The Walden of My Youth.

In the early days of my rambunctious and unrefined adolescence I often took to wandering through the ancient pine forest behind my family's hideaway cabin. The cabin itself was rustic and beautiful, picturesque even, a page from a northwoods memoir, and as inspiring a natural retreat as one is likely to find in the UP of Michigan. It possessed such a humbling beauty that my city-bounded aunts would often visit with us to relax and take in the calm and wilderness. As we drove back on winding, heavily shaded gravel roads, I often felt as if I were driving into a different world, more quiet and majestic then ours, and its dusty antiquated charm whispered of long nights reading near the black pot-bellied stove and serene Autumn walks on miles of trails and abandoned country roads. As we drove past the gate and onto our property the first thing in sight was The Barn, which housed a variety of old watercraft and its second floor served as a simple guest house. It was red, inherently dirty, and filled with mice. The cabin was a bit dirty and had mice as well, but somehow its coziness and enchanted air more than made up for the dust and regularly placed mousetraps. More than anything, the magical feeling came from the cabin's characteristic oldness. The faintly marred hardwood floors with so much character you could write a short volume about the generations of scratches, the peculiar stone sign that read 'Gandalf', left behind by the eccentric and Tolkien-obsessed original owner. The old-fashioned cloth napkins, bedsheets, throw blankets, comforters, towels and any other fabric you might find that radiated with this oldness but a sort of venerated and well-loved oldness. These things possesed a quality that deeply immersed you into the feeling of living in a history museum or a carefully weaved historical novel set in a peaceful cottage. Behind the cabin, running alongside the unperturbed lake and deep into the wilds was The Sylvania. The magic and primitive forest of my youth. The enormously tall and widely spaced trees gave a cavernous feeling to the forest. Huge aged trees bear down from all sides, blotting out the Sun and leaving in her place foreboding shades of gray and green. Its huge hushed openness and low light echoed the atmosphere of an abandoned cathedral. The ground was thickly piled with brittle orange needles that offered a stealthily muffled crunch. Actual living trees were relatively rare and always massive. The darkened forest floor was riddled with ancient fallen trees, slowly rotting at acute angles and covered in moss and fungus. One of the more ominous aspects: this forest seemed devoid of fauna. We rarely saw the ubiquitous whitetails that populate every forest and roadside in the UP and even seldom saw a squirrel. This reinforced the solitude and mystery of the forest. I think the man who built our cabin understood it, and I don't wonder that a reader of Tolkien would choose to settle here. The Sylvania feels like an enchanted forest in Middle Earth. And so I spent many hours ranging around in The Mystical Sylvania, and it became familiar to me. I played games and explored endlessly, wandering often and looking for animals. I had names for certain areas and odd tree phenomena. The bouncing log, the climbing tree, the deep bog, little hill, they were landmarks to show off to cousins and visiting friends but also important signposts in the labyrinthine Sylvania. We camped in the forest, but always within sight of the cabin, to go deeper at night was to risk the wolves we heard late at night.