The Woodlands

This is probably just the first of many reveries -stories and thoughts- I'll write about.

For a brief period, some years ago, I was in attendance of a school up north from where I live. Being in classroom environments, and structured labour in general, has always been noxious to me, something I find very difficult to see through without considerable emotional strain. To cope, I had a regular habit of leaving class to wander the forest that lay just behind the building, out of sight for most in attendance at my class, it was a place of retreat from the noise and corporatised environment

Our campus was built on what was once a virgin forest, though you would not know this looking from outside in, or even from being in the campus itself- rather, it was a detail hinted at by old ruins, benches, and trails hidden in it's corners and recesses, peaking out from the very edges of the land owned by the school itself.

Of the classes I attended, they were all very "business oriented"- we started by covering workplace safety, moved on to acting out job interviews.  It felt all really dehumanising,  and convinced me more than anything that I do not ever want to work in a corporate environment- I think it would kill me.

At the time, I had discovered post punk, which I would listen to during school as a kind of tether, clinging onto all the words of particular songs I liked a lot. When I could hardly bear to be there anymore, I would go out to wander the forest, a fragment of the memories of frontier to that corporate space, somewhere to escape to.

I first heard Sewerslvt around this time, too. I think her music is most imbued with the feeling of being there out of any I listened to at the time.

I brought a tea flask with me everywhere I went, filled with breakfast tea, accompanied by a beautiful cup adorned with hard ceramic, it feels nice to touch, very thick texture. The only place with steady placement was beside a lake, which served as a kind of oasis to me, a place of serenity. Despite my carefree actions, I was still somewhat afraid I would disturb the abode of a deer trying to sunbathe or nap, given deers and foxes were often reported in the area. I never encountered one myself, but I did come across various holes in the ground which I presume where homes to various animals. I hope I was of no disturbance in my idle wandering.

Each outing, I grew more adventurous, wandered deeper and deeper until I hit a fence upon which I could travel no further, though despite this, I sought out ways of crossing it- you could see a stream and a farm just across it, and further still some kind of ruin that looked akin to some kind of Serbian/Byzantine church or fortification, always beckoning in the distance. It's slightly visible in this zoomed-in picture I took. It was at the very border near the fences where I came across the signs of what the place once was, an information board of sorts, put there by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism -I'm not sure why anyone would come here- with fragments of a map plastered on.

Another aspect in my pursuit of finding novelty in the woods was the pratcice of a kinda vulgar naturalism. I had an affinity for the plants around me, I would try and identify them, taking notes about their features, and how they interacted with everything else as part of an ecosystem. Hungarian oaks were of most note to me- They grew much faster compared to the other trees. It tasted a bit like vanilla, coffee, chocolate and black pepper. I couldn't really identify the species of grass, and most types of trees that grew didn't mean much to me, but it was so fun just learning about it.

I probably learned more drinking tea, watching the clouds, wandering the grass, wondering where the butterflies ate, and what plants there were, than I ever did spending weeks in that dusty hollow classroom. It is a testament to the worth of the time I spent idling in that forested wonderland that I have such vivid memory of it, and an indictment to schooling that nothing but it's worst excesses are what I retained.