The Wood again...

“I suppose the mere fact of being walled-in gave the wood part of its peculiar quality, for when a thing is enclosed, the mind does not willingly regard it as common. As I went forward over the quiet turf I had the sense of being received. The trees were just so wide apart that one saw uninterrupted foliage in the distance but the place where one stood seemed always to be a clearing; surrounded by a world of shadows, one walked in mild sunshine. Except for the sheep, whose nibbling kept the grass so short and who sometimes raised their, long, foolish faces to stare at me, I was quite alone, and it felt more like the loneliness of a very large room in a deserted house than like any solitude out of doors. I remember thinking, ‘This is the sort of place, which as a child, one would have been rather afraid of or else would have liked very much indeed.’ A moment later I thought, ‘But when alone―really alone―everyone is a child: or no one?’ Youth and age touch only the surface of our lives.”

From C. S. Lewis (1945), ‘That Hideous Strength’

[The last two postings prompted by Ian Lowell]