One day a woman went into the woods. She left the village and tasted its name, rolled her tongue: Rovegno. The robustness dissolved in a beautiful vowel which left her mouth open like an admiring circle, a kiss.
She walked curiously, looked at the different types of vegetation, its deeper, strange green, a different kind of light. She saw the ruins which told her stories of the past. She drank from a fountain that came up unexpectedly, it seemed that everyone who had lived there offered her a welcome toast. She felt the sound of the soil that rose from her feet like warm water, like new blood tingling and awakening her.
She walked, breathed, adjusted herself into the surroundings, opened herself and let the colours flow into her, she gave away her heat to the woods which replied filling her with their own warmth similar to the breath of the beloved. The woman looked, saw and felt like a child or an animal, perfectly. She knew that she would return, again and again. She could feel the power of the woods and it was hers.
She went. She walked mechanically, loudly, distinct from the woods. She could not see, she trampled, staggered. She made dry branches crackle under her feet, stripping out delicate leaves without noticing it, she bent and stamped on whining straws. She carried on herself the voices of the city and the people, the rhythm of the machines. Her steps were of man-made roads. She was breathing as an iron frame blowing out exhaust fumes and road dust. She still saw the previous images, scenes from a film that had a jerky rhythm, the film that continued elsewhere. She walked seeking contact, she continued. Little by little, the city inside her was leaking out of her, her rough movements became flexible, her steps conformed to the earth, her breathing evened out and it became the same as the breath of the woods. She slowed down her pace, stopped, closed her eyes and looked again, observing, being present. She was standing, at first she became aware of a little movement, then a bigger one, a murmur that was appropriate, a meaning that would continue even after she was gone and her fast-paced life was over, the life that she had mistakenly regarded as predeterminated. She watched the woods, the animals and their actions, she focused her eyes near and far, she was being careful not disturb them. She pushed her daily life into the background, so that she might go back to it again.
She came back peacefully, ready to see, to record the events that followed the cycle, but they would never be repeated, they would never take place in the same way. The position of a roe deer doe's head when bending down to their fawns: ancient, similar, unique. Light and shade on a tree bark: it happened every day, when the sun was shining from a certain direction. Every time something was different. The tree grew bigger, older, it lived. Its surface was scratched by a bird's beak or by stormy wind in the previous night.
She wanted to retain every moment, to show the deeper significance of every scene which linked them into a single entity. In that thread glowed the rite of life, the uniqueness of the recurring events, the beauty, the continuum, the meaning in itself. She wanted to show the others the things she saw and how she felt, so that they would also respect and cherish it. She knew that without the woods her life elsewhere would not exist.
Written by Carita Kuosmanen
Translation Johanna Lehikoinen