Welcome to Chasing the Wind. This is an essay series engaging with Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, chapter by chapter, from the viewpoint of an unabashed admirer (me). Here’s the preface explaining why I’m doing this. And here’s the playlist with five new woodsy songs to enjoy (starting from Prokofiev’s Wedding Dance). Cheers, friends.
One might be tempted to think of the third chapter of Willows, by virtue of the preceding introductions to the river, the Rat, and the Toad, as another spirited introduction of a beloved character. And indeed, Kenneth lends credence to this by opening the chapter in almost identical fashion to the last, with Mole (noble audience stand-in as he is) wishing to make the acquaintance of the resident recluse, the Badger.
Good old Ratty is consistently complimentary toward his friends, and he brooks no exception with Badger. Like Toad, the “best of animals,” Rat’s first description of Badger is the “best of fellows!” However, unlike Toad, you don’t just drop ‘round to see him. Badger, it seems, requires more caution.
“...you must not only take him as you find him, but when you find him.”
The reasons for this caution are numerous. Badger simply detests anything that smacks of what Kenneth capitalizes, “Society.” Other animals may be perfectly willing to pass hours in small talk and frivolity, but Badger is of stiffer stuff made. He has little time for invitations, dinner, and definitely calling on friends unannounced. Significantly, the other animals don’t interfere with him.
From what we can surmise of the character of Badger (to be revealed in the following chapter), we can ascertain that his characteristic dislike of big-S “Society” is not actually a dislike of other animals. His shyness and offense do not come from a spiteful nature. Badger is a codger, a curmudgeon of the highest order, in that he likes what he likes — that is, solitude and solidity — and doesn’t give two figs what others think about his likings. Hence, this “best of fellows” is allowed, in Rat’s gracious estimation, the space he needs to be himself. Take him on his own terms, Rat advises: “He’ll be coming along some day, if you’ll wait quietly.”
And this is the moment when we get the first inkling that Badger is not the star of this particular chapter. Unlike the last chapter, in which Toad fairly took the wheel and drove us onward, this next part of the saga is about a different character entirely, a character that has darkly framed the story since chapter one: the Wild Wood.
But wait, Kenneth says. Let’s not forget how wonderful summer was.
The interlude we encounter here is indicative of the poetic quality of Kenneth’s writing in both its imagination and descriptive force. In my book, these are some of his strongest moments – when, waxing eloquent on something he loves so dearly (in this case, summer on the river banks he so loved), we are treated to descriptive passages that ripple in the mind and get tangled in the roots at the edges.
Kenneth takes a single metaphor — that of a pageant — and uses it to great effect to describe the seasonal ways of wildflowers: purple loosestrife, willow-herb, comfrey, dog-rose, and meadow-sweet. Within this framing device, he sets the stage for the sweetly-tuned memories of summer:
“They recalled the languorous siesta of hot mid-day, deep in green undergrowth, the sun striking through in tiny golden shafts and spots; the boating and bathing of the afternoon, the rambles along dusty lanes and through yellow cornfields; and the long, cool evening at last, when so many threads were gathered up, so many friendships rounded, and so many adventures planned for the morrow.”
Kenneth’s work has often been lauded as a celebration of youth, the summer of one’s life, and these few pages tucked within one of the most wintry chapters of the book are examples of why that is so. He also settles the nostalgia over us in layers. We aren’t just placed in the sweet summertime, we are placed in a cozy wintertime spent remembering the sweet summer times. This is, perhaps, the more powerful framing than even the descriptions of the river bank — that our heroes are recalling them “while wind and rain were battering at their doors,” on “short winter days when the animals found themselves round the fire…”
But summer is not the only season worth celebrating on the river bank. On the contrary, when Mole takes it upon himself to set out for the Wild Wood, we are treated to a parallel description of the countryside in winter.
“The country lay bare and entirely leafless around him, and he thought that he had never seen so far and so intimately into the insides of things as on that winter day when Nature was deep in her annual slumber and seemed to have kicked the clothes off.”
Something of that strong undercurrent of Willows — its enduring affection for places and the creatures who inhabit them — is uncovered here. The place is not loved for its finest moments, but for its every moment. The person is not loved for their noblest aspirations, but in the midst of their deepest flaws. The presence we feel as we read it, the affection that grows in us for these characters and their environs, is directly related to the unabashed grace Kenneth offers to his childhood haunts.
Childhood is a complicated thing, never more so than when we seek to reconcile our childly ways and mindsets to the broader scope and jaded heart of adulthood. In some sense we are always looking down on ourselves from high above, seeking forgiveness for the child we were as we seek mercy for the adult we have become. Nostalgia can be a crutch, it is true. It can be manipulated for evil purposes. But it can also be that highest of graces: forgetfulness of a painful past as we amplify the beautiful. To imagine things as better than they were, better than they are, better than they may be — is this not an exercise in love?
Kenneth did not have much good to remember in his childhood, and little to celebrate in his adulthood. His amplification of the beautiful bits he did have is, in my view, a courageous stance against despair. We can learn from this, even as we confront the truth of our pasts. Maybe that’s something of what Kenneth was getting at here:
“He was glad that he liked the country undecorated, hard, and stripped of its finery. He had got down to the bare bones of it, and they were fine and strong and simple.”
But enough of this. The Wild Wood awaits.
The forest has held a distinct place and purpose in myths and fairytales for eons, essential as both a transformational and pressurizing setting for our favorite protagonists. The knights of the round table set off through it to find adventures. Baba Yaga’s fowl hut is located within it. Hansel and Gretel get lost in it. Little Red Riding Hood encounters the Wolf in it (apparently, it features 11 times in Grimm, and is responsible for deciding the fates of 30 characters). Rosalind and Celia flee to the forest of Arden in As You Like It, Hermia and Lysander to the forest of Athens in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Robin Hood and his merry men hide in it. The dwarves get lost in Mirkwood, the fellowship in Fangorn — out of which the Ents and Huorns come to turn the tide of the battle against Saruman. It is the doorway to Narnia in both The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and the place of refuge and revolution in Prince Caspian; Shasta’s foggy pathway lies through it in The Horse and His Boy. Harry Potter and friends find all manner of danger and revelation in their many visits to the Forbidden Forest.
In these stories, the forest can mean many things: mystery, terror, madness, confusion, magic, healing, refuge, adventure, etc. It is a place of wildness, the antithesis of civilization, the disorienting labyrinth full of monsters, through which our heroes must travel in order to reach their goals. It is a place where transformation of some sort occurs, and while it may be for our good, it always carries danger.1
Kenneth’s first description of the Wild Wood (beyond the fact that it is Wild) is that it “darkly framed” the river bank. Here, it is “low and threatening, like a black reef in some still southern sea.” Even though Mole finds the startling nature of it all good fun at first, it very quickly shows its true colors.
Three things bring about Mole’s descent into abject terror: faces, whistling, and pattering.
The faces that first appear to Mole are “all fixing on him glances of malice and hatred: all hard-eyed and evil and sharp.” They come from every apparently empty hole, and Mole finds it difficult to distinguish between actual faces and imaginary ones – but it doesn’t matter, because every single one of them hates him. We are surrounded with him, ringed about by enemies, pressed in, with no friendly face to be seen. Significantly, Mole seeks to escape the faces by way of leaving the path.
Next, the whistling begins:
“Very faint and shrill it was, and far behind him, when first he heard it; but somehow it made him hurry forward. Then, still very faint and shrill, it sounded far ahead of him, and made him hesitate and want to go back. As he halted in indecision it broke out on either side, and seemed to be caught up and passed on throughout the whole length of the wood to its farthest limit.”
Now there are signals — not only is Mole surrounded by enemies, he does not know where to turn to fight them. There are too many, and there is no escape. Again, Kenneth blurs the experience through Mole’s dread: is this really happening? Should he really be this afraid?
The Wild Wood has isolated and disoriented Mole. Now it seeks to capture him.
“... he knew it for nothing else but the pat-pat-pat of little feet, still a very long way off. Was it in front or behind? It seemed to be first one, then the other, then both. It grew and it multiplied, till from every quarter as he listened anxiously, leaning this way and that, it seemed to be closing in on him…”
At this point we meet an actual denizen of the Wood: a rabbit with “eyes staring” who mutters the least helpful advice you could offer to anyone in Mole’s position: “Get out of this, you fool, get out!” before dashing into its burrow to save itself.
The vague idea that unfriendly forces are mustering around him, the sly communications, the sensation of being chased — all of these are too much for the poor Mole to handle, and he breaks. He runs like the Wood is running, bewildered beyond sense, seeking only a sufficient hiding place.
“... he knew it at last, in all its fullness, that dread thing which other little dwellers in field and hedgerow had encountered here, and known as their darkest moment — that thing which the Rat had vainly tried to shield him from — the Terror of the Wild Wood!”
Mole feels utterly and intentionally alone here, unwanted in the extreme. Never has it been so clear that everyone around him would willingly betray or destroy him at the drop of a hat. It doesn’t matter that his isolation could possibly be his imagination playing tricks on him. The terror is all too real.
This alienation is, unfortunately, all too familiar to all of us moderns bopping about our supposedly more evolved worlds. We feel it in the thick of Twitter mobs, in the rhythm of our politics, in the tense undercurrents of polite social gatherings. We feel it when the pastor’s preaching about purpose and we realize, suddenly, we don’t know ourselves like we thought we did. What if we’re getting all of it wrong — our vocations, our relationships, our politics, our faith? Surely we are the only ones dealing with these thoughts and fears? Surely it’s all in our heads? We know it when it seems as though we are nothing but an embarrassment to our friends, our families, our faith, our God, because of something we have done or said or believed. We know it when we fail and keep failing.
The confusion rises in us, and the spiral spirals, and the cycle begins again and we find ourselves once again at the bottom of a dark hollow, facing some of the darkest moments of our lives, when we cannot gain any traction on truth or grasp any shred of hope. Those days when the only thing we can do is scurry into hiding, when folks tell us to just buck up and get out of the hole, when what we need most is a friend — and our friends all feel too far away to help.
It’s clear that Kenneth knew this feeling all too well. Maybe he knew that his son did too.
We have to remember here that Mole did not seek out the Wild Wood. He stepped out brashly, without support, and against the advice of a good friend, to be sure – but with noble cause, seeking merely to make the acquaintance of Badger. He is susceptible to the Terror only in the way that we all are, as small woodland dwellers making our way in a big world. The Wild Wood waits for all of us, and all of us will walk through it at some point, perhaps many times. Rat never suggests that they should just avoid it entirely, but that — not unlike Badger — you have to be ready for it, and it has to be ready for you. What will we be like on the other side?
The mettle of Rat, always so near the surface, shows itself immediately upon his realization of what Mole has done. His rescue of Mole is accomplished with a brace of pistols, a “stout cudgel,” and a healthy dose of cheerful optimism. He is able to do this not only out of care for his friend, but because he’s been through the Wild Wood before.
“We river bankers, we hardly ever come here by ourselves. If we have to come, we come in couples, at least; then we’re generally all right. Besides, there are a hundred things one has to know, which we understand all about and you don’t, as yet. I mean passwords, and signs, and sayings which have power and effect, and plants you carry in your pocket, and verses you repeat, and dodges and tricks you practise; all simple enough when you know them, but they’ve got to be known if you’re small, or you’ll find yourself in trouble.”
Mole entered the Wild Wood sans weaponry, sans knowledge, sans friends, and with little else but resolve — a weak protection when you are alone. In contrast, Rat comes armed to the teeth with more than just weapons: laughter, hope, poetry, and long experience dodging the dangers. He offers help, not as a hard-faced rabbit, but as a stalwart friend.
“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)
The reunited, more resilient pair set out against the Wild Wood once more, only to be presented with another seemingly insurmountable problem: a snowstorm that erases all paths out of the forest. The challenge now is not facing the fears thrown their way by the forest, but keeping the fire of hope kindled until they can escape back to their cozy home. Rat is all plans and push, despite the fact that “there seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and worst of all, no way out.”
They are in the very thick of it when Mole cuts his leg severely, and worse (according to Kenneth), goes grammatically backward. But as Mole collapses inward, Rat asks questions of their surroundings: Why is the cut clean? What might have made that cut? What could that object mean about where we are? These are questions, one supposes, that might come in handy the next time we find our own creaturely selves in an untenable, chaotic place full of sylvan terrors.
The juxtaposition of their two reactions in this moment is actually quite funny, as Rat’s lateral thinking collides with Mole’s memorable retort that “Door-mats know their place.” But to Mole’s credit, when Rat’s curiosity is rewarded by their discovery of a door out of the Wood (and into Badger’s home), he fully repents of his funk and praises his friend to no end.
And so they ring the bell-pull and hammer on the door, until far away they hear the deep bell sounding their salvation.
I’m struck in my rereading of this chapter just how low the stakes drop when Rat enters the picture. The full terror and hopelessness Mole carries dissipate significantly, even in the face of an impending blizzard. He’s lost at least 80% of his disorientation, because now he has a compass to guide him, a friend who is — despite his curiosity, experience, and confidence — actually just as lost as he is. Now, at least, they are together. And that is everything.
I can pinpoint a few times in my life when I've entered a forest of some sort, either for the sake of adventurous ambitions or against my will, kicking and screaming. Whether I am wrestling with strange and uncontrollable forces or just bent by the strength of Something or Someone beyond my scope, I've never found myself more tree-like than in those moments – clinging with all I have to whatever stable patch of earth I am inhabiting, buttressed by comrades who already know the danger I am facing, always reaching skyward. You keep holding on, you keep growing upward. You wrestle until you come away limping, carrying nothing but an unforeseen blessing.
There is no escape from the Wild Wood. There is only the thrice-bound cord, the long endurance, the codes and verses that carry you through. You can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, you can’t go around it. You can only go through it.2
And who knows, really, what you will become by the time you reach Badger’s door and the distant bell sounds, signaling the change of your fortunes and safety ahead.
No AI was used in the making of this essay. Cover art by Ernest Shepard, as captured by Bibliodyssey. I offer all current essays here for free, but you can always go paid to dig into the archives and support my writing habit.
Interestingly, the forest is distinct in literature from the wilderness/desert, though there is some overlap. The latter has more to do with deprivation, while the former more with confusion. The desert is supremely isolating, while the forest teems with wild and strange things. In the wilderness, you are purified. In the forest, you are transformed. In both places you are divested of resources and must face something inside of you — fear, fleshly impulses, pride, grief, etc. — in order to escape intact.
With immeasurable thanks to Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.
And your playlist is beautifully woodsy. Thank you.
Applause, cheers, and an admission that I found myself deep in the forest, quite deep in, only just yesterday, after a long stint in the meadowlands... And it was friends who saved me, who gripped my hands and told me with their eyes that I was not alone. Brace of pistols, cudgels, and stout hearts offered for my help, I stumbled out again wounds and all, hanging on to their faith and strong arms. Thanks, Chris, for setting these paper boats of words afloat onto the river in faith. Your words are landing, and needed.