The art of cutting loose

In hindsight, I should have explained it to you. I should have made it clear that I was done with it: the felling, the scraping, the sawing, the cutting. I should have construed a line of reasoning why I sold my chainsaw, why I burned my splitting axes, my hatchets. I should have come to the local pub to buy for all of you a last drink, to say goodbye to all of you.

But I didn't. Was I to afraid to show my feelings? Was it still because the wound was too fresh, too raw? Mind you, being a woodsman has been my way of living as long as I can remember (I already dropped out of secondary school to go to the woods, to live in shacks) and it was my sole identity.

So, to decide after all those years to quit woodcutting, felt like a long serving king who decides to abdicate and to spend the rest of his life reading Shakespeare and breeding rare species of white-faced black Spanish chicken.

Actually, I didn't start doing something else immediately. After I left the shack and cleared my property (what couldn't be burned, I buried deep underground) I start wandering not knowing where to go. For the first time of my life I went out of the woods. For the first time I experienced what it must feel to be: a civilian.

Honestly, I wasn't completely unprepared. I had saved some money, I had bought some extra cloths, I had looked up places where I could spend the nights (I preferred the bed and breakfast locations over hotels or  guest houses), I got a speed training from one of my cousins on how mobile phones work and how to use social media (deep down in the woods there's no service).

Since I barely have had contact with my fellow men (okay, apart from you villagers off course, but you know me, you know why I smell like ferns and moss, why I swear sometimes like a drunk ranger) you can imagine that it was my deepest fear to meet people. How would they react, how would they treat me?

Throughout the years my nightmares have been consistent. During Bakelite black nights I would get lost in a city and was surrounded by minacious cars, sinister skyscrapers, direful pedestrians and fateful traffic lights.

And now I was about to live in my worst dreams? The moment I stepped out of the train and walked up the platform to go the exit of the station, I run into a woman who couldn't help but to smile at me. From which fairy tale are you originating? I didn't feel offended. I just was scared and helpless.

The woman happens to be Viktorya. She took me by the hand and taught my everything about how to live in a society: how to get your groceries, how to greet bystanders, how to apply for a job, how to cook baked salmon with lemon and butter. How to like neighbours, bus drivers and even freeloaders. How to love her.

One night when we were on the balcony of her apartment (she lived on the seventh floor although she didn't like odd numbers) we just stared silently at the teeming lights of the city, I told her why I once had left the forest. I explained to her that at some point I was just fed up by cutting and slashing trees. What at first seemed natural and right, appeared to be weird of alien. Like I didn't love live, as if I was born only to maim and to mutilate.

Viktorya smiled but didn't agree with me. She hugged me and whispered that if surgeons would feel the same, hospitals would be full of people who suffered endlessly.

That was the moment I decided to go back. To the woods, to the village, to my old live. But I knew my life wouldn't be the same anymore. Instead of chopping down trees, I would grow trees. I would buy various seedlings: oak, birch, beech, spruce, apple, fig, pear and cherry. I would plant them in fertile ground,  I would know how to nurture them, feed them, love them.

In hindsight, I should have explained it to you. But anyway, I will meet you near upon (by the way, I'm still wearing that blue worn overall, I'm still humming Here comes the sun).