The Smell of Brushwood

A gigantic field of rapeseed encloses my view; it’s a vision of intense yellow opposed by a foul odor that arises from some withered blossoms. I don’t halt at this rich sight, because my lungs demand the freshness I was coming for and the rapeseed corrupts it too hardly. Still, there’s notice of the fresh scent I’ve been awaiting to enwrap me. It feels so close that I’m nervous with excitement.

I continue walking down the sidewalk parallel to the rapeseed field, but my view merely touches it – it’s concentrated on the nearing trees, not the yellow. I want to smell, not see; my eyes only serve the purpose to ascertain that I’m approaching the anticipated smell. It’s nippy, but the sun is blazing, thus I know my cool body will be warmed before long, for a forest retains its own kind of temperature.

Some minutes later, I can leave the streets behind and a pure smell dispels the stale air in my nose, which makes me feel as if I had to sneeze. My eyes get wet, as they frequently do when I need to sneeze, and as I close my eyes, two tears run down my jowls. A faint reminiscence of the foul odor stays present at first, but suddenly the scent of withered rapeseed is pushed off by the smell of the densely wooded area I’ve just entered.

On the skirts of the wood, the air’s always heavy; it’s almost arduous to breathe. Maybe because the air presents itself in such a tight naturalness, that’s usually adulterated by other influences; only on the verge, this line between naturalness and adulteration is explicitly perceptible. Yet even now, for just one short inhalation, I catch a faint smell of flowers from the outside. Their smell is light, the woodland air stays dense. Its immersive richness fills my lungs with novel sensations. I hold my breath while taking the first steps into the forest. I hold onto it till I promptly need to gasp for air, which makes it burst into my lungs so suddenly that I start crying, overwhelmed by my senses.

Through my next steps and the pure air, my body slowly reconnects to its own natural sensations. It enables me to take notice of how the denseness of the air grows into viscosity that takes off its heaviness. Sometimes, I let a bit of the humidity, that has also entered this woodland vacuum, seep into my lungs in fine breaths.

It’s a smell of freshly cut grass grounded in earth, that now beds me and pushes everything forced away, nothing artificial remains, nothing as human as that. Nature directly touches me and catches hold of my naturalness; my physicalness proves itself true to me in a novel manner.

I come to terms with myself, which is a seldom good that assures me a very different kind of safeness; a deep understanding to exist. Henceforth, my steps become faster and arrogating, I’m almost stamping, in order to further get into the forest.

My thoughts are soothed; they merely circle my perception of the wood and its smells. I lie down on the ground, next to a tree, and fallen leaves attrit as I plant my body between them. I’m surrounded by brushwood, which borders my view with leaves. On my back I feel the soil. I take my shoes off and dig my bare feet underneath the leaves and a little into the earth. Something scuttles on my feet, it quickly moves on, then I feel something else scuttling, this movement stops as well. The scuttling recurs and fades again and again.

Laying on the ground, I look into the sky, but the sun shines so intensely, that I need to avert my eyes just after a few seconds. Ants walk up and down the thick tree trunk I lay next to. Some walk in a crisscross motion and form black dots; most of them float either up or downwards in a parallel movement. In the bushes above my head, I see a fly perching on one of the leaves. Now and then it wings briefly or springs onto another leave. Its torso is blue-green, the twiggy wings shimmer in a transparent gray. I take my forefinger and hold it next to the leave the fly is currently seated on; my finger touches the leave just slightly. The fly doesn’t notice this extraneous body part I added to the scenery, and I don’t notice when it walks onto my finger; I can’t feel it, because it’s too light, only my eyes can perceive the midget fly.

Hours later I start back. I feel cleansed, consistent with myself and my environment; like a stone on the shore that is washed clean by the forever moving waves. Getting up feels strenuous to me and quickly a deep exhaustion seizes my body.

In nature I’m just right; it’s a rightness that doesn’t know falsehood. I’m aware that I will feel all the more spurious and perverted just as I get out of the wood, to the street and the sidewalk - as I’m brought back into the contrived humaneness, most people nestle themselves into without ever questioning. Only in nature, I’m able to utterly peel this factitiousness away from my being.

With my next steps back to the street, the air becomes earthy and heavier. By and by I become aware of a stark yellow that occasionally forms the background of the trees in front of me when I stroll by spots with sparse vegetation.

The transition occurs suddenly; the foul odor startles me, for it so abruptly bursts back into my lungs, I can’t take any precautions, and no final gasp for later reminiscence. I know I will return to the forest soon, but this affirmation can’t relieve the sadness and malaise I’m certain of keeping in me until nature exfoliates them once more.

The smell of brushwood assured me company. As I leave the branches behind, I say goodbye to my companion.