Terra Incognita
I don’t know if a forest has rights, if its life, or the lives it holds, are more important than mine; I just know, if it was gone, I would miss it. I would miss its wild emptiness, its ability to be somewhere unknowable to me, miss that there is a place carved out I cannot trace. We are always happiest when approaching a form of understanding—the moment before a thought becomes a thought, how you can’t see it, until you see it. I want forests to be this strangely uninhabitable, to have this kind of wisdom, living on the gnarled edge of what can be said, what can be known. The forest does not exist for me just to add to my knowledge (the forest is not here to mold into how you’ve molded you). I can think of no higher honor to bestow to any copse of trees, than to know, to be aware, of my unimportance to all that’s in it. There is no higher honor I could give than for it to live life without ever knowing me, so when I’m gone, I was unknown, I was the mystery.
HANNAH RODABAUGH is the author of Lost Cathedral (forthcoming, Cornerstone Press) and three chapbooks of poetry. Read more.