I know if I read the title I’ve assigned to this post, alarm bells would go off. Rape. I’d be waiting for the rape story. I am a lone woman and rape has never been far from my mind since I was a teenager and was alone in most of what I did from day to day. I learned from an early age what it meant to be a female that did most things in her life alone – sometimes by choice, sometimes, not. Tracy Chapman, one of my absolute favourite folk singers, unfortunately grouped us girls into ‘good girls’ – those who moved around quickly in groups – and ‘fast girls’ – those of us who walk alone and who got raped and beaten and disappeared by men and boys. There is almost the implication that the latter are looking for trouble, and deserve what they get. I kind of hated her for that. I’m neither fast nor bad, and I certainly neither look for trouble nor do I deserve all the rapes and assaults by men of all races I’ve experienced as a lone woman and especially as a white woman. I love you, Tracy, but fuck you.

[Brief rant, get ready, or get out now while you can;)]

Many of you are likely partnered and you have no idea what it is like to have to do every fucking thing in your life alone. It’s not always a choice to be alone, but neither do I want to have to call someone every time I want or need to leave the house, ffs. [I was told endlessly in China after being stalked for weeks and threatened with rape by a black man on my university campus, that I should never leave my apartment by myself. Not possible, even if I wanted to, which I didn’t because I wasn’t the criminal.] The non-alone don’t know what it is like to have to plan every single thing you do around what could possibly happen to you because you are alone. If you travel, you are likely travelling with a male master, or children, or other family members, or maybe a friend or friends. Mothers bitch constantly about the struggles of being a mother, but they are so fucking protected by their brats. They have no idea #!$@ If a rapist or thief or kidnapper is going to target a woman, who is he going to pick – the bitch with the litter of pups with her or the lone female? Which will be easier to deal with? Men are opportunists, picking off the ones no one will miss. Breeders don’t know real danger even though they think they do or they wax poetic about how ‘dangerous’ things are for them. They’ve chosen to be mastered, to fit into society, to get the economic, legal and social tit squeeze and ass pat that society and their family gives them for spreading their legs, so the only real danger they experience is from the master they enslave themselves to. There is a lot of coat-tail privilege one gets when signing on for motherhood and/or hetero slavery. I say coat-tail because no woman is truly privileged. I stand by that. But you become privilege adjacent simply by orbiting a man or using your cunt the way it was ordained by males. When you are alone – whether it is because you know you aren’t mentally healthy enough to have a lesbian partnership thanks to years of mom-abuse and the subsequent distrust you have for women you make yourself vulnerable to, or whether you just never met someone you could envision partnering with, or whether you just don’t believe in the male-designed concept of long-term monogamous entrapment – you have a very different experience of the world. Despite what heteros and especially breeders say, lone women don’t have it easier. The so-called freedom comes at a massive price. You are economically much less well off than the average breeder and hetero enslaved. Jeez, I was looking at the median family incomes that idiot American liberals published a week or two ago to try to show how whites and blacks are different economically, and I was drooling at the median black income. I’ve never even come close – and I have 3.5 university degrees. Being white and female and not attached to a male always has meant fewer opportunities and less pay and more expectations that I’ll do volunteer work or work for free – I think the assumption is that all white women have husbands and don’t need to work (um, 1950’s much…?) therefore you don’t need to take them seriously in the job market. I probably have gotten pushed or guilted into working for free more than any non-white woman or any male, for that matter. (I just was told again recently that I should find some unpaid work. Why do I have to work for free but everyone else deserves a pay cheque???) Further, for some reason – probably the same one I just mentioned, I am always harassed for money by a segment of the population (all non-white men, and even some non-white women) that has more earning potential than me, even with less education. So being alone and a lez and white and a woman sucks the big one economically. And you are always a target for men and boys physically and sexually. Even indoors. Even in your own home or what passes for one. But outdoors??? It is always there.

Rant finished. Thanks for persevering.

So “A Lone Woman in the Woods”. For me, it smacks of a rape story, but today, no. This is a story of positivity, the beauty of simplicity, the power of a lone woman and the collective power of women through the ages – power that has been stolen by men – that that lies waiting in all of us still if we wish to harness it once again.

Today, I hiked a redwood and eucalyptus forest that lies a mile from where I am staying temporarily. I am Canadian and although I detest my country on so many levels, there is something essentially Canadian that lies in me that is tapped when I go to forests. Most of us don’t live near the ocean even though so much of our land is bordered by ocean. The greatest percentage of our population is lake- and river-situated. And we are tree people too. The forests define us. The ocean is mildly interesting, but inspires a healthy fear in me. It is a river or lake and the forests that typically go with them that speak to me on a primal Canadian and human and womanly level. Some of my relatives are freshwater (Great Lakes) fisherfolk, and I myself have spent much quality time travelling by canoe, camping in untouched forest land, and fishing. So entering this beautiful forest today was pure bliss. The thought of men and rape and intimidation and violence, as usual, entered my mind and settled in at the back, on the edges. But I allowed the smells and colours and textures and the history of women and my people take over.

Women have always been stewards of the forest, and nature in general, in the past. [Sorry, aboriginal North American peoples don’t have the corner market on nature stewardship, as much as modern Canadians and Americans are brainwashed to believe. Women from all cultures have always had a healthy respect for nature until men overruled them and ‘civilized’ them.] Before men stole medicine from my foremothers and banned them from knowledge, branding them witches and devil worshippers, imprisoning them, torturing them, tearing their female parts off or apart, killing them, and destroying or erasing years of wisdom, they were the Wise Women. The healers, the midwives, the abortionist-saviours, the repositories of forest wisdom, the herb and mushroom collectors, the pain relievers. Men became suspicious, then felt threatened, and finally said NO. Women are not allowed to have the independence of body and mind that exists separate from male control and that is deeply rooted in nature, the forests and water bodies. Men decided the forests were not to be cherished and guarded, but exploited – much as women’s bodies were exploited. Men brought death to the forest as they brought death to women through rape and endless pregnancy and ignorance and house-bound slavery. They cut the trees down. They burned down forests to deprive enemies of their bounty. They used women’s bodies and forests to fuel endless wars. To no end. Completely useless and pointless.

Much of that body of medical knowledge has been lost to Western women. Some groups of women were luckier. The knowledge they collected lived on in Traditional Chinese Medicine, for example. But the Wise Women of western countries were decimated and replaced by the male need to cut and bleed and dissect and drug, and although their modern ‘medicine’ lives on today, it creates more illness than it cures. Older cultures sneer at Western Medicine, but it is male medicine. Our ancient wisdom – our female wisdom was mostly erased. I’d bet that we did a lot of things better.

This lost history impressed upon me as I hiked unmolested through the forest. I breathed in the scent of trees and sun and wildflowers. I only ran across two people – both women – and I wondered if they felt the collective female history in the background. Probably not. Heterosexuality beats sensitivity out of you, in my experience. But I will be going to that forest every day for the next 10 days that I will be in this area.

Jane Siberry, one of my favourite Canadian singers, was the background music for my journey today. I’ve had the privilege to hear her sing three times in small venues in Vancouver back in the day. Two of her songs have been featured in the beautiful all-woman death-ritual scenes on the L-Word (Anytime) and Six Feet Under (Calling All Angels – thanks for the reminder, Radfemspiraling). The song I heard today in my mind and heart was Bound by the Beauty. It is such an essentially Canadian song and a song of woman-joy. And the nature-bonding is an aspect of Canadianism that I can get on board with. Enjoy the lyrics and videos (clear studio/audio version and a live version that is less clear) at the bottom.

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I’m bound by the fire
I’m bound by the beauty
I’m bound by desire
I’m bound by the duty

I’m coming back in 500 years
And the first thing I’m gonna do
When I get back here
Is to see these things I love
And they’d better be here, better be here
Better be here

And first I’m going to find a forest
And stand there in the trees
And kiss the fragrant forest floor
And lie down in the leaves
And listen to the birds sing
The sweetest sound you’ll hear

And everything the dappled
Everything the birds
Everything the earthiness
Everything the verdant, the verdant, the verdant
The verdant dream