Beyond Words (Nonfiction)

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I can’t explain music. I can’t read it, don’t know the names of the notes, or even know the names of most instruments. What I do know is that the tinkling of piano keys evokes visions of crystal-clear streams for me, and the crashing of drums calls up images of thundering waterfalls. I don’t know how this is achieved, yet I feel it unsettle my soul in the most satisfying way.

It’s the same in the forest. I don’t know the names of most plants. I don’t know the science behind why some mushrooms glow in the dark and some trees divert food to their sick neighbors. But I know that the forest lifts me, tells me things in a language I can’t answer, yet nonetheless understand.

I’m soothed by this absence of language. There are words for the forest, but I don’t want to use them because they’re not mine—and nor are they the forest’s. Words form questions and seek answers. Words demand a narrative, creating limits. But the power of the forest is an unspoken understanding. It is an awareness of harmony which steals into my heart from the branches of the old oaks and the comfort of the mossy rocks.

There’s a reason that people leave the city at the weekend to be amongst trees, and why we grow parks in the middle of town. “Oxygen” and “oxytocin” and “awe” might be the words to describe why, but this barely scratches the surface of our deep, spiritual bond with ecosystems that have existed for eons, and which we are only beginning to understand. Did you know that when a caterpillar munches on a leaf, the tree will send out a warning signal to the nearby trees? It releases a chemical which the other trees register. The trees can smell. Interestingly, if you record the sound of a caterpillar munching and play this sound to a tree, it will release this chemical even though there is no actual caterpillar. The trees can hear.

There are so many aspects of reality that we take for granted now, which would have been thought of as magical only a few generations ago. That spiders can fly on electrical currents. That, according to the theory of relativity, the faster you travel, the longer you live. That we can look into the night sky and observe the past. Crazy stuff, but all true. How many truths are still out there, waiting to be acknowledged? William Blake wrote that “man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” How much have we yet to learn about nature? What is the forest screaming at us?

When I am in the forest, I feel the answer. I feel it beyond words. The forest is calling to me from somewhere deep in my memory. I know its voice–like that of an old friend, or even a part of myself. Capturing this feeling with language is futile. The irony is not lost on me—I’m writing about the forest, while arguing that there is no point in using words to describe it. I have been blinkered by verbs and nouns. I was once so desperate to figure out how the clock works that I could not tell the time. It is the old adage about the butterfly: chase it and you’ll never catch it. Sit still and it’ll come to rest on your shoulder.

An ecosystem is a whole made up of interconnecting parts. It’s an organism composed of a million interdependent animals and plants. Whether we realize it or not, we are one of those parts. The forest is a powerful, humble womb of our species and does not reject us. It will always welcome us home, but on its own terms, not the ones we use to classify and categorize it.

The forest creeps across the hills to my house. Each time I go in, I feel the distance between us closing. From the silver birches that dart up crookedly on the outskirts, to the lumbering maple trees that make their way down rocky slopes, I meet the spirits of the forest like old friends. I find circles of mushrooms like attendees at some secret meeting. I rub my fingers through ancient lichen, hanging like lace from even more ancient beech trees. I watch as a breeze seems to be the result of the forest breathing. I sit in some of my favorite places–a rock above a glittering stream, a giant root that holds me like a protective arm–and I inhale the woody scent of homecoming.

Chad Eastwood is a writer from the northwest of Ireland. He lives in Bulgaria, with his wife and two boys. He teaches English. He has a degree in English Literature and a diploma in Journalism. He spends most of his time writing, philosophizing, and wandering about the forests.