My Enchanted Sherwood Forest
A few years ago Sam and I read aloud from a 1923 copy of Robin Hood on our screened porch, and my notion of Sherwood Forest, royal woods of Nottinghamshire, became filled with details. As I listened, I pictured these stories taking place in the Sherwood Forest I lived in during 2007. It’s not far from here, across the highway from the Whistlestop Market, where I worked that summer.
In chapter XIII, “Friar Tuck and the Bishop”, the powerful Bishop and his attendants are due to pass through the woods carrying rent money, the “unjust dues” they’ve collected. Robin Hood’s band decides to take that money and return it to the poor. They dress up as shepherds, set some meat roasting, and wait.
The Bishop is angry to see shepherds feasting, believing that only “a noble or a wealthy Churchman had a right to eat rich venison”. He also thinks they’re poachers, and plans to take the upper hand. I will leave it up to you to find out how Robin Hood and Little John outwit the Bishop, empty his small purse and his large wallet, and then wear him out with dancing.
The wildflower and bird filled woods that I knew in our Sherwood Forest could easily be the “greenwood” where the tales of Robin Hood take place. That year I was ready for adventure, though of a more mindful kind.
When I worked at the Transylvania Library and at Highland Books, I met people of many backgrounds who lived there. They came in for nature books and other nonfiction, for fiction, and for conversation. I learned that Sherwood Forest was an Audubon sanctuary, formerly the site of a hotel, and then a colony for naturalists and artists. A welcoming place.
As soon as I retired, I gave myself a year to live there before deciding where to settle next. The house I rented had a small observatory in the yard, but I never had the key to it!
It was a short walk from my door to one of the five lakes in Sherwood Forest. I came to know the lake’s many moods, crowned by late afternoon sunshine and enclosed in morning mist.
A few years later I made a set of note cards from my photos, and altered one with a watercolor wash. I would like to continue this experiment.
In late May I saw my first rare “blue ghost” fireflies there. Now, we see them in the leaf litter near our own garden and every year they’re just as magical as the first time.
The friendships I enjoyed while at Sherwood Forest spilled over into generous volunteer-led nature walks, writers’ meetings with readings, and exercise classes to swing music of the 1930’s and ‘40’s. I loved the Andrews Sisters’ Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B.
Inside my house, I turned one of the rooms into an art studio. Listening to audio tapes from the library, I painted a large 6-panel screen showing our mountains by day on one side and by moonlight on the other. The room was big enough to hold it.
It would be nice to somehow equate Robin Hood’s complicated doings with my simple ones in Sherwood Forest. But it was different. The adventure I was looking for, and found, was a quiet place where people share deep respect for nature and for others. There I could stop, turn around, and with great peace, enter the rest of my life.
Robin Hood, edited by George Cockburn Harvey, B.A., Illustrated by Edwin John Prittie, The John C. Winston Company, 1923
Andrews Sisters’ Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B
Sherwood Forest community near Brevard NC
I've added the Sherwood Forest note cards to my Etsy shop
If it is so, that one may return to this world in another state, I would like that to be of your shadow!
Mary
Your story and works delight me and are amazing!