For a long time, my husband and I have joked that it is a miracle I can identify a goat from a sheep. Now that joke is a bit exaggerated, but a little true. I grew up in the D.C. suburbs surrounded by cookie-cutter neighborhoods with winding sidewalks and quick access to the highway. The spaces I spent most of my time in were paved, sidewalked, and marked by a maze of cars or buildings.
Of course, I spent time in the outdoors and the “country.” I had some experience interacting with farm animals, walking on trails through the woods, and standing on ground that was not leveled and covered in pavement. I even thought of myself as “outdoorsy” because I loved to hike “the Billy Goat Trail” in Potomac, MD with my family. When I was little I even hiked it in sandals, though I would not recommend it. The hike had a rock wall that you could climb up or down, depending on which end of the trail you started on. Part of the trail was lined with cliffs that fell down to the Potomac River. There were trees, small beaches, and lots of other “outdoorsy” hikers to speed past when we got the chance.
When I moved to Virginia for college at James Madison University, my friends and I explored the local trails for hiking and trail runs. In these woods, like the trails back home, I was surrounded by friends and noise and comfort. The woods were not imposing. They didn’t elicit my attention any more than the pretty parks downtown. The whispers of the trees were only exchanged amongst themselves.
Since moving a thousand plus miles away from Virginia to the wide-open spaces of Wyoming, I’ve noticed the trees are louder and the mountains and spaces in between are consuming. Even the hiking trails are wilder.
Parker, my husband, leads us on the trails with his map and compass. We walk somewhat confidently over barely marked and lightly trodden trails and quickly lose sight of our car with just a few turns. Parker isn’t bothered by the lack of trail markers or people. He is a stranger in these woods, but he feels at home. I just watch my feet to avoid the deer poop that looks like perfect chocolate covered raisins.
As we dodge through the spruces, pines, and felled trees, my mind is restless. These woods will not float to the periphery of my attention. They are not satisfied with being a mere landscape. The height and density of the trees are imposing in a way I have not experienced before. Even in their absence, in the vast spaces of sky and land which define this state, I am forced to engage. But, I don’t know where to start, nor do I have much to distract me from my swirling thoughts and emotions. The trees creak in the wind, sudden and jarring like the creak of old hardwood floors when you are trying to slip out of a room without being noticed.
In a fury of restless thoughts and a cry rising in my throat, I remember a passage Parker read to me last night from Prince Caspian.
“The trees parted to let them through and for one second assumed their human forms completely. Lucy had a glimpse of tall and lovely wood-gods and wood-goddesses all bowing to the Lion; next moment they were trees again, but still bowing, with such graceful sweeps of branch and trunk that their bowing was itself a kind of dance” (Prince Caspian, 144).
With images of dancing and bowing trees in my mind, I imagine the trees around me coming to life. The towering bare trunks of the lodgepole pines dance around each other in a quick jig. Their pine needle crowns create shadows on the ground as their heads reach up to the warm sun. I move my way through their dance down a hill and into a grove of quaking aspen. They move in twos and threes in a slow do-si-do. The black eyes on their trunks look from their dance partners and back to me. Their leaves quake with a delightful sound, transforming the wind into an audience clapping to the beat. It is hard not to grab Parker’s hands to do-si-do with them.
Though I am only imagining all this, I feel less restless and overwhelmed. And beyond a new engagement with the space around me, there is a deeper reality that comes alive by these flights of imagination. Lewis’ dancing trees (and all the creature of Narnia) are centered around Aslan. The trees come to life in Aslan’s presence and they bow to Him as He passes.
In an unseen way, these woods and the wild landscape of my new home also bow to God. And whether I am in Maryland, Virginia, or Wyoming, I am also centered on and animated by the Father. The praises and groans rising out of me and all of creation are met firmly and kindly in the presence of Christ, “the maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen” (Nicene Creed).
Thank you, C.S. Lewis, for your bountiful imagination that deepens my own.
In the comments below, share about a piece of imagination you’ve borrowed. How did that piece of imagination transform how you felt in a new, unknown place?
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