Act 1 Scene 1: A Walk in the Woods
It all began with a snow-topped log pointing into the woods. Anna Arnesen was trying to pull herself together—at times a superfluous task, at others an impossible one. And now the forest seemed to be offering her a path forward.
When Anna took their pictures the trees spoke and she did her best to listen. She remembered reading how in one day, a single tree could deliver enough oxygen for four grown humans while breathing in carbon dioxide to protect the planet. Trees had feelings. They looked after each other. They even made friends. And when they got thirsty, they cried out in ultrasonic volumes humans can’t hear. She’d also read that trees can count, learn, and remember. Facts that seemed impossible when she was sitting in her living room back in Stamford. But now they all made sense.
Soon Anna came to a lake decorated by dancing clusters of orange brush where an array of pines and cedars lined the shore like protective soldiers. The lake was beautiful, with golden reeds dancing in the breeze. The landscape was as celebratory as a birthday cake.
Anna took its picture with a sense of revelry.
But when she moved onward, she saw too many trees had been cut down for no apparent reason. Long unattended logs lay strewn across the forest floor waiting for a purpose that would never come, bleached by time into colors that all but defied description—flickers of orange, green, and brown merging into backgrounds of pale khaki and off-white. Some cut up like drums no one would ever play.
Anna also read that the number of trees worldwide had declined by almost half since farming began twelve thousand years ago. And more than fifteen billion trees are felled every year. The article in the Smithsonian also noted that today the average mammal weighs less than twenty pounds, but prior to us their average weight was two hundred pounds. Humans had created a new universe of miniaturized creatures and pets.
This included Anna’s cat, Waley, whom she adored.
A twinge of sadness struck her when she came across a huge trunk lying on the ground with all its roots exposed, spreading more than six feet across. The bark was still fresh, so it had recently been alive. The roots stretched beside the trail, their long fingers reaching out for nourishment but finding only air. A sculpture from nature. A monument. But a monument to what?
It all seemed to be an icon of warning far beyond the forest, reminding Anna that along with her concerns about nature and the planet, her fear for her own future had also increased exponentially. She was no longer clear what kind of country she lived in. She hadn’t been all that clear before, but now it was even more problematic. A country divided. A country that was really two countries. And she lived, at best, in only one.
Anna took another picture at the edge of a beaver dam, stood still, and listened again. Instead of the trees talking she heard a very different set of voices. Appeals of all sorts coming from the birds and the hurried footsteps of animals racing toward and away from her. Appeals but also calls to action of a distinct kind—as if nature might ask humans to reform by taking matters into its own hands, which in some respects it was already doing through droughts, storms, and fires.
As she listened more closely, Anna thought she discerned another presence. Something breathing that she could barely hear. Something moving toward her that she couldn’t see. But she could feel it. And as seconds turned into minutes, she was convinced it was there. Was it another animal waiting to be seen? Or just another tree moving in the wind? Or was it something else?
Anna became fearful. But then she tried to laugh. As crazy as it was, she thought of trolls. She often fantasized about trolls while growing up. Sometimes labeled “protectors of the forest” they’d saturated her grandmother Christine’s fairy tales ever since she could remember. Trolls could change their shape and take on almost any form, like hollowed-out trees, stumps, animals, or even rolling balls of yarn. They might crop up as a cloud of smoke leaving a dwelling through a chimney. But most often males had large noses, big ears, and beards, while female trolls could be fat and hideous, or else beautiful even if they had tails.
Christine once told Anna she had “secret powers” to bring trolls to life when Anna described a bearded man and a plump woman appearing at different times in her bedroom. Everyone took it as a joke. Even Anna tried to dismiss those troubling bedroom appearances as “troll delusions” once she knew what “delusions” meant. But there was a glint in her grandmother’s eyes suggesting a very different interpretation.
Anna wished Christine had been with her the summer before her junior year at Barnard. when years after her “troll delusions” faded she thought she saw a troll in the mountains near Lillehammer. The sky was already dark. She was descending along a ridge when she felt a larger force emerging beyond herself. Then she noticed a brooding figure as tall as a tree standing beside a narrow row of railroad tracks lined by woods. In retrospect, maybe it was a tree. But it seemed to have magnetic power—shaggy, bearded, with very little neck and a long nose that, on the other hand, might have been a branch skewed strangely in the twilight. It was breathing with the wind and speaking words she heard quite magically from fifty yards away— “We’re not done. We’re coming back!”
Anna wished she’d had a camera with her, but she didn’t. So instead she took a mental picture. Then, after standing in awe for nearly a minute, she hurried down the mountain on a path that soon took the tree troll out of sight.
Once she returned to her uncle and aunt’s cabin, she tried out her Norwegian, learned more about Oslo’s caring government, played cards, and drank beer. But Anna resorted to English when she confessed that she’d imagined a tree was a troll, provoking smiles and laughter. Nothing to suggest that the creature was real and nothing about its whispered message—a well-kept secret placed squarely in the past until its felt presence sprang forward in the Halden woods to become a transformative part of her Sunday afternoon.
