Colm O'Regan: I want to live in the woods, but someone leave food out for me
Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Picture: Denis Minihane.
Sometimes you just need to get away. All of you, if possible. But, since the Rose of Tralee bell has tolled and the return to school is imminent, at least your mind is just out the door over the fence and away.
I have let it be known that dads are not difficult to buy for. Just get me any book where the main character runs off into the woods.
They don’t have to always be on the move. Maybe they find a shack and set about assembling the bracken for their bed for a few nights’ peace before the bandits threaten them again. But in general their only ‘job’ is to survive. Their only deliverables are delivering themselves to safety.
No zoom meetings or insurance renewal quandaries. No notifications, no responses, no “just following up on”, no “did you get a chance to look at”, no calendars, no offence taken (they might be dying of thirst but they’re not offended), no attachments except to a baby owl they’ve nursed, no WhatsApps about car break-ins (there might be brigands in the thickets but there’s no CCTV).
No reply-alls, no wrong-bin days, no viral sensations (unless it’s the unshakeable feeling you’ve caught typhus from bad water).
I want to get away, and not in a way. In my mind, I want to reach the safety of cover before Lord Tosspot can assemble his dragoons. I want to somehow magically light a fire with some tinder and roast a rabbit, which I obviously know how to snare.
Yes, of course I’d be useless in the woods. I’d drop the matches on the way out the door, begging to be fed from the first house I see in the woods only to find it’s inhabited by cannibals, or else be dead of the aforementioned typhus by Tuesday.
The children are on board with me. Which is good. Someone will have to tell the world of my exploits after I’ve gone.
I am reading Brendon Chase to them for their nighttime story. These days they’re getting fed the stories that enthralled me. Especially the classics that involve Very Long Walks Through Woods.
We’ve been through the Narnia books — the good ones (more woods, less Aslan), The Hobbit and now it’s Brendon Chase. For my money, the best book about boys running away from a stern aunt and living in a hollow oak tree that you are likely to find.
This is a very boys, boys, boys book. The women in it are fuss pots and get in the way of fun and the boys are noble and free. But my girls are fine with that.
They are well aware books written long ago would not exactly pass the Bechdel test and they just want to hear about the boys trapping the badger.
Children don’t always need inspiration from books and role models. Sometimes they just want to hear about arrows and deer brought crashing to the ground.
There’s a lot of nature in Brendon Chase. And it’s when you read about being out in the woods, you realise how starved many of us are of nature.
Yes, we want to run into the woods to avoid replying to a WhatsApp from someone who wants to meet up but you’re not actually sure if you want to still be their friend but you probably will never say that so you’ll continue meeting them until one of you dies.
But also, we crave the green and the lack of beeps, and the sound and the smells of actual wilderness.
Well, I do. You mightn’t. Your loss.
But just in case I can’t survive in the woods, would you mind leaving some food out for me?
