Jessica Dylan Miele

English Major, Hiram College

Words of the Forest, 2003

A forest is a fascinating world of contradictions. It is patient and anxious to grow, giant with meaty Beech trees and delicate with funnel webs and the tiniest crane flies. I found faces in trees and forced myself to stare into a stream until I could go beyond poetic similes and see what this powerful, peaceful body of water had to offer simply by being itself. Each day I entered the woodlands at Hiram College and became increasingly more aware of my surroundings. I learned to listen to the forest, to watch for the changes when it rained—like the droplets on a spider web and the sound of mud as I walked; I looked for consistencies, like the way the vines remained constantly creepy in the shadows, and the scars in the trees. I learned to spot the toads and garter snakes usually camouflaged amongst the leaves and roots. Sometimes my day job at the field station as an animal care- taker worked its way into my poems, and I learned not to fight it. In this way, the forest never left me, no matter where I was.

I became so inspired by the forest that I decided to make my own paper. I chose various leaves, pink wildflowers, bark, recycled paper, anything I could get my hands on. I even found shed tarantula exoskeletons from the field station to press into my homemade paper. For the ink, I learned how to grind iron ore from a nearby streambed. Making paper and ink made me appreciate the process of my art. As a writer, I unfortunately use mounds of paper, ink toner, and graphite. It made me aware of the evolution of writing. I became infatuated with the shape of words, the way they neatly fit the paper, the emphasis spacing gives each word. I went back into the forest with new eyes. I wrote verses in the mud, saw letters with fallen petals, and developed a new appreciation for the words of the forest.