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Have you ever, in any season, been deep in the woods in the gloaming? In the blurred time midway between sunset and the dark, and closer to the latter?
In the early, cold, snowbound Springs in the gloaming, when everything is a shade of gray, a tone of blue, the snow freezing again? In the day with a south wind, it was in the 30s and the sun shone at a powerful degree and things were melting, but in an hour’s time from sunset to dark the temperature races to single digits.
The warm Summer after the sunsets spooking deer – or what we think are deer… easy walking leading you to wander further in the woods, meaning the walk home gets long and hard again.
The Autumns I can remember the most and clearest. Always coming in with the gun, in the warm days of September, with the bird dogs – the Spaniels – finally so tired that they are at the heel, with their tongues hanging down to the ground, looking at you as if there was any chance in heck, you’d pick them up and carry them back to the Dog Chow, but they are even too tired for Dog Chow.
Then in the Winter up in the red pine plantation I might’ve been in the pines late. I can’t remember why. Because as a boy alone I could be very afraid in the woods and afraid more of the dark.
Maybe it was a Friday evening and I had finished school in the afternoon and my grandfather, when he had finished work, would pick me up and we’d go to the lake cabin. So that I could be out in the woods before the dark to set maybe three snares and a Conibear trap for rabbits.
Probably, though, I was in the pines in the gloaming very bravely because – and as a trapper, I’m reluctant to admit this – because I was checking my Saturday traps for the second time that day. Silly, but out of excitement. The cottontails didn’t come out during the day. Check your drops once, in the morning.
The red pines were juvenile, maybe 10 to 15 years old if I counted the joints. Yes 10 feet to 15 feet tall when I counted the joints, meaning they were very thick, very full, which was nice for me, who didn’t like people, who didn’t want to be seen, who, let’s be clear, was trespassing.
This was before I had snowshoes and, gosh that meadow over to the pines was so clear and the snow so white and deep, deep up to my crotch. And up there beyond the pasture there’s the white farmhouse and red barn and down the other way is all the row of cabins. And here was me struggling to get across the snowy open meadow.
But finally, every single time, I came up to the pines and finally I’m inside the big woods, and safe, but when it’s dark and you’re 11 years old and alone and the temperature is 11° Fahrenheit and the pines are thick and black, you don’t feel safe. Because you don’t feel alone.
There was a route into the pines and through the boughs that I took, following my own tracks in the shallow snow, or making a blaze by breaking off a branch when it became particularly hairy. Then there is this one turn and duck under you had to make, and I thought that was the spot I’d be ambushed. If I was ever ambushed. By Bigfoot.
There was another Bigfoot revival when I was a kid. Of course, the famous Zapruder film (or whatever) of Bigfoot from California (or Idaho) had been shot in ‘67 or so.
Then when I was a kid there was this syndicated show popular with all the kids called “In Search Of” with Leonard Nimoy (“Mr. Spock”) narrating in his sometimes spooky, sometimes scientific manner (and don’t those two characteristics make for good, convincing conspiracy theory?). You know, it had a spooky and scientific show on the Loch Ness Monster, or the Bermuda Triangle, or some lake monster from a lake in Canada. But of course, the all-time most popular one was about Bigfoot.
I got slowly over my fear of Bigfoot and mostly of my fear of man and monsters in the woods. I’m mostly never afraid in the woods of bear or wolves. Maybe still of people. I still believe malevolence may be around every corner. That the universe is not benign. The malevolence comes from men, and the lack of benignness comes from the growing dark and it is 19° Fahrenheit and dropping.
The earth is not flat, there are no UFOs, there is no Q, there is no Jewish or Liberal conspiracy. But there still are bad men. Monsters. Although we should remember they are silly and stupid. Mostly.
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