The God of the Woods

by Liz Moore

Many a pedestrian on reaching these woods is incredulous of the danger which he is told will menace him if he ventures out alone to indulge in his favorite pastime. But let him rest assured that there is no question as to the reality of this danger—the danger of losing himself in the forest. That is the only thing to be dreaded in the Adirondack woods!

“Panic,” said T.J. But no one raised a hand. She explained. It came from the Greek god Pan: the god of the woods. He liked to trick people, to confuse and disorient them until they lost their bearings, and their minds. To panic, said T.J., was to make an enemy of the forest. To stay calm was to be its friend.

To be a human is complex, and often painful; to be an animal is comfortingly simple and good.

It was then that a memory sprang forcefully to the front of his mind: something the boy had said once about his grandfather, in passing, that Carl had brushed aside.

Rich people, thought Judy—she thought this then, and she thinks it now—generally become most enraged when they sense they’re about to be held accountable for their wrongs.

“They’re a strange family,” he says. “Too many generations with too much money. It addles the brain. You ever notice how the children of rich people are never as smart as the parents? Never as ambitious, never as successful? You gotta have something to strive for in life. What I think, anyway.”

Woodswoman, by Anne LaBastille; Lost Person Behavior, by Robert J. Koester; “Self-Reliance,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson; Walden, by Henry David Thoreau; Creem magazine; Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks, by William Murray; Adirondack Album, volume 2, by Barney Fowler; Adirondack Explorations: Nature Writings of Verplanck Colvin, edited by Paul Schaefer; and At the Mercy of the Mountains, by Peter Bronski.