The woods and other sacred places

If you've ever been a bored teen in small town Canada, you've probably spent a fair amount of time wandering the woods. It becomes a plce everyone, regardless of who they are or where they come from, feels like they belong. And why shouln't you? The trees don't judge. The trees don't call you gay, they make you feel small in a way that makes you feel like a part of something bigger, instead of isolated and alone. 

I was fifteen, in the woods, smoking a cigarette I stole from my dad. A little girl came up to me, she couldn't have been more than eight. 

"You shouln't do that" She said, seeming genuinely concered for a stranger she'd never met. "It's bad for you, you could get lung cancer and die. My sister used to smoke, but now she vapes. It's soooo much healthier."

I laughed and told her I'd be fine. I tried to quit for a few weeks after that.

I was thirteen, still trying to understand teenage friendships, what my gender was, and why girls were pretty. My friends and I made a point to always use the woods as our spot. Our place we could get away from catholic school and covid-19. I summoned Bill Cipher so many times in that clearing. 

The woods, to me, is a place where the realities of being a young adult in this world, and the fantasy version of being this age I created while still in grade school can combine, and be something else entierly.

I was seventeen, with the girl I wanted to marry. Her bedroom felt like a church, her bed the pews where I never learned the right prayer to say. Changing things about myself for her felt like a transformation aided by god, and in the end what I found was something about myself far more human than anything a god could teach me. Something only I only felt when I was alone.

I don't need to perform or change when I'm in the woods. I don't need to make myself want things I know aren't part of my path. I don't need to wait for my body to catch up with my brain, I don't need to hope for someone to tell me what I am or who I can be. I can tell myself what I am, and I already know what I could become. 

Something only the trees could teach.