Into the Woods

on the forest's teachings

By EllYse GivenS

Illustrated by elliana reynolds

relatives parked in nearby cars, en route to a more final destination. I, on the other hand, do not have an escort— just Uber and Lyft. I wrest my phone from my jacket pocket’s grasp to summon a driver, only to find the app struggling to load, perplexed by my blue location dot’s new rural whereabout. My fucking phone does not even know where I am.

I am alone at a bus station in the middle of nowhere. For a moment, I consider my uselessness. A metropolitan girl in the countryside—her telephone and academic fervor and interpersonal skills, once her most valued assets, rendered futile in this rurality. This weakness makes me angry. I Facetime my mom in annoyance and the screen glitches violently, her features frozen into place. Phones do not enjoy functioning in the wilderness—just as I imagine the wilderness despises these technologized vibrations that interrupt its intrinsic rhythm. Neither of these creatures wants to function in tandem, yet I bat my screen with a finger, determined to defy their dissonance. My mom comes alive again. Apparently, a small, Augusta-based taxi company has gleefully agreed to retrieve the stranded daughter from the bus station.

In post- this week, our writers looked to the past and did exactly that. In Feature, the author reflects on visiting her sister at a rural college and the value of being in the woods in an increasingly urbanized world. In Narrative, one writer fondly reminisces on the quirky experiences associated with his high school football team, while another reflects on her experience with ChatGPT to unpack her own relationship with writing and creative productivity. In Arts & Culture, one writer discusses the recent increase in films depicting feminine rage (!) and another talks about the virality of Ice Spice and why it’s not just a phase (spoiler: she’s the modern day Princess Diana). And in Lifestyle, advice on how best to participate in the lovely rituals of communion and scrapbooking.

The driver arrives in an oviform, faded blue minivan that screeches faintly to a halt along the sidewalk. “We only take cash,” he remarks while shoving something into the glove compartment, not looking at me. “Yes, sir,” I respond. I cannot remember the last time I was in a taxi. He begins driving and I feel the car’s underpinnings vibrate beneath my feet, the vehicle emitting a peculiar buzzing sound that concerns me slightly. He turns up the music so that I no longer notice it. Excited to hear that I am from California, he speaks of his escapades in Mexico, his tales embellished by the “very beautiful women” he met along the way. He drinks from a silver can and I refuse to allow myself to wonder if its contents are alcoholic.

But really, what’s to say life is to be found in what is TRULY new when the same choices you’ve made before led to happiness and gratification?

It’s always good to be on the same page as yourself. Anyway, that’s my brain on a platter. I hope you enjoy our first issue this semester in tandem with the budding spring of yet another year.

Thinking about how pretty birds are, Kimberly Liu Editor-in-Chief

I see fuzzy cubes peeping from the abyss outside the window and am relieved. Colby College is perched atop the hill ahead, the pointed bell tower crowning Miller Library heralding the institution's presence like a lighthouse. We drive and the picture I see framed by the windshield comes into focus, quaint brick buildings now proudly defying the darkness attempting to engulf them. Light posts kiss the sidewalks with a warm yellow, outlining the curving paths that shepherd students from class to class during the daytime. The campus is so cute, like a quintessential colonial town, that the irritation brewing in my chest is forced to recede. It feels as if my surroundings are begging me to smile. And I do.

I see my sister’s smile from yards away and I almost beg my driver to stop. It’s raining now, but I am not scared anymore; I trudge through the darkness, my bags slamming into my hip bones as I walk. I nearly squeal when I see her, wrapping my arms around her body— the small frame I know so well now cushioned by the new puffer jacket she dons. She looks beautiful. It is a funny thing, sisters uniting within a world created not by their parents, but by themselves alone. It feels almost unnatural—to be together outside of our childhood home. It is also exhilarating.

***

Emily had three criteria to which her prospective post-secondary site of education had to adhere. “It needs to have a body of water nearby, uniform and consistent architecture, and a forest,” she would say. Contrasting my “I-probably-can-adapt”-attitude, she knew what she wanted, and I admired this. I had been to Colby’s campus before and enjoyed it, but walking into her dorm, into the space she has established for herself, I can sense that this place is exactly what she had wanted and imagined it to be. Outside her window is Johnson Pond, a picturesque body of water, its shine visible despite the curtain of pine trees veiling its circumference. The buildings do appear uniform, each dorm and academic hall appearing like a brick homestead to me, the former indistinguishable from the latter.

And the school does in fact stand within what could be considered a forest. The 714 acre campus is situated on Mayflower Hill, overlooking the Kennebec River Valley in Central Maine. Kennebec Valley is the largest northsouth region of Maine, covering more than 5,000 square miles. The Abnaki occupied the Kennebec River Valley at the point of first European contact, adorning it with the name "Kennebec," which means "snaky monster" or "long quiet water.” The River was one of the first explored by Europeans in the New World, who eventually settled along the banks to use the river for transportation and commerce of fish and furs. Mills for textile production and gristmills for flour were slowly littered along the shores, and major cities Augusta, Gardiner, Skowhegan, and Waterville emerged later on, becoming sites of ship

Hearts

tonnage production and ice harvesting. Now, the Valley is well-loved for trout fishing, hiking, biking, and bird watching, and even offers its own ‘moose safari’ for interested visitors. The region is still relatively rural, the native Grey Birch tree, Canada lynx, and black-capped chickadee existing in harmony without fear of too much human encroachment.

For Colby students, the forest is intrinsic to their emotional and academic growth. Each year, Colby inaugurates new freshmen students with a COOT: a Colby Outdoor Orientation Trip. Students can choose from a wide array of outdoor activities to commence their time at Colby, including backpacking, canoeing, fishing, rock climbing, and surfing—Emily met her best friend, Julia, on her COOT white water rafting trip. In addition to fostering interpersonal connection amongst Colby students, the forest also encourages academic achievement. Despite its relatively rural location, Colby boasts a 9% acceptance rate and attracts students from nearly 70 countries around the world. It is one of the nation’s premier liberal arts colleges, offering 57 majors and 36 minors. My sister took a class called “Landscape and Place,” during which they would often venture into the surrounding wilderness to garner inspiration. For all the Environmental Science classes, labs take place outdoors. Colby is also the only college with its very own Island Campus: located off the coast of Maine, Allen and Bander islands have become sites upon which Colby students study climate change, atmospheric pollution, and biodiversity.

This belief in the pedagogic and inspirational value of nature has been shared by countless others as well. Henry David Thoreau embarked into the woods adjacent to Walden Pond for two years and two months as an “experiment,” drawing closer to nature” and contemplating “the final ends of his own life.” He came to see God in nature, and believed that the world would be better off if “all the meadows were left in a wild state.” His experience “bore fruit” in the 1854 publication of his literary masterpiece Walden. Gautama Buddha found spiritual enlightenment in the woods, leaving his palace behind against the will of his father and journeying into the nearby wilderness. He seated himself beneath the Bodhi Tree in meditation posture and vowed not to rise from meditation until he had attained this perfect enlightenment, which he eventually did. Taylor Swift retreated to the woods as well, spending time in upstate New York to write her sister albums Folklore and Evermore. In the song “Seven,” she writes, “picture me, in the weeds, before I learned civility.” To me, her songs feel olive-toned—almost fire-lit. They are rustic and beautiful and unique, and won her a Grammy award. The woods may be where humans achieve their best.

***

And yet our forests are dying. During the European colonization of the Americas from the 1600s to 1870s, the eastern region of what is now the United States lost about half of its woodland. Advances in lumber processing during the Industrial Revolution further stimulated this forest removal due to the increasing demand for clear land that could be used for agriculture, industry, and residence. This was the cost of modernity— the stripping of what is natural to make way for what is new, for what is ‘advanced.’

The mythos of cities mirrors this association between urbanization and progress. In the Bible, John saw the “Holy City” of Jerusalem and knew that there would be “no more death or mourning….for the old order of things has passed away.” In the Emerald City, the wishes of the Lion, Scarecrow, Tinman, and Dorothy can all be granted. John Winthrop envisioned America to be a “city upon a hill,” a beacon of hope amidst uncertainty. And today, nearly 180 of the nation’s largest companies are headquartered in just six major cities. It is estimated that 83% of the U.S. population lives in these infamous urban centers.

I see this rhetoric of metropolitan supremacy in my conversations. Some have said that Colby’s rural location is an “escape from reality,” yet commend my friend, Sophia, for “being brave enough” to live in New York City whilst attending NYU. They say she must be “maturing so much” (which I don’t doubt, Sophia). Yet who is to say that my sister is not experiencing a similar type of monumental personal growth while isolated from American cities?

The last two centuries have associated industrialism with modernity, and forest with incivility and antiquity. A city’s lights can bring terror and challenge—but what about finding yourself in a desolate place, no silver buildings present to guide you home, no honking horns to drown out your thoughts? I think it may take even more courage to do just this, to be in the wilderness without the comforting cushion of civilization. I think that, maybe, urbanization was implemented to distract. Living in a city, one forgets all that they do not know about the world below them—about the power Earth will forever hold over humans. To be in the wilderness, to be at Colby, is to surrender. One stands in the forest aware of their forever inferiority to the grounds atop which they stand. To be in the “middle of nowhere”—a place that has been an important somewhere all along—I think this action may be more ‘advanced’ than any skyscraper we could ever construct.

***

The other day, I was speaking with my grandfather and he asked if Emily had “survived” the -20 degree temperatures experienced by Maine just a week ago.

“You know, I admire you, Ellyse, but it’s Emily who I think is brave…going all the way from southern California all the way up to Maine,” he said.

“Yeah, she is pretty brave. And I am so proud of her.”