took possession of my soul, ever so gently. It was like a green light shining behind my eyes. It is very hard to describe, for words are not made for this. My interpreting just stopped, my worries and ambitions subsided. I certainly heard the birds still, and saw the trees, and was aware where I was, even when I was, and why, but it did not matter. I felt like a part of it all, of sun and trees and life and death. Sounds esoteric, eh? It is. But then words are not made for this. The secret is, that there is nothing semantic to this feeling. It happens in a state of mind, where our constant construction of the world slowly and gently is faded out, where all of our mechanisms of interpretation fail. Because of the fact, that sign and significance might still be not identical, but that does not matter any more. because there is little, but slow and thorough movement, our everyday hectic vectorial orientation in a subsemantic complex subsides. There is a healing effect to this. The experinece, for being self-referred (autotelic) and solitary in a peaceful surrounding creates a side-effect of "Flow" (Cziksentmihalyi 2008). The phenomenon has been only recently researched in a study (transcendent experiences in forest environments:

Won Sop Shin,¹ Poung Sik Yeoun,¹ Rhi Wha Yoo,² and Chang Seob Shin¹(2009):

Forest experience and psychological health benefits: the state of the art and future prospect in Korea

 

KATHRYN WILLIAMS^a and DAVID HARVEY^{b (2002)}:TRANSCENDENT EXPERIENCE IN FOREST ENVIRONMENTS

and many more;-). I personally hold in high esteem Wolfgang Hogrebe. As a first read you can perceive the essay "Mantics and Semantics" (1994, 1995, 2006). )

I often critisize the society we live in as insane. This society is often characterized as "rapidfire society", concerning the rapidity of information flow we all are confronted with. This leads to a somewhat onesided balance in the individual. Semantics are all that is asked from the individual, but mantics cannot be switched off. There are many millions of bits our brain perceives in everyday situations. A mentally normal individual filters this information by only processing and interpreting a small part of it. Now, in modern society, it is demanded, that many more informations are processed, at once. And the problem might not even be the mass of the informations to be semantically interpreted, but the impossiblity to train the mind to it and the connection between life-essentiality of interpretation and the resulting stress without a positive reinforcement as a bargain.(after the model: Don´t be slow, do not dream / rest etc or you´ll lose your job, plus the fact that no positive reinforcement is given by executives, but more requirements still ). The system is complex.

Flow can transcend this vicious cycle (or system even), and might be the reason this is entirely dissolved in forest environments, giving recreation and happiness and a healing effect to the individual by breaking the conctant need for (semantic) informational processing. 

After this much healing trance;-) I went on and came across this birch offering me its bark for tinder. Boy, do I need a tinder pouch, for it vanished in the depths of my rucksack. Found on the cheese afterwards;-) but no harm done, cheese was cleaned, and the bark still in order;-). Have to make myself a pouch, though.

Still more scenery to be mantically processed;-).

Found this dead tinder conk and took part of it home for tinder. I even heard it say you can make sheaths, caps, and bags from it. I´ll keep you informed!

The sun was sinking, and provided for magic moments under the forests roof again. I saw some roe deer and some wild pigs, and something in the distance that might have been a badger. As usual, my clumsy fingers did mess up with the camera, so no pics of any wildstock whatsoever;-). I walked for some seven hours on end, and was beginning to feel a bit fatigued. Had some cheese and bread with birchbark on;-) and some apples, an onion and the last swig from my birchsap bottle, drank some tea, and on I went. It was becoming colder, as the sun sank. I came to the road after another hour´s walking and took the bus home.