An Unlikely Fear.

This evening I went into a wood I’ve never trodden before. It doesn’t border any lanes or public footpaths; to get to it requires going through the small wood at the top of the lane, and then across a field on the other side. I’ve been eyeing it up for a while, so this evening I indulged my curiosity.

It seemed that nobody else had trodden it for a while either, because the undergrowth on the other side of the rusty old gate was well advanced and I got liberally stung by nettles when I pushed through it. I didn’t get far before I felt uneasy.

Woods can be creepy places, especially at twilight, and I suspect we humans retain a fear of the terrors that woods used to hold – both physical and metaphysical. That wasn’t what was bothering me, though. What I suddenly felt afraid of was man traps.

Man traps? In the 21^st century? I know; hardly likely, is it? That was what I kept telling myself, but it made no difference. I remember seeing a man trap in a museum when I was a kid, and it terrified me. I remember how it seemed to re-open an old memory. It made me shudder.

So what is this unlikely fear I have of man traps? Is it simply an imaginative child’s ability to conjure up the horror of being caught in one? Is it a genetic memory hidden deep in the psyche of a person born into peasant stock? Or could it be something deeper still – something from a past life, maybe?

I paid my respects to the denizens of the deep woods and left. It was time to go home anyway.