Once I went on a city-girl camp out. The forest, like the one in the fairytale, was deep-green lovely.  Alive even.  We packed without regard for the physics of making fire, which meant green wood, cold hot dogs, no true s’mores, and the ultimate kindness of strangers.

We had pitched our tent in the light, but in the Appalachian night all the trees looked the same.  At that point I was the one who believed the most in an Interventionist God, which meant quite a bit of out-loud-supplication and some amusement from my agnostic companions.

Funny sense of humor-God.  He did not seem fazed by their scepticism when He was the one who found us out tent again in the moonless night, but they were the ones who did not sleep, one afraid of bears, the other-human intruders.

I, myself, am afraid of both

But slept like a baby because I knew they would stay wide awake.

Old story now, this interventionist God-someone to watch over us.

I tell the little girl who lives inside my head, don’t look straight at the sun. She knows by heart the encantations  against fear and the haunting past we once lived in together like a candy house in a crumb-consuming forest. Leave stones instead along the path home.  Watch out for cages and unexpected hunger. You think it will be the wolf you must run from when all along the danger is so near, crouched in the corner of everything, assuming the guise of the familiar.