Gliding through the forest, I gently rub my hand against the bark of the nearest tree. It doesn’t matter the season; no, it does not. Whether the tree has leaves or a whole bunch of moss, it is filled with such beauty I am sometimes at a loss.
“Wow,” I will say over and over again. It sums up everything I am feeling and where I have been.
I know these trees like they are old friends. Because I know I will see them time and time again. There’s the tree that fell just a few years ago; it’s fun to jump over when we have enough snow. There’s the huge old oak tree that comes deep from the earth; it takes two humans to hug a tree of this girth.
To this day, I remember my first love, although, in the shallowness of my childhood, I really knew nothing about her. But I knew her branches and studied for hours as I lay on my bed. How they moved and twisted, how they filled with leaves, and how they changed every year. I watched that tree grow for over two decades; sometimes, we chatted. Okay, a lot of times. I was kind of a bookish kid, and there were years when she was my best friend, that tree outside my bedroom window, especially when she was covered in snow.
I have to get out there out amongst the forests and trees, for it’s the canopy under which I’m brought to my knees. A sacred canopy under which thousands make their home, And now we’ve decided to take it. For what? It’s yet to be known.
The Green Mountain National Forest was established in 1932 and has grown to 400,000 acres. This land is used for hiking and fishing, swimming and paddling, hunting, and where we chop down our Christmas trees. No, seriously, did you know that the National Forest Service gives out permits to cut down your own Christmas tree? It’s awesome.
The Green Mountain National Forest makes up half the hunting grounds available to Vermont’s 73,000 hunters. Hunting is an essential component of what makes Vermonters who we are, just as much as someone wearing Birkenstocks with socks. I love getting invited to try some bear meat stew from a friend who made every step of that happen. Celebrating the value of the animals we eat and the forests in which they live.
The Green Mountain National Forest is home to more than 345 miles of snowmobile trails, the Appalachian and Long Trails, the Catamount Trails, and maybe even a catamount or two! Who doesn’t love a good jaunt up to White Rocks to see the cairns and enjoy the view? It even protects our beloved Kent Pond here in Killington.
The Green Mountain National Forest exists purely because Vermont had allowed unlimited tree clearing and had desecrated our forests throughout the 1920s. By the 1930s, soil erosion had killed off many of our fish, and as it collapsed into the rivers, the animals we depended on for hunting vanished with the forests that were their homes. Vermont learned the hard way that we need our forests.
As women, the forest is a source of our power. Traveling the forest at night is said to release the Divine Feminine and strengthen the feminine soul within. Every time I wander through a forest, I feel emboldened. Strengthened. Empowered. There’s an energy force that seems to bounce off the trees, sometimes pulling you along the path. Unless I’m skiing like crap, but even then, I still earned those damn turns, and that’s power in itself.
Throughout the ages, women have taken to the forest to gather herbs and learn of the earth, been called witches for that power, and ostracized for it. The tale of the old crone is one of warning that one would be banished to the forest but be happier for it. Forests and cranky, disagreeable women are stories repeated throughout many cultures, and the two are tied together. But the forest always welcomes the crone, and they support each other. The forest provides her peace and sanity and brings her comfort and strength to be her own self in this world.
I can feel when I have gone a day without being surrounded by trees. Somehow, I always feel less alive, less lived, less of everything. Even if it’s just a walk down the road to the mailbox, I need 15 minutes of shinrin-yoku to provide a balance to all things. Especially here in Vermont, where the Sacred Canopy is so thick during the summer, there is much joy in the peeling back of the leaves the other half of the year.
Women need the forest where our old cronies can grow strong. Where we can exist in cooperation with nature, not in domination of it. Remember the Lorax, we beg, and we plead, and that Truffula Trees are what everyone needs.
Merisa Sherman is a long-time Killington resident, global real estate advisor, town official, and Coach PomPom. She can be found in the forest or at [email protected].
