^{Photo by Mike Hindle on Unsplash}

Some things linger in the deep woods as they do in the desert, persisting in a void unmolested by oversighted observers from beyond. Allowed to rest and remain, a proud peak or humble elk antler may ratify or rot, according to its own will or that of the wild itself that it is a dweller within. In the Wilderness — outside of the domain and far beyond the designs of higher thought systems — a feature or creature may make its own signature upon the spaces where it presides, regardless of the outside.

Liberated by the primitivity of an area, a beast may raise itself up to a power or position that could not be conceived under the pressure of precedent and predisposition. Badgers and beavers are builders of bases and barriers — with but mere branches and bramble, burrowing beneath the earth or barring the flow of waters upon its surface, as is their wont for warmth and warren. To those without, these are simple structures whose conception seems straightforward enough to dismiss further suspicion. How many rodentious irrigation projects have we belittled or seen only the ruins of, far too long after that Lodge Lordship’s fall? When did we end the unbroken line of pronghorn poets that left their randy prose etched upon the supple peaks of yester?

It is a crucial failing of the two-footed to underconceive the potential intricacies of those beneath their scale or beyond their scope. Late (if ever) will they decrypt that the trees in fact grazed up all of us quick movers to expand their dominion more rapidly than a winding root or a canopied seed upon a zephyr might. As they give us little sweet treatlings that incent us to sup of their seedcase’s succor, we spread their successors far and wide, enrobed in perfectly designed food and warmth for spawning. The movers and shakers make up the footsoldiers proselytizing their nucleic word in a web across the vast gulfs between verdant kingdoms. We are all part of a machine; it is just the two-footed and excised animals that, once domesticated, can no longer smell the instructions.

So are these two domains so many epochs divested from one another, that they are diminished in potential since that split, and the two have not grown as richly as they did once before. Each half held back and lessened by the other, a gross perversion of the design as it was intended. There are no longer giants among men, the last strains of the Grigoric line driven either underground or into it, as the wicked silt of jealousy slipped into the hearts of man and beast alike, stoppering up the natural flow toward greatness. The outlier became the outcast, not the outstanding, and the march of mice towards Mars ever diminished in possibility. Even those who preach the stuff of miracles — confronted with the clear evidence of something greater than their experience — would likely club the unfamiliar away.

From the Bang onward, all of existence shows us, from top to bottom, the core underlayment of duality as its base. From particles to protozoa, pears and polecats, pairings are persistent through-in and throughout. The Totality leans toward balance, which is best struck by a distancing of two points rather than a tippy middle bit. Thus is binarity a constant in the template, reflections of reflections skittering outwards to fill the emptiness that craves them so. Here the basis is set for a greater conceit — that by its very nature cannot ever be fully captured by one alone — and calls for a collaboration to allow its conception. In the beginning there is one, but only by division may there become something greater, as a singular cannot multiply. Give and take, black and white provide the structure upon which all the spectrographic definition between may be deviated and explored. Imagine yourself alone and you will ever be singularly so.

In an axis mundi mapped by man, where may a monster make its mark? As the lessening magnifies across the globe, where is there left to be strange and great? We may only hope that, deep within the unspoilt strata of long since subducted antiquity, some curiosity is concentrating and collecting. Mayhaps the plates tectonic themselves are the true masters of the earth that they make up, as the mountains have been long worshipped as gods.

In the call for duality, the seas become their brides, as the waters ebb and flow through their heavenly intermediary, collecting upon the icy peaks and then sojourning back down through their tribulations to the sea again. Upon the way, they are collecting and dispensing the elemental salts and sins of the earth itself, to bring to the watery lifelands below that the cycle may ever flow, witnessed or not.

What is it that has changed in man that we no longer allow spaces for wonderment in the world around us? Why now do we lack the imagination to dream of more under the mountainside than mineral and material? Where did the dragons go? Science persistently has provided us with new horizons and realms to explore, but ones only accessed by means beyond the scope of any humble shaman or frenzied wildman. Will it be only too late that we find the zeal with which we disproved the existence of the fantastic, only hastened by the revelation that “Here Be Monsters” was a warning gravely misinterpreted? Every advance in evolution, technology, or civilization has been the result of some variant allowed to take root and grow a new strain of weirdling.

Without, some vague, only glimpsed (yet undeniable) terrifying force lurks in the thick fogs, dark vales, and deep spaces. We are left with only the real about us to blame, shame, forsake, and make war with. Bereft of malevolent forces to oppose, we manufacture and become the vile and polarist beings the balance seems to require there be. Only when we have collected all the monsters without will we begin to see: the last monster left uncollected remains within ourselves.

Sylvan Lingo hails from the insubstantial township of Quishnam, and has a deep, abiding regard for the unique weirdness of Eastern Washington.