Get Lost In Woods Quotes

Did you know I always thought you were braver than me? Did you ever guess that that was why I was so afraid? It wasn't that I only loved some of you. But I wondered if you could ever love more than some of me. I knew I'd miss you. But the surprising thing is, you never leave me. I never forget a thing. Every kind of love, it seems, is the only one. It doesn't happen twice. And I never expected that you could have a broken heart and love with it too, so much that it doesn't seem broken at all. I know young people look at me and think my youth seems so far away, but it's all around me, and you're all around me. Tiger Lily, do you think magic exists if it can be explained? I can explain why I loved you, I can explain the theory of evolution that tells me why mermaids live in Neverland and nowhere else. But it still feels magic. The lost boys all stood at our wedding. Does it seem odd to you that they could have stood at a wedding that wasn't yours and mine? It does to me. and I'm sorry for it, and for a lot, and I also wouldn't change it. It is so quiet here. Even with all the trains and the streets and the people. It's nothing like the jungle. The boys have grown. Everything has grown. Do you think you will ever grow? I hope not. I like to think that even if I change and fade away, some other people won't. I like to think that one day after I die, at least one small particle of me - of all the particles that will spread everywhere - will float all the way to Neverland, and be part of a flower or something like that, like that poet said, the one that your Tik Tok loved. I like to think that nothing's final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don't, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I'll see you sometime again, even if it's not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the way things go after all - that all things end happy. Even for you and Tik Tok. and for you and me. Always, Your Peter P.S. Please give my love to Tink. She was always such a funny little bug.

There comes a moment, when you get lost in the woods, when the woods begin to feel like home.

You live among this ridiculous wealth and you get lost. You worry about nonsense like spirituality and inner health and satisfaction and relationships.You have no idea what it is like to starve, to watch yourself turn to bones.

So Rhys went against orders, and marched in his whole legion to get Myriam out. For his friend, for my lover- and for that bastard Drakon's sake. Rhys sacrificed his legion in the process, got all of them captured and tortured afterward. Yet everyone insists Rhysand is soulless, wicked. But the male I knew was the most decent of them all. Better than that prick-prince. You don't lose that quality, no matter the centuries, and Rhys was too smart to do anything but have the vilification of his character be a calculated move. And yet here you are- his mate. The most powerful High Lord in the world lost his mate, and has not yet come to claim her, even when she is defenseless in the woods." Jurian Chuckled. "Perhaps that's because Rhysand has not lost you at all. But rather unleashed you upon us.

Finding love is like making creme brulee. It may take a few tries before you get it right.

Jay took out his guitar. He was decent at it, but the piano was his best talent. He couldn’t get a certain riff right, so he handed the instrument to Kaidan, and my heart flipped. I recalled him saying he played guitar, but I’d never actually seen or heard him play. Kaidan began to pick at each string, testing and tuning with his full attention. I watched the way his hands moved across the wood and strings, gently, reverently, his body seeming to curl around it as if it were a part of him. . . . I felt my hands getting sweaty, because watching Kaidan get lost in music did crazy things to me. My breathing became ragged and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He looked up at that moment and caught me staring hard. He knew. He knew what it did to me! I could tell because his badge expanded. He angled himself away from the others and signed to me, I want to be alone with you tonight. Patti did have a lot of guests staying in the house. I signed back, I’ll work on it. “Excellent,” he whispered, a hot grin sliding onto his face.

What happens when we lose the things that anchor us? What if, instead of grasping at something to hold on to, we pull up our roots and walk away? Instead of trying to find the way back, we walk deeper and deeper into the woods, willing ourselves to get lost. In this place where nothing is recognizable. not the people or the language or the food, we are truly on our own. Eventually, we find ourselves unencumbered by the past or the future. Here is a fleeting glimpse of our truest self, our self in the present moment.

Everyone has a supremely low moment somewhere along the AT, usually when the urge to quit the trail becomes almost overpowering. The irony of my moment was that I wanted to get back on the trail and didn't know how. I hadn't lost just Katz, my boon companion, but my whole sense of connectedness to the trail. I had lost my momentum, my feeling of purpose. In the most literal way I needed to find my feet again.

Things like this don't happen back in Libertyville, Illinois. You don't get lost in the woods behind your house. You don't get trapped inside a fortress-like wall ten feet tall.

Note to all students: Vampire bites, loss of limbs or getting lost in the wailing wood will not count as a valid excuse for being late to class.

You’re a grown woman with a brain in your head, two good arms for carrying books and two strong legs to get you where you need to go.

There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast. "The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways. "Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller. "I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state. "You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.

But hippies always forget that old Gaea can be one heartless bitch. Spend a little time wandering lost in the woods as she attacks you and tries to reduce you to fertilizer.” She snorted. “You won’t be singing kumbayas very long.” She paused to make sure Janus would get the point. “In this world, Gaea’s the predator and we’re the prey.

Oh, and another time he gave me a sex concussion. I can’t really go into the details, because my mother will probably read this, but basically he had a bunk bed in his dorm room (because he’s an only child and only children are obsessed with bunk beds for some reason), so we were on the bottom bunk and I tossed back my hair in what I envisioned would be a total porn-star move, except the wooden beam of the bunk bed above us was too low, and so I violently head-butted the wood plank and totally knocked myself out, which is pretty much the least sexy thing you could ever possibly do. Like, if I also lost control of my bowels that would be worse, but not by much. Then when I’d recovered, Victor was all, “Sex concussion, motherfucker!” like it was something to be proud of. Basically it was like autoerotic asphyxiation, except instead of being choked you get whacked in the head with a two-by-four. And instead of having an orgasm you lose all muscle control and pee on yourself. Which I totally did not do because that would be disgusting. I hardly ever pee on myself.

I just didn't want to be here anymore. I wanted to get lost. I wanted to burrow myself somewhere out in the woods with my favorite books and a bottle of wine, and never see anyone again. Never have the opportunity to meet someone new. Never give my heart the chance to fall again.

But, surprise folks, women get mad about things that don't have to do with men. Women feel anger and isolation just as intensely as men. Women have desires for power – destructive desires – that aren't satisfied with mean-spirited gossip and a bold lip color. Women need to be able to see themselves reflected in the monsters playing out these emotions on the big screen. Our only options shouldn't be either banishment to a shack in the woods or growing fangs and becoming part of a bloodthirsty sister-wife troupe. Women rarely get to weigh in on monster designs, but when she got the chance to, Millicent made it count.

It goes something like this: I am one person among 6.5 billion people on Earth at the moment. That's one person among 6,500,000,000 people. That'a lot of Wembley Stadiums full of people, and even more double-decker buses (apparently the standard British measurements for size). And we live on an Earth that is spinning at 67,000 miles an hour through space around a sun that is the centre of our solar system (and our solar system is spinning around the centre of the Milky Way at 530,000 mph). Just our solar system (which is a tiny speck within the entire universe) is very big indeed. If Earth was a peppercorn and Jupiter was a chestnut (the standard American measurements), you'd have to place them 100 metres apart to get a sense of the real distance between us. And this universe is only one of many. In fact, the chances are that there are many, many more populated Earths - just like ours - in other universes. And that's just space. Have a look at time, too. If you're in for a good run, you may spend 85 years on this Earth. Man has been around for 100,000 years, so you're going to spend just 0.00085 percent of man's history living on this Earth. And Man's stay on Earth has been very short in the context of the life of the Earth (which is 4.5 billion years old): if the Earth had been around for the equivalent of a day (with the Big Bang kicking it all off at midnight), humans didn't turn up until 11.59.58 p.m. That means we've only been around for the last two seconds. A lifetime is gone in a flash. There are relatively few people on this Earth that were here 100 years ago. Just as you'll be gone (relatively) soon. So, with just the briefest look at the spatial and temporal context of our lives, we are utterly insignificant. As the Perspective Machine lifts up so far above the woods that we forget what the word means, we see just one moving light. It is beautiful. A small, gently glowing light. It is a firefly lost somewhere in the cosmos. And a firefly - on Earth - lives for just one night. It glows beautifully, then goes out. And up there so high in our Perspective Machine we realize that our lives are really just like that of the firefly. Except the air is full of 6.5 billion fireflies. They're glowing beautifully for one night. Then they are gone. So, Fuck It, you might as well REALLY glow.

Every time it starts to get cool, I mean in the middle of autim, I start gettin nutty ideas like I was thinkin about what was forein and diffrent, like for exsample how I'd like to turn into a swallow and get away and fly to countrys where it gets hot, or be an ant so's I could get deep into a cave and eat the stuff I stored away durin the summer or be a snake like what they got in the zoO, the ones they keep lockt up in glass cages thats heated so's they don't get stiff from the cold, which is what happens to poor human beans who cant buy no close cause the price is to high, and cant keep warm cause theys no keroseen, no coal, no wood, no fule oil and besides theys no loot, cause when you go around with bocoo bread you can go into any bar and get some sneaky pete that can be real warmin, even tho it aint good to overdo it cause if you overdos it it gets to be a bad habbit and bad habbits is bad for your body just like they is for youre selfrespeck, and when you start goin downhill cause your actin bad in everythin, they aint nobody or nothin can stop you from endin up a stinkin piece of human garbidge and they never gone give you a hand to haul you up outen the dirty muck you rollin around in, not even if you was a eaglE when you was young and could fly up and over the highest hills, but when you get old you like a highflyin bomber thats lost its moral engines and fall down outen the sky. I jes hope what I been writin down hear do somebody some good so he take a good look at how he livin and he dont be sorry when it too late and everythin is gone down the drain cause it his own fault. -- Caser Bruto, What I Would Like to Be If I Wasn't What I Am (Chapter: "A St. Bernard Dog")

You’re late,” Thiago said in a flat voice. Nikolaus opened his mouth to apologize, but Remy smiled cheekily and shocked Nikolaus by wrapping his arm around him and pulling him closer as if they’d been friends all of their lives. “I was teaching Niko the proper technique for getting lost in the woods,” Remy claimed seriously. “He took to the lesson real well.

I had hardly left England's shores and already I was succumbing to the charms of a foreign accent like some ingénue. I had to get a hold of myself.

You're a grown woman with a brain in your head, two good arms for carrying books and two strong legs to get you where you need to go.

It makes me feel free, like I could get lost in the woods and live my best life or something.

I ask if I can come talk to her in person, and her laugh is hot whiskey on ice. “You’d get lost on the way to finding me,” she says. “You’d need breadcrumbs, or a spool of thread.

He wondered exactly how lost a person could get. Lost at sea, lost in the woods. Fatally lost.

He smells like a forest and I want to get lost in the woods.

I was afraid if I left I'd get lost in these woods. I was afraid I would never find my way back.

„What do you want me to do, Touraine?” Luca gestured in the direction of Cantic's office. „Tell Cantic to never let them fight again?” „That's the problem, Luca.” Touraine gestured through the sandstone walls at Cantic's office and toward the city, too. Her eyes burned, and all of Cheminade's old junk blurred. Her voice came out hoarse, barely above a whisper. „It's not a matter of let. They never chose this. They're not getting rewarded for valor with ribbons and raises. We just die, and when we die, we're not even worth the wood to burn us.

I read,” he said, “that often, when people get lost in the woods, they’ll come to a main road and they’ll just walk right across it. Or they’ll turn around and go right back where they started. People who’ve done this have said it was because they didn’t believe the road would take them in the right direction. But I tend to think it’s just easier sometimes to be lost.

Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town. The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you Who only has at heart your getting lost, May seem as if it should have been a quarry— Great monolithic knees the former town Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. And there’s a story in a book about it: Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest, The chisel work of an enormous Glacier That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole. You must not mind a certain coolness from him Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain. Nor need you mind the serial ordeal Of being watched from forty cellar holes As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins. As for the woods’ excitement over you That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves, Charge that to upstart inexperience. Where were they all not twenty years ago? They think too much of having shaded out A few old pecker-fretted apple trees. Make yourself up a cheering song of how Someone’s road home from work this once was, Who may be just ahead of you on foot Or creaking with a buggy load of grain. The height of the adventure is the height Of country where two village cultures faded Into each other. Both of them are lost. And if you’re lost enough to find yourself By now, pull in your ladder road behind you And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me. Then make yourself at home. The only field Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall. First there’s the children’s house of make-believe, Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, The playthings in the playhouse of the children. Weep for what little things could make them glad. Then for the house that is no more a house, But only a belilaced cellar hole, Now slowly closing like a dent in dough. This was no playhouse but a house in earnest. Your destination and your destiny’s A brook that was the water of the house, Cold as a spring as yet so near its source, Too lofty and original to rage. (We know the valley streams that when aroused Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.) I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it, So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t. (I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.) Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

I think you two are secretly friends,” I joked, as Vidrol shoved Vale to the side to avoid a rotten piece of wood jutting from the wall. Vale shoved him back. I assumed in thanks. “Me and that pampered prince?” Vale scoffed derisively. “Not in your lifetime.” “I only associate with nonpsychotic individuals,” Vidrol agreed. “You only associate with pussy,” Vale shot back. “I haven’t associated with pussy in such a long time, I’m basically as nonperforming as you are. I might as well get a hut in the woods and start wearing unflattering robes and waxing on about how everyone’s fate belongs to the water while I howl at the moon with the rest of my weird-ass sector.” “Everything flatters me,” Vale responded calmly. “And I performed to the hilt inside the very body you went celibate for, so I can understand why you now strive to be like me.

XXIV. And more than that - a furlong on - why, there! What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, Or brake, not wheel - that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? With all the air Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel. XXV. Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood, Next a marsh it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!) within a rood - Bog, clay and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth. XXVI. Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim, Now patches where some leanness of the soil's Broke into moss, or substances like boils; Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils. XXVII. And just as far as ever from the end! Naught in the distance but the evening, naught To point my footstep further! At the thought, A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom friend, Sailed past, not best his wide wing dragon-penned That brushed my cap - perchance the guide I sought. XXVIII. For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place All round to mountains - with such name to grace Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. How thus they had surprised me - solve it, you! How to get from them was no clearer case. XXIX. Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick Of mischief happened to me, God knows when - In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click As when a trap shuts - you're inside the den. XXX. Burningly it came on me all at once, This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While to the left a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a life spent training for the sight! XXXI. What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart, Built of brown stone, without a counterpart In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf He strikes on, only when the timbers start. XXXII. Not see? because of night perhaps? - why day Came back again for that! before it left The dying sunset kindled through a cleft: The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, - Now stab and end the creature - to the heft!' XXXIII. Not hear? When noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventurers, my peers - How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years. XXXIV. There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! In a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.

Where is it, Rudolf?” she whispers, pressing herself against me. “Tell me where it is! Has a piece of me been left behind everywhere? In all the mirrors I have looked into? I have seen lots of them, countless ones! Am I scattered everywhere in them? Has each of them taken some part of me? A thin impression, a thin slice of me? Have I been shaved down by mirrors like a piece of wood by a carpenter’s plane? What is still left of me?” I take her by the shoulders. “All of you is still here,” I say. “On-the contrary, mirrors add something. They make it visible and give it to you—a bit of space, a lighted bit of our-self.” “Myself?” She continues to cling to my hand. “But suppose it is not that way? Suppose myself is buried all over in thousands and thousands of mirrors? How can I get it back? Oh, I can never get it back! It is lost! Lost! It has been rubbed away like a statue that no longer has a face. Where is my face? Where is my first face? The one before all the mirrors? The one before they began to steal me!” “No one has stolen you,” I say in desperation. “Mirrors don’t steal. They only reflect.

I’m going to tell you something, there’s country poor, and there’s city poor. As much of my life as I’d spent in front of a TV thinking Oh, man, city’s where the money trees grow, I was seeing more to the picture now. I mean yes, that is where they all grow, but plenty of people are sitting in that shade with nothing falling on them. Chartrain was always discussing “hustle,” and it took me awhile to understand he grew up hungry for money like it was food. Because for him, they’re one and the same. Not to run the man down, but he wouldn’t know a cow from a steer, or which of them gave milk. No desperate men Chartrain ever knew went out and shot venison if they were hungry. They shot liquor store cashiers. Living in the big woods made of steel and cement, without cash, is a hungrier life than I knew how to think about. I made my peace with the place, but never went a day without feeling around for things that weren’t there, the way your tongue pushes into the holes where you’ve lost teeth. I don’t just mean cows, or apple trees, it runs deeper. Weather, for instance. Air, the way it smells from having live things breathing into it, grass and trees and I don’t know what, creatures of the soil. Sounds, I missed most of all. There was noise, but nothing behind it. I couldn’t get used to the blankness where there should have been bird gossip morning and evening, crickets at night, the buzz saw of cicadas in August. A rooster always sounding off somewhere, even dead in the middle of Jonesville. It’s like the movie background music. Notice it or don’t, but if the volume goes out, the movie has no heart. I’d oftentimes have to stop and ask myself what season it was. I never realized what was holding me to my place on the planet of earth: that soundtrack. That, and leaf colors and what’s blooming in the roadside ditches this week, wild sweet peas or purple ironweed or goldenrod. And stars. A sky as dark as sleep, not this hazy pinkish business, I’m saying blind man’s black. For a lot of us, that’s medicine. Required for the daily reboot.

Always lost, always striking out in the wrong direction, always going around in circles. You have suffered from a life-long inability to orient yourself in space, and even in New York, the easiest of cities to negotiate, the city where you have spent the better part of your adulthood, you often run into trouble. Whenever you take the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan (assuming you have boarded the correct train and are not traveling deeper into Brooklyn), you make a special point to stop for a moment to get your bearings once you have climbed the stairs to the street, and still you will head north instead of south, go east instead of west, and even when you try to outsmart yourself, knowing that your handicap will set you going the wrong way and therefore, to rectify the error, you do the opposite of what you were intending to do, go left instead of right, go right instead of left, and still you find yourself moving in the wrong direction, no matter how many adjustments you have made. Forget tramping alone in the woods. You are hopelessly lost within minutes, and even indoors, whenever you find yourself in an unfamiliar building, you will walk down the wrong corridor or take the wrong elevator, not to speak of smaller enclosed spaces such as restaurants, for whenever you go to the men’s room in a restaurant that has more than one dining area, you will inevitably make a wrong turn on your way back and wind up spending several minutes searching for your table. Most other people, your wife included, with her unerring inner compass, seem to be able to get around without difficulty. They know where they are, where they have been, and where they are going, but you know nothing, you are forever lost in the moment, in the void of each successive moment that engulfs you, with no idea where true north is, since the four cardinal points do not exist for you, have never existed for you. A minor infirmity until now, with no dramatic consequences to speak of, but that doesn’t mean a day won’t come when you accidentally walk off the edge of a cliff.

This had not happened because they were evil people; it had not happened because the old gods were punishing them; it had happened because they had gotten lost in the woods, that was all, and getting lost in the woods was a thing that could happen to anybody.

Humanity gets so endlessly lost in thinking that our perception and interpretation of things is the heart of existence, as if an eel or a cloud or the Catskill mountains weren’t wholly here and in possession of themselves before we named and categorized them.

once saw a deer get hit by three arrows and keep going. It took him a whole day to die. I followed him. I lost him for a while but then found him again, tracked him farther into the woods than I’d ever been. He was weaker by then, because of the arrows the hunter hit him with. Up close he was hurt worse than I first thought and covered in blood from the battle he’d fought. When he finally fell, I walked up and knelt by him. His hair was matted and warm and slick, and his ribs were rising and falling. Long ears and velvet antlers. He blinked and gazed at me. Dark lashes, his gentle brown eyes. I put my hand on his neck. I stayed there and looked in those eyes until the last of the light went away from them and his ribs were still. Then I got up and went home. I think about that deer. I see him all the time.

Perceptive and valuable personal explorations of time alone include A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland, Party of One by Anneli Rufus, Migrations to Solitude by Sue Halpern, Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton, The Point of Vanishing by Howard Axelrod, Solitude by Robert Kull, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, The Story of My Heart by Richard Jefferies, Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton, and the incomparable Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

Why then I do but dream on sovereignty, Like one that stands upon a promontory And spies a far-off shore where he would tread, Wishing his foot were equal with his eye, And chides the sea that sunders him from thence, Saying, he'll lade it dry to have his way: So do I wish the crown, being so far off, And so I chide the means that keeps me from it, And so, I say, I'll cut the causes off, Flattering me with impossibilities, My eye's too quick, my hear o'erweens too much, Unless my hand and strength could equal them. Well, say there is no kingdom then for Richard; What other pleasure can the world afford? I'll make my heaven in a lady's lap, And deck my body in gay ornaments, And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks. O miserable thought! and more unlikely Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns! Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb; And for I should not deal in her soft laws, She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe, To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub, To make an envious mountain on my back, Where sits deformity to mock my body; To shape my legs of an unequal size, To disproportion me in every part, Like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp That carries no impression like the dam. And am I then a man to be belov'd? O monstrous fault, to harbor such a thought! Then since this earth affords no joy to me But to command, to check, to o'erbear such As are of better person than myself, I'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown, And whiles I live, t' account this world but hell, Until my misshap'd trunk that bears this head Be round impaled with a glorious crown. And yet I know not how to get the crown, For many lives stand between me and home; And I - like one lost in a thorny wood, That rents the thorns, and is rent with the thorns, Seeking a way, and straying from the way, Not knowing how to find the open air, But toiling desperately to find it out - Torment myself to catch the English crown; And from that torment I will free myself, Or hew my way out with a bloody axe. Why, I can smile, and murther whiles I smile, And cry "Content" to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, And frame my face to all occasions. I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall, I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk, I'll play the orator as well as Nestor, Deceive more slily than Ulysses could, And like a Simon, take another Troy. I can add colors to the chameleon, Change shapes with Proteus for advantages, And set the murtherous Machevil to school. Can I do this, and cannot get a crown? Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down.

The sure path to tomorrow was plotted in a manger and paved on a cross. And although this sturdy byway is mine for the taking, I have incessantly chosen lesser paths. And maybe it is time to realize that Christmas is a promise that I can walk through the world and never get lost in the woods.

from her purse. “We have to follow that car!” “But not too close,” Nancy replied. “We’d make them suspicious.” The girls waited three minutes before backing out into the main highway and then turning into the adjacent road. Though the automobile ahead had disappeared, tire prints were plainly visible. The road twisted through a stretch of wood-land. When finally the tire prints turned off into a heavily wooded narrow lane, Nancy was sure they were not far from the cabin. She parked among some trees and they went forward on foot. “There it is!” whispered Nancy, recognizing the chimney. “Bess, I want you to take my car, drive to River Heights, and look up the name of the owner of the car we just saw. Here’s the license number. “After you’ve been to the Motor Vehicle Bureau, please phone Mrs. Putney’s house. If she answers, we’ll know it wasn’t she we saw in the car. Then get hold of Dad or Ned, and bring one of them here as fast as you can. We may need help. Got it straight?” “I—I—g-guess so,” Bess answered. “Hurry back! No telling what may happen while you’re away.” The two watched as Nancy’s car rounded a bend and was lost to view. Then Nancy and George walked swiftly through the woods toward the cabin. Approaching the building, Nancy and George were amazed to find that no car was parked on the road in front. “How do you figure it?” George whispered as the girls crouched behind bushes. “We certainly saw tire marks leading into this road!” “Yes, but the car that passed may have gone on without stopping. Possibly the driver saw us and changed her plans. Wait here, and watch the cabin while I check the tire marks out at the

You're never lost. You always know exactly where you are. You're right here. It's just that sometimes you've misplaced your destination. Brian W. Porter 2005 Have you ever wondered how the computer you're using got to the store? How about your medicines, the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the furniture, the plants in the garden center? Do they have a railroad right there? Does merchandise magically appear? Only if you grow your own food, make your own clothes, make your own tools, cut your own wood, and make your own furniture, can you get away from trucking. Everything you see, even the nature outside in some places, has been on at least one truck.

His voice grew more remote. She wondered if he was calling from his condominium, where he’d lost his best friend, or from Avalon, where he’d lost himself. “I like you, Billie. You’re a nice person. Good company. But tonight was a mistake.” She flung an arm over her eyes and swallowed the lump of tears that had lodged in her throat. “Oh? Which part? The part where you introduced me to your family and exposed yourself as coming from a perfectly average, wholesome background? Or the part where you touched me and turned me inside-out while swaying in a hammock in the rich, beautiful woods—one of the most searing sexual experiences of my life? Which part do you regret, Adrian?” “All of it. I can’t have those things with you. You know what I am.” “Yes, Adrian, I know what you are. A gentle man. A likable one. Smart. Cultured. Sexy. I know what you are.” “But the other part—” “What about the other part? You hide behind the other part.” She yanked the pillow out from beneath her head and winged it across the bedroom, furious suddenly. “Did you call to tell me I’m not going to see you anymore? Because if that’s the case, hurry up and say it. Then hang up and go back to work, and don’t worry one bit about me. I’ve been on my own a long time, and I’m tougher than you think. I won’t cling to any man who’d rather be a-a—” She stumbled, bit back the ugly words rushing to her lips. “A what?” he countered softly. “A whore? A gigolo? Go ahead and say it, Billie. If you’re going to waste your time caring about me, then you’d better get used to the idea, because I can’t change. I won’t. Not for you or anyone.” She bit back a sound of pure derision. “How about for you? Think you could walk the straight and narrow for yourself?” He didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. Billie already knew the answer. “You’re afraid.” She sat up among the sheets as cold realization washed through her. “Afraid to live without women clambering to pay top dollar for you. All that money…it’s a measure of your value, right? It’s your self-esteem. What would happen if you were paid in love instead of cash? Would the world end? My God, Adrian. You’re running scared.” The half-whispered accusation seemed to permeate his impassivity. “I was fine before you.” His voice came low and furious. Finally, finally. True emotion. “Damn it, Billie. I want my life back.” “Then hang up and don’t call me again, because I’m not going to pay you for sex, Adrian. What I offer is a worthless currency in your world.

Cassie’s eyes. “Thank you,” she said. She didn’t get up to see us out, and I realized it was because she wasn’t sure she could do it. As I closed the door I caught a last glimpse of her through the round window, still sitting straight-backed and motionless with her hands folded in her lap: a queen in a fairy tale, left alone in her tower to mourn her lost, witch-stolen princess.

Martin Luther. Luther argued: I have brought up a daughter with great expense and effort, care and peril, diligence and labor, and for many years I have ventured my entire life, my person and possessions, in the undertaking. . . . And now she is not to be better protected for me than my cow, lost in the woods, which any wolf may devour? Who would approve of this? Likewise, is my child to stand there free for all, so that any knave, unknown to me, or perhaps even a former enemy of mine, has the power and the unlimited opportunity secretly to steal her from me and take her away without my knowledge and will? There certainly is no one who would want to let his money and goods stand open to the public in this way, so that they may be taken by the first comer. But now the knave takes not only my money and goods, but my child whom I have brought up with painful care; and with my daughter he gets my goods and money besides. And so I must reward him for the grief and harm he has caused me and must let him be the heir of the possessions I have acquired with pains and labor. Surely, this is rewarding wickedness with honor; this is inviting grief and injury.2

Out there in the woods, there’s no one to impress and no one to judge you. The only people you’ll see are your fellow hikers, and they don’t care what you look like, or what you wear. It’s when you get past this attitude of judging people by their surface appearance that you’re able to genuinely get to know someone on a deeper, more personal level. This is why relationships formed on the trail are so strong. In

None of us have ever left the borders of this forest, we do not know the way out of it. And to have found yourself here, this means you are lost in the woods, too – if you were to follow the stream backwards, you would never find the place where you entered it, as the water have erased your tracks and the forest have changed, so really you can only get out of it by chance, if you are to ever get out of here alive.

What do people do with their lives? I mean seriously, literally, hour for hour, what does everyone do? When I was at school I felt perfectly ordinary, just like anyone else, but now it is as if I have forgotten how. I have to do impersonations of a real human being to fit in anywhere or even get served in the supermarket. I have lost my instinct and taste for life, and my days feel like eating with a cold now, knowing you need soup, swallowing, not being able to taste it.

All kinds of people have completed thru-hikes. One man hiked it in his eighties. Another did it on crutches. A blind man named Bill Irwin hiked the trail with a seeing-eye dog, falling down an estimated 5,000 times in the process. Probably the most famous, certainly the most written about, of all thru-hikers was Emma "Grandma" Gatewood, who successfully hiked the trail twice in her late sixties despite being eccentric, poorly equipped, and a danger to herself. (She was forever getting lost.)

He roars, “What have you done?” I don’t answer. My heart beats crazy happy just to see her get across the iron. She’s not burned. She’s still human. “Zara.” His voice is measured. “I need her to maintain control.” “You don’t need to be in control. You’re all trapped. So there’ll be no more stealing boys, no more shooting arrows in the woods, getting people lost. It’s all over.” The metal is cold on my fingers. Devyn grabs more wire, starts another flight. A group of pixies leaps for him, screaming, a wild, chaotic mess. They start clawing at each other, lost in fear and hunger, angry. A pixie in a pink dress shrieks when another wearing a black gown lashes at her, slashing through the skin on her arm. “Zara?” The king tries to be calm and nice. He tries to look human. It doesn’t work. “Do you know what this means? Do you know the power that I’ll lose? The need? We will fight in here. We will kill each other.” “I know,” I say and my voice shakes as I stare at him, this man who is in my blood, but not me. He is not me. Still, I understand his need, his fear. He is stuck in this awful place where there is no moral way to move forward. “I’m so sorry.” And I am.

Lost In The World" (feat. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver) [Sample From "Woods": Justin Vernon] I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind I'm building a still to slow down the time I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind I'm building a still to slow down the time I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind I'm building a still to slow down the time [Chorus 2x:] I'm lost in the world, I'm down on my mind I'm new in the city, and I'm down for the night Down for the night Said she's down for the night [Kanye West:] You're my devil, you're my angel You're my heaven, you're my hell You're my now, you're my forever You're my freedom, you're my jail You're my lies, you're my truth You're my war, you're my truce You're my questions, you're my proof You're my stress and you're my masseuse Mama-say mama-say ma-ma-coo-sah Lost in this plastic life, Let's break out of this fake ass party Turn this into a classic night If we die in each other's arms we still get laid in the afterlife If we die in each other's arms we still get laid [Chorus:] (I'm lost in the world) Run from the lights, run from the night, (I'm down on my mind) Run for your life, I'm new in the city, and I'm down for the night Down for the night Down for the night I'm lost in the world, been down for my whole life, I'm new in the city but I'm down for the night Down for the night Down for the night Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? [Chorus:] I'm lost in the world, I'm down on my mind I'm new in the city, and I'm down for the night Down for the night Said she's down for the night I'm lost in the world, I'm down on my mind I'm new in the city and I'm goin' for a ride Goin' for a ride I'm lost in the world, been down for my whole life I'm new in the city but I'm down the for the night Down for a night, down for a good time [Gil-Scott Heron:] Us living as we do upside down. And the new word to have is revolution. People don't even want to hear the preacher spill or spiel because God's whole card has been thoroughly piqued. And America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey. The youngsters who were programmed to continue fucking up woke up one night digging Paul Revere and Nat Turner as the good guys. America stripped for bed and we had not all yet closed our eyes. The signs of truth were tattooed across our open ended vagina. We learned to our amazement the untold tale of scandal. Two long centuries buried in the musty vault, hosed down daily with a gagging perfume. America was a bastard, the illegitimate daughter of the mother country whose legs were then spread around the world and a rapist known as freedom, free doom. Democracy, liberty, and justice were revolutionary code names that preceded the bubbling bubbling bubbling bubbling bubbling in the mother country's crotch What does Webster say about soul? All I want is a good home and a wife And our children and some food to feed them every night. After all is said and done build a new route to China if they'll have you. Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America?

Too many of my friends are dead, and others wrecked By various diseases of the intellect Or failing body. How am I still upright? And even I sleep half the day, cough half the night. How did it come to this? How else but through The course of years, and what its workings do To wood, stone, glass and almost all the metals, Smouldering already in the fresh rose petals. Our energy deceived us. Blessed with the knack To get things done, we thought to get it back Each time we lost it, just by taking breath — And some of us are racing yet as we face death. Well, good to see you. Sorry I have to fly. I’m struggling with a deadline, God knows why, And ghosts keep interrupting. Think of me The way I do of you. Quite often. Constantly.

Walking in circles Dr. Jan Souman, of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, studied what happens to us when we have no map, no compass, no way to determine landmarks. I’m not talking about a metaphor—he researched what happens to people lost in the woods or stumbling around the Sahara, with no north star, no setting sun to guide them. It turns out we walk in circles. Try as we might to walk in a straight line, to get out of the forest or the desert, we end up back where we started. Our instincts aren’t enough. In the words of Dr. Souman, “Don’t trust your senses because even though you might think you are walking in a straight line when you’re not.” Human nature is to need a map. If you’re brave enough to draw one, people will follow.

In everyday life we must often act without delay, it is a most certain truth that when it is not in our power to discern the truest opinions, we must follow the most probable." (Discourse III, AT VI: 25/CSM I: 123) [Descartes discusses a traveler lost in a forest to illustrate this. The traveler is lost, and he does not know how to get out of the woods. Descartes’ advice is that the traveler should pick a route, even if it is uncertain, and resolutely stick to it: "Keep walking as straight as he can in one direction, never changing it for slight reasons even if mere chance made him choose it in the first place; for in this way, even if he does not go exactly where he wishes, he will at least end up in a place where he is likely to be better off than in the middle of a forest." (Ibid.)]

We were both seniors in college when we learned she had cancer. By then we weren’t at St. Thomas anymore. We’d both transferred to the University of Minnesota after that first year—she to the Duluth campus, I to the one in Minneapolis—and, much to our amusement, we shared a major. She was double majoring in women’s studies and history, I in women’s studies and English. At night, we’d talk for an hour on the phone. I was married by then, to a good man named Paul. I’d married him in the woods on our land, wearing a white satin and lace dress my mother had sewn. After she got sick, I folded my life down. I told Paul not to count on me. I would have to come and go according to my mother’s needs. I wanted to quit school, but my mother ordered me not to, begging me, no matter what happened, to get my degree. She herself took what she called a break. She only needed to complete a couple more classes to graduate, and she would, she told me. She would get her BA if it killed her, she said, and we laughed and then looked at each other darkly. She’d do the work from her bed. She’d tell me what to type and I’d type it. She would be strong enough to start in on those last two classes soon, she absolutely knew. I stayed in school, though I convinced my professors to allow me to be in class only two days each week. As soon as those two days were over, I raced home to be with my mother. Unlike Leif and Karen, who could hardly bear to be in our mother’s presence once she got sick, I couldn’t bear to be away from her. Plus, I was needed. Eddie was with her when he could be, but he had to work. Someone had to pay the bills.

AUTUMN WAS COMING; the evergreens might not have noticed, but the sycamores did. They flashed thousands of golden leaves across slate-gray skies. Late one afternoon, after the lesson, Tate lingering when he should have left, he and Kya sat on a log in the woods. She finally asked the question she’d wanted to ask for months. “Tate, I appreciate your teaching me to read and all those things you gave me. But why’d you do it? Don’t you have a girlfriend or somebody like that?” “Nah—well, sometimes I do. I had one, but not now. I like being out here in the quiet and I like the way you’re so interested in the marsh, Kya. Most people don’t pay it any attention except to fish. They think it’s wasteland that should be drained and developed. People don’t understand that most sea creatures—including the very ones they eat—need the marsh.” He didn’t mention how he felt sorry for her being alone, that he knew how the kids had treated her for years; how the villagers called her the Marsh Girl and made up stories about her. Sneaking out to her shack, running through the dark and tagging it, had become a regular tradition, an initiation for boys becoming men. What did that say about men? Some of them were already making bets about who would be the first to get her cherry. Things that infuriated and worried him. But that wasn’t the main reason he’d left feathers for Kya in the forest, or why he kept coming to see her. The other words Tate didn’t say were his feelings for her that seemed tangled up between the sweet love for a lost sister and the fiery love for a girl. He couldn’t come close to sorting it out himself, but he’d never been hit by a stronger wave. A power of emotions as painful as pleasurable.

In the Mountains, they cooked, too. Joe Godwin made liquor in Muscadine. Moe Shealey made it in Mineral Springs. Junior McMahan had a still in ragland. Fred and Alton Dryden made liquor in Tallapoosa, and Eulis Parker made it on Terrapin Creek. Wayne Glass knew their faces because he drove it, and made more money hauling liquor than he ever made at the cotton mill. He loaded the gallon cans into his car in the deep woods and dodged sheriffs and federal men to get it to men like Robert Kilgore, the bootlegger who sold whiskey from a house in Weaver, about ten minutes south of Jacksonville. "I could haul a hundred and fifty gallons in a Flathead Ford, at thirty-five dollars a load," he said. Wayne lost the end of one finger in the mill, but he was bulletproof when he was running liquor, and only did time once, for conspiracy. "They couldn't catch me haulin' liquor," he said, "so they got me for thinkin' about it.

One day Lot went into Sodom, took office, tried to reform the evil city, succeeded in vexing his righteous, but unspiritual soul with the filthy conversation of the wicked, got down to the level of the natural man, lost his testimony and seemed to his friends and intimates like a madman or the most excuselessly inconsistent trifler when he attempted to take up once more his damaged testimony. Then there was a night when God’s angels came and snatched him out of the doomed city. The next morning the fire of God fell and Lot “saved so as by fire” looked on at the blaze and the burning of all his works of righteousness as wood hay and stubble, big in bulk but rejected of God. Looking forward to His Second Coming and backward for an illustration the Son of God declared as it was in the days of Lot so should it be when the Son of man should come again. There are good and righteous Christians—righteous enough but wholly unspiritual who are seeking to make spotless town of a world God has judged and doomed, failing to see the cross is not only the judgment of the individual, but equally the judgment of the world; that not only does the cross reveal the end of all flesh but the end in God’s sight of that system of things which men call the world; that on the cross the world is crucified to the Christian and the Christian to the world; and failing to see this, failing to get the mind of God are daily descending to the plane of the natural man, are losing and in many cases deliberately setting aside the testimony once for all delivered to the saints. Without warning, they will be snatched away to meet a descending Lord (if they be real and regenerated Christians) and this alone because their faith be it never so small holds them securely in the bonds of the covenant. After that the Lord will be revealed in flaming fire to execute judgment on the world and all the works of misguided social reformers because these works are built, not upon the righteousness of God, but the righteousness of man.

I’m sorry,” said Peter. “It’s my fault for coming this way. We’re lost. I’ve never seen this place in my life before.” The Dwarf gave a low whistle between his teeth. “Oh, do let’s go back and go the other way,” said Susan. “I knew all along we’d get lost in these woods.” “Susan!” said Lucy, reproachfully, “don’t nag at Peter like that. It’s so rotten, and he’s doing all he can.” “And don’t you snap at Su like that, either,” said Edmund. “I think she’s quite right.” “Tubs and tortoiseshells!” exclaimed Trumpkin. “If we’ve got lost coming, what chance have we of finding our way back? And if we’re to go back to the Island and begin all over again--even supposing we could--we might as well give the whole thing up. Miraz will have finished with Caspian before we get there at that rate.” “You think we ought to go on?” said Lucy. “I’m not sure the High King is lost,” said Trumpkin. “What’s to hinder this river being the Rush?” “Because the Rush is not in a gorge,” said Peter, keeping his temper with some difficulty.

My form master in 4B1, Snappy Priestman, was a gentle man, cultivated, kind and civilized except when he (very occasionally) lost his temper. Even then, there was something oddly gentlemanly about the way he did it. In one of his lessons he caught a boy misbehaving. After a lull when nothing happened, he began to give us verbal warning of his escalating internal fury, speaking quite calmly as an objective observer of his own internal state. Oh dear. I can't hold it. I'm going to lose my temper. Get down below your desks. I'm warning you. It's coming. Get down below your desks. As his voice rose in a steady crescendo he was becoming increasingly red in the face, and he finally picked up everything within reach - chalk, inkpots, books, wood-backed blackboard erasers - and hurled them, with the utmost ferocity, towards the miscreant. Next day he was charm itself, apologizing briefly but graciously to the same boy. He was a kind gentleman provoked beyond endurance - as who would not be in his profession? Who would not be in mine, for that matter?

Did you know I always thought you were braver than me? Did you ever guess that that was why I was so afraid? It wasn’t that I only loved some of you. But I wondered if you could ever love more than some of me. I knew I’d miss you. But the surprising thing is, you never leave me. I never forget a thing. Every kind of love, it seems, is the only one. It doesn’t happen twice. And I never expected that you could have a broken heart and love with it too, so much that it doesn’t seem broken at all. I know young people look at me and think my youth seems so far away. But it’s all around me, and you’re all around me. Tiger Lily, do you think magic exists if it can be explained? I can explain why I loved you, I can explain the theory of evolution that tells me why mermaids live in Neverland and nowhere else. But it still feels magic. The lost boys all stood at our wedding. Does it seem odd to you that they could have stood at a wedding that wasn’t yours and mine? It does to me. And I’m sorry for it, and for a lot, and I also wouldn’t change it. It is so quiet here. Even with all the trains and the streets and the people. It’s nothing like the jungle. The boys have grown. Everything has grown. Do you think you will ever grow? I hope not. I like to think that even if I change and fade away, some other people won’t. I like to think that one day after I die, at least one small particle of me—of all the particles that will spread everywhere—will float all the way to Neverland, and be part of a flower or something like that, like that poet said, the one that your Tik Tok loved. I like to think that nothing’s final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don’t, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I’ll see you sometime again, even if it’s not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the way things go after all—that all things end happy. Even for you and Tik Tok. And for you and me. Always, Your Peter P.S. Please give my love to Tink. She was always such a funny little bug.

By the time I arrived in the town of Mojave, California, on the night before I began hiking the PCT, I’d shot out of Minnesota for the last time. I’d even told my mother that, not that she could hear. I’d sat in the flowerbed in the woods on our land, where Eddie, Paul, my siblings, and I had mixed her ashes in with the dirt and laid a tombstone, and explained to her that I wasn’t going to be around to tend her grave anymore. Which meant that no one would. I finally had no choice but to leave her grave to go back to the weeds and blown-down tree branches and fallen pinecones. To snow and whatever the ants and deer and black bears and ground wasps wanted to do with her. I lay down in the mother ash dirt among the crocuses and told her it was okay. That I’d surrendered. That since she died, everything had changed. Things she couldn’t have imagined and wouldn’t have guessed. My words came out low and steadfast. I was so sad it felt as if someone were choking me, and yet it seemed my whole life depended on my getting those words out. She would always be my mother, I told her, but I had to go. She wasn’t there for me in that flowerbed anymore anyway, I explained. I’d put her somewhere else. The only place I could reach her. In me.

I suggest you stand slowly and walk out with my men,” Zrakovi said, tapping a napkin against his lying, two-faced mouth and putting a twenty on the table to cover the drinks. “If you make a scene, innocent humans will be injured. I have a Blue Congress cleanup team in place, however, so if you want to fight in public and damage a few humans, knock yourself out. It will only add to your list of crimes.” I stood slowly, gritting my teeth when Squirrel Chin patted me down while feeling me up and making it look like a romantic moment. He’d been so busy feeling the naughty bits that he missed both Charlie, sitting in my bag next to my foot, and the dagger attached to my inner forearm. Idiot. Alex would never have been so sloppy. If Alex had patted me down, he’d have found not only the weapons but also the portable magic kit. From the corner of my eye, I saw a tourist taking mobile phone shots of us. He’d no doubt email them to all his friends back home with stories of those crazy New Orleanians and their public displays of affection. I considered pretending to faint, but I was too badly outnumbered for it to work. Like my friend Jean Lafitte, whose help I could use about now, I didn’t want to try something unless it had a reasonable chance at succeeding. I also didn’t want to pull Charlie out and risk humans getting hurt. “Walk out the door onto Chartres and turn straight toward the cathedral.” Zrakovi pulled his jacket aside enough for me to see a shoulder holster. I hadn’t even known the man could hold a gun, although for all I knew about guns it could be a water pistol. The walk to the cathedral transport was three very long city blocks. My best escape opportunity would be near Jackson Square. When the muscular goons tried to turn me left toward the cathedral, I’d try to break and run right toward the river, where I could get lost among the wharves and docks long enough to draw and power a transport. Of course in order to run, I’d have to get away from the clinch of Dreadlocks and Squirrel Chin. Charlie could take care of that. I slipped the messenger bag over my head slowly, and not even Zrakovi noticed the stick of wood protruding from the top by a couple of inches. Not to be redundant, but . . . idiots. None of us spoke as we proceeded down Chartres Street, where, to our south, the clouds continued to build. The wind had grown stronger and drier. The hurricane was sucking all the humidity out of the air, all the better to gain intensity. I hoped Zrakovi, a Bostonian, would enjoy his first storm. I hoped a live oak landed on his head.

She picked up a piece that looked like the arm of the chair, gasping as she turned it over. “Scorch marks,” she whispered. The wood slipped from her hand as the nightmares took over. You’re safe, Fitz transmitted, filling her mind with a soft thread of warmth. Their thumb rings snapped together as he pulled her gently away from the pile of wood. “I told you this would be a bad idea,” Mr. Forkle said, kicking a broken board into the wall. “I’m fine,” Sophie promised. “I just . . . need to get out of this room.” Fitz helped her wobble back to the hall and she sank to the floor, putting her head between her knees to stop the spinning. Want me to carry you out? Fitz offered. NO! The thought was so loud he jumped. Sorry. I . . . I don’t want to be carried out of here again, like some helpless little girl. No one would ever call you helpless. But I get what you mean. Is there anything I can do? You’re here. He tightened his hold on her hands. “Are we ready to go?” Mr. Forkle asked. Sophie closed her eyes, focusing on tying the threads of panic away with her other emotions. The knot in her chest swelled so huge, it felt like it was pressing on her heart. But after a few slow breaths, she could bear it. “There’s still more to the hideout, isn’t there?” she asked. “Only the old entrance,” Mr. Forkle said. “But it’s nothing worth seeing. Just an empty room with a collapsed tunnel.

I dreamt of a City to the West of here,” Dixon tries to recall, scrying in his Coffee-Mug, the wind blowing Wood-smoke in his eyes, “at some great Confluence of Rivers, or upon a Harbor in some inland Sea,— a large City,— busy, prospering, sacred.” “A Sylvan Philadelphia. . . .” “Well . . . well yes, now tha put it thah’ way,— ” “I hope you are prepar’d for the possibility, that waking Philadelphia is as sacred as anything over here will ever get, Dixon,— observe you not, as we move West, more and more of those Forces, which Cities upon Coasts have learn’d to push away, and leave to Back Inhabitants,— the Lightning, the Winter, an Indifference to Pain, not to mention Fire, Blood, and so forth, all measur’d upon a Scale far from Philadelphian,— whereunto we, and our Royal Commission, and our battery of costly Instruments, are but Fleas in the Flea Circus. We trespass, each day ever more deeply, into a world of less restraint in ev’rything,— no law, no convergence upon any idea of how life is to be,— an Interior that grows meanwhile ever more forested, more savage and perilous, until,— perhaps at the very Longitude of your ‘City,’— we must reach at last an Anti-City,— some concentration of Fate,— some final condition of Abandonment,— wherein all are unredeemably alone and at Hazard as deep as their souls may bear,— lost Creatures that make the very Seneca seem Christian and merciful.

I dreamt of a City to the West of here,” Dixon tries to recall, scrying in his Coffee-Mug, the wind blowing Wood-smoke in his eyes, “at some great Confluence of Rivers, or upon a Harbor in some inland Sea,— a large City,— busy, prospering, sacred.” “A Sylvan Philadelphia. . . .” “Well . . . well yes, now tha put it thah’ way,— ” “I hope you are prepar’d for the possibility, that waking Philadelphia is as sacred as anything over here will ever get, Dixon,— observe you not, as we move West, more and more of those Forces, which Cities upon Coasts have learn’d to push away, and leave to Back Inhabitants,— the Lightning, the Winter, an Indifference to Pain, not to mention Fire, Blood, and so forth, all measur’d upon a Scale far from Philadelphian,— whereunto we, and our Royal Commission, and our battery of costly Instruments, are but Fleas in the Flea Circus. We trespass, each day ever more deeply, into a world of less restraint in ev’rything,— no law, no convergence upon any idea of how life is to be,— an Interior that grows meanwhile ever more forested, more savage and perilous, until,— perhaps at the very Longitude of your ‘City,’— we must reach at last an Anti-City,— some concentration of Fate,— some final condition of Abandonment,— wherein all are unredeemably alone and at Hazard as deep as their souls may bear,— lost Creatures that make the very Seneca seem Christian and merciful.” “Eeh, chirpy today . . . ?

DITCHING SESSIONS AND OTHER DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR 5 out of 10 None. I’m not going to bother documenting all of the reports I’ve gotten about Keefe’s recent behavior (or any of the other prodigies currently acting up.) Nor am I allowing any punishment to be assigned. The plantings for Sophie Foster and Dex Dizznee were only a few days ago and everyone needs more time to process their shock and grief—particularly Keefe, who seemed inconsolable when I saw him in the Wanderling Woods. —Dame Alina LEVEL FIVE VIOLATION SERIOUSNESS SENTENCE PRINCIPAL’S COMMENTS DITCHING THE UNIVERSE According to a report from the gnomes, Keefe was found in the Mentors’ private cafeteria again, covered in butterblast crumbs. 2 out of 10 One detention assigned. First day of sessions and Keefe’s ditching again. I definitely should’ve tried to get him assigned to a different session. But the Council’s been busy since Sophie Foster and Dex Dizznee returned. I still can’t believe anyone would capture children—and I don’t want to think about what Sophie and Dex endured. Our world is changing.… —Dame Alina VIOLATION SERIOUSNESS SENTENCE PRINCIPAL’S COMMENTS DISRUPTING STUDY HALL According to a report from Sir Rosings, Keefe was talking to Sophie Foster during detention—and made a “sassy” reply when Sir Rosings called them out. When Keefe continued to talk, Sir Rosings gave them both detention. (Keefe apparently looked excited by the prospect. Sophie less so.) 1 out of 10 One detention detention assigned. Honestly, this seems a somewhat minor offense, considering the theatrics Keefe usually pulls. But I respect Sir Rosings’s decision. —Dame Alina Update: Keefe’s detention (and Sophie’s as well) was postponed a day after he injured his hand in Elementalism while trying to bottle a tornado. (Sophie apparently had some trouble in her inflicting session as well.)

Did you know I always thought you were braver than me? Did you ever guess that that was why I was so afraid? It wasn't that I only loved some of you. But I wondered if you could ever love more than some of me. I knew I'd miss you. But the surprising thing is, you never leave me. I never forget a thing. Every kind of love, it seems, is the only one. It doesn't happen twice. And I never expected that you could have a broken heart and love with it too, so much that it doesn't seem broken at all. I know young people look at me and think my youth seems so far away, but it's all around me, and you're all around me. Tiger Lily, do you think magic exists if it can be explained? I can explain why I loved you, I can explain the theory of evolution that tells me why mermaids live in Neverland and nowhere else. But it still feels magic. The lost boys all stood at our wedding. Does it seem odd to you that they could have stood at a wedding that wasn't yours and mine? It does to me. and I'm sorry for it, and for a lot, and I also wouldn't change it. It is so quiet here. Even with all the trains and the streets and the people. It's nothing like the jungle. The boys have grown. Everything has grown. Do you think you will ever grow? I hope not. I like to think that even if I change and fade away, some other people won't. I like to think that one day after I die, at least one small particle of me - of all the particles that will spread everywhere - will float all the way to Neverland, and be part of a flower or something like that, like that poet said, the one that your Tik Tok loved. I like to think that nothing's final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don't, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I'll see you sometime again, even if it's not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the way things go after all - that all things end happy. Even for you and Tik Tok. and for you and me. Always, Your Peter

We’re talking now of late August evenings in Minnesota. That world consists of the din of lawn mower blades turning in raucous slicing circles like buzzards over prey, the throb of a racing boat’s outboard motor on the Lake. Garden hoses run with cool water and wash over the last flowers of the year before the autumn turns all the green to brown. In the afternoons, children run through sprinklers on the lawn and men burn piles of last autumn’s leaves. Mothers prepare suppers and read novels under the shade of summer hats, carefully watching over their children from afar. All is safe and good in the summer. But Thom Algonquin can no longer hear the lawn mowers humming, boat motors churning, the hoses splashing or the children playing. He doesn’t smell the leaves burning or help his mother prepare supper. Thom Algonquin is seven years old and he has walked too far into the woods near his home on Lake Superior. He hears nothing save the sound of sunlight and trees, birds, and his own feet pattering along atop the underbrush. He is not so sure he can hear these things exactly though. It has now become clear to him that he has gone too far, too deep into the old woods. He is accustomed to going a little farther than his mother allowed, but he has walked miles past that line now. Though his heart races he does not scream or run or cry. He looks around for home but each direction is identical to the others. He remembers his Cub Scout manual saying that moss grows on the northern side of tree trunks because there is less sunlight. But the aspen trees have no moss on them at all, and the big white oaks have moss on every side of their trunks. He holds his breath and listens. He hears his heart beat, and somewhere behind that, he hears water, waves and lapping tides. The Lake. He can always find home from the Lake. His father told him to simply keep the water on his left hand and walk until he is home, should he ever get lost. Thom moves toward the sound of water. He walks quickly but doesn’t run, doesn’t panic. If he runs he will know that something is wrong and that he is scared. He does not want to know these things, does not want them to become real, so he walks quickly but calmly.

Just above Tommy’s face were the Maiden and the Troll, two of his oldest wall people. The troll lived in a cave deep in the woods. He was big (Tommy knew the troll was even bigger than his daddy, and if the troll told his daddy to sit down and shut up, he would in a second), and he looked scary, with his little eyes and crooked teeth like fangs, but he had a secret. The secret was that he wasn’t scary at all. He liked to read, and play chess by mail with a gnome from over by the closet wall, and he never killed anything. The troll was a good troll, but everyone judged him by his looks. And that, Tommy knew, was a mean thing to do, though everyone did it. The maiden was very beautiful. Even more beautiful than Tommy’s mommy. She had long blonde hair that fell in heavy curls to her waist, and big blue eyes, and she always smiled even though her family was poor. She came into the woods near the troll’s cave to get water from a spring, for her family. The spring bubbled out of Tommy’s wall right next to where his hand lay when he was asleep. Sometimes she only came and filled her jug and left. But other times she would sit awhile, and sing songs of love lost, and sailing ships, and the kings and queens of Elfland. And the troll, so hideous and so kind, would listen to her soft voice from the shadows just inside the entrance of his cave, which sat just below the shelf where Tommy kept his favorite toys and books. Tommy felt bad for the troll. He loved the maiden who came to his spring, but she would never love him. He knew from listening to his parents and the stuff they watched on television when he was supposed to be asleep that beautiful people didn’t love ugly people. Ugly people were either to laugh at or to be frightened of. That was how the whole world worked. Tommy rolled over on his side, just a small seven year old boy in tan cargo shorts and a plain white T-shirt. He let his eyes drift over the bedroom wall, which was lumpy in some places and just gone in others. There was a part of the wall down near the floor where he could see the yellow light of the naked bulb down in the basement, and sometimes he wondered what might live down there. Nothing good, of that he was sure.

There is a show tonight in the Highwood, John. There will be all sorts of people to play music there. We must go tonight to the Highwood, john. we'll breathe in the music and the cold-starred air. * And Cornelius has taken down the moon - hasn't he? - with gleam-of-eye and giddying snout and his touch on the wheel is delicate as the spring, here a soft tip, there a glanced tap for each swerve of the road as it runs the country and turns. Oh this is the knack of it - John can see clearly now - the carefree life, and he envies him the spring. And before we know it, John? The summer proper will be in on top of us and the woods will be whispering. Fuck the whispering woods, Cornelius. Just get me to my fucking island. But he is snagged again; he turns helplessly. How'd you mean, about the woods? Cornelius beams - There are things we can't describe, he says. Go on? What we see around us is only at the ten per cent level, John. Of? The reality. And what's the leftover? Unseen. How'd you mean? Well, he says. The way sometimes you'd walk across a field and a sense of elation would come over you. Are you with me? Okay... You're half risen from the skin. the feet are not touching the stones. The little heart is about to hop out of your chest from the sheer fucken joy. And the strange thing about it? Go on. That patch of happiness could be floating around the field for the last ten years. Or for the last three hundred and fifty years. Out of love that was had there or a child that was playing or an old friend that was found again after a long time lost. Whatever it was, it caused a great happy feeling and it was left there in the field. You're after walking into it. And for half a minute you're lifted and soaring but then you're out the far side again and back into your own poor stride and woes. You'd find a sadness just the same? Or an evil, John. Or a blackness. Or terror, John, or fucken terror, because there's plenty of terror in the world. Always was and has been. A soft whisper - I mean take a look out the window. A sweep of the arm for the greys and sea-greens of the moonful hills, the pale night as they pass by - I mean why'd you think I've the fucken foot down, John?

Seven Versions" 1. The Kiss Massive languor, languor hammered; Sentient languor, languor dissected; Languor deserted, reignite your sidereal fires; Holier languor, arise from love. The wood’s owl has come home. 2. Beyond Sunlight I can’t shakle one of your ankles as if you were a falcon, but nothing can prevent me from following, no matter how far, even beyond sunlight where Jesus becomes visible: I’ll follow, I will wait, I will never give up until I understand why you are going away from me. 3. A Man Wound His Watch In the darkness the man wound his watch before secreting it under his pillow. Then he went to sleep. Outside, the wind was blowing. You who comprehend the repercussions of the faintest gesture—you will understand. A man, his watch, the wind. What else is there? 4. For Which There Is No Name Let me have what the tree has and what it can never lose, let me have it and lose it again, blurred lines the wind draws with the darkness it gets from summer nights, formless indescribable darkness. Either give me back my gladness, or the courage to think about how it was lost to me. Give me back, not what I see, but my sight. Let me meet you again owning nothing but what is in the past. Let me inherit the very thing I am forbidden. And let me continue to seek, though I know it is futile, the only heaven that I could endure: unhurting you. 5. The Composer People said he was overly fond of the good life and ate like a pig. Yet the servant who brought him his chocolate in bed would sometimes find him weeping quietly, both plump pink hands raised slightly and conducting, evidently, in small brief genuflective feints. He experienced the reality of death as music. 6. Detoxification And I refuse to repent of my drug use. It gave me my finest and happiest hours. And I have been wondering: will I use drugs again? I will if my work wants me to. And if drugs want me to. 7. And Suddenlty It’s Night You stand there alone, like everyone else, the center of the world’s attention, a ray of sunlight passing through you. And suddenly it’s night. Franz Wright, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, Vol I Issue I . (May 15th, 2011) The individual sections of “Seven Versions” ia based, loosely—some very loosely—on poems by Rene Char, Rumi, Yannis Ritsos, Natan Zach, Günther Eich, Jean Cocteau, and Salvatore Quasimodo.

You’re like a nuclear missile, you’re dropped somewhere and cause devastation all around. You’ve always been that way. And I figured you’d come here and just fucking destroy everything that stood against me, like you do all the time. I wanted to tell you, I really did, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk you saying no, to the whole plan going out the window.” I got off Galahad, who adjusted his suit, but didn’t bother getting back to his feet. “Do you even know what Simon was here for?” “No, although we will. A few years in a dungeon will loosen his tongue a little.” “I never thought you’d be on the receiving end of my anger,” I said softly. “I always thought you’d be honest with me. That you knew how I felt after leaving Merlin, leaving behind the lies and manipulations. But I was wrong. You’re just shittier at it than he was.” “I have more important things to do than lament whatever has broken in our friendship,” he said, anger leaking from every syllable. “I think you should leave this city and this state.” “You’re having me kicked out?” Galahad shook his head. “I’ll be putting Bill Moon in charge of the investigation into what happened here. We’ll make things more palatable for the humans living here, and then we’ll be taking Simon back to Shadow Falls.” “And Rean?” “He has refused my aid and vanished with his remaining colony into the woods. Nine out of twenty-two died today, I doubt he wishes to involve himself with the affairs of anyone other than his colony.” “You lost two allies in space of a day and damaged your reputation as a ruler who takes care of his own. Congrats. You must be very proud.” “I think we’re done here,” he said and got back to his feet once more. I took a step toward him and I noticed something in his expression. Fear. But not fear of me, Galahad would never have been scared of me, but maybe the fear of what had been lost between us, and my anger evaporated, replaced with sadness. “Galahad, you should know something,” I said, gaining his attention as he walked off toward the house. He stopped at the open door and glanced back at me. “What is it?” “I’m not a nuclear bomb, I’m a scalpel. I cut away the tumors and diseased flesh that threatens to consume everything. So, you need to be very careful that during your reign, you don’t become something that requires my utmost attention.” And with that, I turned and walked away.

Perceptive and valuable personal explorations of time alone include A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland, Party of One by Anneli Rufus, Migrations to Solitude by Sue Halpern, Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton, The Point of Vanishing by Howard Axelrod, Solitude by Robert Kull, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, The Story of My Heart by Richard Jefferies, Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton, and the incomparable Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Adventure tales offering superb insight into solitude, both its horror and its beauty, include The Long Way by Bernard Moitessier, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, and Alone by Richard E. Byrd. Science-focused books that provided me with further understanding of how solitude affects people include Social by Matthew D. Lieberman, Loneliness by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Quiet by Susan Cain, Neurotribes by Steve Silberman, and An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. Also offering astute ideas about aloneness are Cave in the Snow by Vicki Mackenzie, The Life of Saint Anthony by Saint Athanasius, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (especially “Nature” and “Self-Reliance”) and Friedrich Nietzsche (especially “Man Alone with Himself”), the verse of William Wordsworth, and the poems of Han-shan, Shih-te, and Wang Fan-chih. It was essential for me to read two of Knight’s favorite books: Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Very Special People by Frederick Drimmer. This book’s epigraph, attributed to Socrates, comes from the C. D. Yonge translation of Diogenes Laërtius’s third-century A.D. work The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. The Hermitary website, which offers hundreds of articles on every aspect of hermit life, is an invaluable resource—I spent weeks immersed in the site, though I did not qualify to become a member of the hermit-only chat groups. My longtime researcher, Jeanne Harper, dug up hundreds of reports on hermits and loners throughout history. I was fascinated by the stories of Japanese soldiers who continued fighting World War II for decades on remote Pacific islands, though none seemed to be completely alone for more than a few years at a time. Still, Hiroo Onoda’s No Surrender is a fascinating account.

Long ago there was a little boy who lived in the wood with his father and his sister. One night, the three of them were out collecting firewood when they heard a low, delicate whimper. The father realised it was an injured animal and ordered the children to fetch water from the lake, whilst he followed the sound. Hours past but the father did not return. The children became fearful for their father’s safety and in their moment of fright, they disobeyed their father in order to find him. And find him they did. However, he was no longer the man he once was. Both his eyes were slit through their centre, oozing blood down the paleness of his face. His neck had been torn open. The entirety of his midsection was split but nothing, not one, single organ, seemed to be left within. Each limb still remained, however they had been dragged, with some exceptional force, in the opposite direction to which they were designed. The children screamed and ran, though the image of their father’s mangled corpse seemed to chase after them. They slept. Within the whisper of the wind came the sweet tune of a woman’s song. The little girl awoke to the feeling of happiness, security and motherly love that the song carried with it. She needed to find the woman it had come from. Leaving her brother, she took off into the wood to try and find the singer. The little boy quickly entered into a spit of panic when he found his sister missing. He didn’t know whether he should call out for her, look for her or wait. But waiting could mean the worst, he thought, and so he took off into the woods after her. He had searched everywhere, every dark corner and decrepit tree, before reaching the lake. The moon reflected off its black surface, which drew his attention to something bobbing within the ripples. It was a leg. When he caught sight of the foot, the boy fell to his knees. He recognised the shoe. It was his sister’s shoe; his sister’s leg. Soon enough, the other body parts came drifting to join the leg, forming a rough manifestation of what was once his sister’s living body. Firstly, there was a head facing down in the water, then arms seemingly blue under the moonlight, and lastly a torso coated in her favourite dress. He felt sick, lost, terrified to his very core. Just as thoughts of never being whole again began to pain his chest, the boy heard the snapping of a twig behind him. He dared to turn around but all he found was a small, black-furred wolf. The wolf approached him timidly, whining deep in its throat to say to the boy that he too was lonely and afraid. The boy put out his hand for the wolf to join him and they sat together. Perhaps he would be OK. Perhaps all that had happened had led to this; something new. He rustled the fur of his new friend, starting with its back then its ear before going under its snout. His hand touched something wet and sticky. He drew it from the wolf to get a better look, only to find a crimson substance now clinging to his small hands. Blood. The wolf turned on the boy as its eyes became a pale blue before thwack! He tore the boy’s face from his head…

Outside the room they found his family standing in the Great Hall, discussing something in heated whispers as Freddy nervously paced the other end. Oliver cleared his throat, and they all jumped. “My fiancée has made it clear that she doesn’t appreciate my attempt at a joke.” “Oliver enjoys shocking people,” Maria said calmly. When he looked at her, surprised that she had noticed, she arched one eyebrow at him. “I’m sure you know that about him by now. I find it a great flaw in his character.” She seemed to consider many things as flaws in his character. Not that he could blame her. Gran glanced from Maria to him. “So the two of you didn’t meet in a brothel?” “We did,” he said, “but only because poor Freddy got lost and wandered into one by mistake. I was trying to determine what he was looking for when Maria rushed in, mad with worry over where he might have gone off to. With two such Americans lost in the wicked city, hopelessly innocent of its dangers, I felt compelled to help them. I’ve been squiring them about town the last week. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?” She cast him a sugary and thoroughly false smile. “Oh, yes, dearest. And you were a very informative guide, too.” Jarret arched one eyebrow. “Astonishing that after finding you in a brothel, Oliver, Miss Butterfield wasn’t put off of marrying you.” “I ought to have been,” Maria said. “But he swore those days were behind him when he pledged his undying love to me on bended knee.” When Gabriel and Jarret barely managed to stifle their laughter, Oliver gritted his teeth. Bended knee, indeed. She was determined to prick his pride at every opportunity. She probably felt he deserved it. He could only pray that Gran backed down from the right before he had to bring the chit around any of his friends, or Maria would have them taunting him unmercifully for the next decade. “I’m afraid, my dear,” he said tersely, “that my brothers have trouble envisioning me bending a knee to anyone.” She affected a look of wide-eyed shock. “Have they no idea what a romantic you are? I’ll have to show them the sonnets you wrote praising my beauty. I believe I left them in my redingote pocket.” The teasing wench actually looked back toward the entrance. “I could go fetch them if you like.” “Not now,” he said, torn between a powerful urge to laugh and an equally powerful urge to strangle her. “It’s time for dinner, and I’m starved.” “So am I,” Freddy put in. At a frown from Maria, he mumbled, “Not that it matters, mind you.” “Of course it matters,” Gran said graciously. “We don’t like our guests to be uncomfortable. Come along then, Mr. Dunse. You may take me in to dinner, since my grandson is otherwise occupied.” As they trooped toward the dining room, Oliver bent his head to whisper, “I see you’re enjoying making me out to be a besotted idiot.” A minxish smile tipped up her fetching lips. “Oh, yes. It’s great fun.” “Then my explanation of how you ended up in a brothel met with your approval?” “It’ll do for now.” She cast him a glance from beneath her long lashes. “You’re by no means out of the woods yet, sir.” But I will be by the time the night is over. No matter what it took, he would get her to stay and do this, so help him God.

According to folk belief that is reflected in the stories and poems, a being who is petrified man and he can revive. In fairy tales, the blind destructiveness of demonic beings can, through humanization psychological demons, transformed into affection and love of the water and freeing petrified beings. In the fairy tale " The Three Sisters " Mezei de-stone petrified people when the hero , which she liked it , obtain them free . In the second story , the hero finding fairy , be petrified to the knee , but since Fairy wish to marry him , she kissed him and freed . When entering a demonic time and space hero can be saved if it behaves in a manner that protects it from the effects of demonic forces . And the tales of fortune Council hero to not turn around and near the terrifying challenges that will find him in the demon area . These recommendations can be tracked ancient prohibited acts in magical behavior . In one short story Penina ( evil mother in law ) , an old man , with demonic qualities , sheds , first of two brothers and their sister who then asks them , iron Balot the place where it should be zero as chorus, which sings wood and green water . When the ball hits the ground resulting clamor and tumult of a thousand voices, but no one sees - the brothers turned , despite warnings that it should not , and was petrified . The old man has contradictory properties assistants and demons . Warning of an old man in a related one variant is more developed - the old man tells the hero to be the place where the ball falls to the reputation of stones and hear thousands of voices around him to cry Get him, go kill him, swang with his sword , stick go ! . The young man did not listen to warnings that reveals the danger : the body does not stones , during the site heroes - like you, and was petrified . The initiation rite in which the suffering of a binding part of the ritual of testing allows the understanding of the magical essence of the prohibition looking back . MAGICAL logic respectful direction of movement is particularly strong in relation to the conduct of the world of demons and the dead . From hero - boys are required to be deaf to the daunting threats of death and temporarily overcome evil by not allowing him to touch his terrible content . The temptation in the case of the two brothers shows failed , while the third attempt brothers usually releases the youngest brother or sister . In fairy tales elements of a rite of passage blended with elements of Remembrance lapot . Silence is one way of preventing the evil demon in a series of ritual acts , thoughts Penina Mezei . Violation of the prohibition of speech allows the communication of man with a demon , and abolishes protection from him . In fairy tales , this ritual obligations lost connection with specific rituals and turned into a motive of testing . The duration of the ban is extended in the spirit of poetic genre in years . Dvanadestorica brothers , to twelve for saving haunted girls , silent for almost seven years, but eleven does not take an oath and petrified ; twelfth brother died three times , defeat the dragon , throw an egg at a crystal mountain , and save the brothers ( Penina Mezei : 115 ) . Petrify in fairy tales is not necessarily caused by fear , or impatience uneducated hero . Self-sacrificing hero resolves accident of his friend's seemingly irrational moves, but he knows that he will be petrified if it is to warn them in advance , he avoids talking . As his friend persuaded him to explain his actions , he is petrified ( Penina Mezei : 129 ) . Petrified friends can save only the blood of a child , and his " borrower " Strikes sacrifice their own child and revives his rescuers . A child is a sacrificial object that provides its innocence and purity of the sacrificial gift of power that allows the return of the forces of life.

Run, it says again and I do, into the woods, down the far path, away from the party, away from the other voices, away from everyone. I know where I'm going, but I still feel lost. Alone. I just want to get home, though the word means nothing now. Just because I live there doesn't mean it's somewhere safe.

Already embittered at being separated from loved ones, slaves on the frontier grew 'mean.' Planters, eager to get on with the work at hand, often countered the slaves' discontent by pressing them with greater force, only to find that slaves called their bet and then raised the stakes, resisting with still greater force. As the struggle escalated, planters discovered that even their best hands became unmanageable. One planter noted that his previously compliant slaves evinced 'a general disregard (with a few exceptions) of orders . . . and an unwillingness to be pressed hard at work.' In the face of festering anger, planters struggled to sustain the old order. Drawing on lessons of mastership that had been nearly two hundred years in the making on the North American mainland, planters instituted a familiar regime: they employed force freely and often; created invidious divisions among the slaves; and exacted exemplary punishments for the smallest infraction. If they sometimes extended the carrot of privilege, the stick was never far behind. The results were violent and bloody, as slave masters made it clear that slaves, by definition, had no rights they need respect. The plantation did not just happen; it had to be made to happen. Planter authority did not transplant easily. Relations between masters and slaves teetered toward anarchy on the cotton frontier. In some places, negotiations between owners and owned became little more than hard words and angry threats. Rumors of rebellion seemed to be everywhere. 'Scarcely a day passes,' observed Mississippi's territorial governor in 1812, 'without my receiving some information relative to the designs of those people to insurrect.' While few rebelled, some joined gangs of bandits and outlaws who resided in the middle ground between the westward-moving planters and the retreating Indians. On the plantations, slave masters saw sabotage everywhere - in broken tools, maimed animals, and burned barns. Slaves regularly took flight to the woods, and a few, eager to regain the world they had lost, tried to retrace their steps to Virginia or the Carolinas. It was a doubtful enterprise, and success was rare. Recaptured, they faced an even grimmer reality than before.

You’re covered in blood,” Felix noted. Jericho snorted. “Yeah, kind of a hazard of the job.” Felix scoffed. “Yeah, but you’re also wearing that weird smug, smirky look you only get whenever you get laid, and since you were in an abandoned cabin with Trevor the perv, we’re…alarmed.” He flicked his hand dramatically. “Alarmed,” Jericho echoed. Arsen leaned in, his tone conspiratorial. “Did you fuck Trevor the perv, Coe?" Felix pulled a face. “I’m just hoping he fucked him before he killed him, not after. Once you cross that line, you don’t come back.” Jericho tried to follow their dizzying thought process, but before he could formulate a response, Nico and Levi arrived. Fuck. Levi looked like a wanted poster had fucked a tattoo model. His inky dark hair fell in his face, and he sucked on a Dum-Dum lollipop. Nico’s springy blond curls hung in his face. He looked surprisingly angelic for somebody who was such a little monster. “What’s up? Why’s everybody looking so constipated?” Levi asked. “Coe fucked Trevor the perv,” Arsen said, as if this was fact and not their wild speculation. Levi wrinkled his nose. “That dude was gay? Or was he, like”—he mimed a blowjob—“trying to bribe his way out of it?” Jericho’s face contorted at the idea of a blowjob from greasy ass Trevor, but they paid him no mind. Nico also looked disgusted. “What the fuck, man? Like, I get it. Who hasn’t wanted to fuck somebody they killed or kill somebody they fucked? But it’s a slippery slope, man.” “This is what I told him,” Arsen said, shaking his head. “Once you cross that line…” “Jesus Christ. I didn’t fuck Trevor the perv. I killed Trevor the perv,” Jericho said, walking around the four of them to head to his office, attempting to close the door behind him. His brother caught it and swung it back open. “If you didn’t fuck Trevor, then who was it? And don’t lie and say it didn’t happen. Your after orgasm glow never lies,” Arsen said, flopping down into a chair hard enough to rock it back dangerously far before it righted itself. “I—” Jericho shook his head. “I ran into a guy.” “With your dick?” Levi asked. Nico’s brows knitted together. “In the middle of the woods?” “Like, a homeless man in the woods? A… What’s the word? A hobo?” Arsen asked. Levi elbowed him. “We don’t call them that anymore. Show some respect.” Arsen shrugged. “Sorry. What do you call a man roaming the woods looking for sex?” “A lie,” Felix said, his mouth set in a hard line. “No way my brother banged some hot, sweaty lumberjack in the woods. That’s not his type.” His long, elegant fingers trailed over his collarbones, a slow smile spreading along his face as his brother seemed to get lost in his own lumberjack fantasy. “I—” “There’s nothing in the woods but animals and Sasquatch,” Nico said. “Sasquatch?” Levi parroted. Nico nodded. “Yeah, you know. Bigfoot.” “Did you fuck Bigfoot?” Levi asked, pulling the lollipop from his mouth with a pop.

once saw a deer get hit by three arrows and keep going. It took him a whole day to die. I followed him. I lost him for a while but then found him again, tracked him farther into the woods than I’d ever been. He was weaker by then, because of the arrows the hunter hit him with. Up close he was hurt worse than I first thought and covered in blood from the battle he’d fought. When he finally fell, I walked up and knelt by him. His hair was matted and warm and slick, and his ribs were rising and falling. Long ears and velvet antlers. He blinked and gazed at me. Dark lashes, his gentle brown eyes. I put my hand on his neck. I stayed there and looked in those eyes until the last of the light went away from them and his ribs were still. Then I got up and went home. I think about that deer. I see him all the

We could make more out of the drawing of a rocket ship on your floor. You could crawl up inside of it, and with my hands on your heart we could get lost in these stars. Just speak some more, and we'll travel on.

After the light turns off under Grandma's door, I make my way out the back and across the yard, around the pound and then into the woods. Exploring the area at night, running on the trail without getting lost isn't a novice activity at all. It took me weeks of daily runs to brave it without shining a flashlight the whole way.

A lot of the people who joined ISIS were the same mercenaries who were in al-Qaeda fighting with bin Laden. And guess where they came from? Most of them were soldiers in the Iraqi army, who had to throw away their uniforms when they lost to the Americans and our military was abolished; what do you expect to happen when you destroy a country and you don’t let them have an army?’ He went on, ‘If you try and dismantle the military, then all you’re left with are a lot of hot-blooded young men with nothing to do. Of course they’re going to fight. Most of the time they don’t even know who or what they’re fighting for, but sooner or later they’ll get their hands on a gun and join a cause. Call them gangsters, mafia, criminals, tribes, ISIS or whatever, they’re all the same. They’re just gangs of young men looking for a fight.

Our hands collectively roamed her flesh as she writhed and dipped between us. We etched her in red and black, the same hues of the the wicked woods, she was our enchanted land. Ours to mark, to claim, to get lost in.

A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland, Party of One by Anneli Rufus, Migrations to Solitude by Sue Halpern, Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton, The Point of Vanishing by Howard Axelrod, Solitude by Robert Kull, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, The

Nora had the look of Hilda Ogden but with the thickest Dublin accent I’d ever heard. She was the kind of person who’d seen it all. Standing with one arm folded and a cigarette held in a limp hand, she looked as though nothing would surprise her. I envied people like that. If there was a nuclear explosion right now with bricks and mortar falling around our ears, Nora would probably still be stood there with her cigarette, rollers in her hair, wondering who’d made that racket and then getting on with frying some eggs for tea.

I knew not what lay ahead of me, but was keenly aware of what I was leaving behind. My mother would doubtless be distressed at my departure, if not for the loss of a daughter, then surely for the gossip and notoriety that would befall our family name. I was bringing shame to them both, but I had no choice. It was their pride or my future and I could not, would not, sacrifice myself on the altar of their expectations. I had enough schooling to get by, or so I thought, and would soon realise that the university of life was an altogether harsher education.

Perhaps it was better to get the hard part over with quickly and reach the exhilaration of having mastered your own senses and the environment. That was why we were all doing this, I thought. To prove something to ourselves. That we could do something so physically uncomfortable in order to feel our own sense of power.

We etched her in red and black, the same hues of the wicked woods, she was our enchanted land. Ours to mark, to claim, to get lost in.

Age brings diminishments, but more than a few come with benefits. I’ve lost the capacity for multitasking, but I’ve rediscovered the joy of doing one thing at a time. My thinking has slowed a bit, but experience has made it deeper and richer. I’m done with big and complex projects, but more aware of the loveliness of simple things: a talk with a friend, a walk in the woods, sunsets and sunrises, a night of good sleep. I have fears, of course, always have and always will. But as time lengthens like a shadow behind me, and the time ahead dwindles, my overriding feeling is gratitude for the gift of life. Above all, I like being old because the view from the brink is striking, a full panorama of my life—and a bracing breeze awakens me to new ways of understanding my own past, present, and future. As one of Kurt Vonnegut’s characters says in Player Piano, “out on the edge you can see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

I think it's easy to get confused about what love is when you're young. Even the title kind of suggests that we normalise bad behaviour in relationships or assume that being normal is the most important thing, so we hide all of the ugly stuff that happens to us. I mean, who even is normal anyway?

Just because coding was based in logical cause and effect didn't mean there was only ever one way to do something. In fact, there was almost always more than one way to arrive at a solution.

Now, now, there’s no need for all that,’ Sylvia said, handing me an envelope with the address and my wages. ‘You’re a grown woman with a brain in your head, two good arms for carrying books and two strong legs to get you where you need to go.

I suppose all Germans were conscripted.’ ‘I am not German.’ A car drove by and the lights dazzled me. I got to my feet. ‘Perhaps I should get back,’ he said. He bowed curtly before unbolting the door. ‘I am Austrian. Good evening, Fräulein.

Do you know why I could never sell this car?” said Viridios. “There’s something about it that makes you long for a place that never existed. I can see it in my mind, every time I get behind the wheel. There’s a coastal highway that goes on for a thousand miles through deserts, forests, and mountains, sprawling cities, towns full of Spanish architecture, beaches full of happy people, and wonderful music that sounds like an orchestra and a barbershop quartet at the same time. It’s like some fantastic version of the Republic, in a mythical land where it’s always summer. Maybe it really exists, somewhere out West, like the lost kingdom of Prester John.

Yeah. He told me,” I said, trying to sound confident. What he actually said was simply call upon my name, and the way will open, which wasn’t a lot more specific than Kelwyyn’s get lost in the woods and die. But I could work with that.

I could tell he was getting a bit tipsy now; his words were crashing together in a haphazard way.

I had enough schooling to get by, or so I thought, and would soon realise that the university of life was an altogether harsher education. -- The Lost Bookshop

I had enough schooling to get by, or so I thought, and would soon realise that the university of life was an altogether harsher education.