A Day with Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest

I don’t know exactly how old I was when I read the story of Robin Hood. Eight? Ten? I don’t know if I borrowed the book from the library or if we had it on a shelf at the house. I don’t know if it was one of the books whose covers my cockatiel Angel nibbled upon as if it were birdseed when we let her out loose in the den or not. But I do know that I read it. And that I was shocked by the ending.

Spoiler alert: Robin Hood dies. Actually, he’s murdered. By his cousin. Who was a nun! What a betrayal. He’d come for help because he’d been feeling unwell and had gotten this instead from someone he’d believed he could trust. She should have been more loyal. Ah, but wasn’t she? She was loyal to King John who took the throne after his brother Richard the Lionheart died.

That’s what one version of the legend says, that she killed Robin because he wasn’t loyal to the king. Other versions say she was upset because Robin’s side of the family had inherited the land she felt was rightly due to her side of the family. Whatever her rationale was, she bled him too much when he came to receive medical treatment from her. The bleeding, in and of itself, wasn’t the problem, blood-letting was a method used by physician-priests of the time for ridding the body of ills, excess fluids (who needs their blood?), and supernatural ailments.

However, knowing exactly what she was doing, his cousin bled him thoroughly and excessively and then locked him in his room to die alone.

Before he completely expired, realizing he was in a fix, Robin Hood summoned his best friend and righthand man Little John with a signal from his horn. Upon the alarm, Little John broke into the room and saw his friend in a terminally weakened state.

Then, with his bow in hand and held up by Little John at the window, Robin gave his famous last words, “Wherever my arrow falls is where you shall lay my body for all eternity.”

He let fly his final shot and then weak from blood loss the legend died.

I was horrified.

It felt like my first introduction to death. I mean, to that death that comes even to the most legendary of figures. That death that shocks with its unexpectedness.

That couldn’t be the end.

That couldn’t be the final chapter.

It’d be a joke, another of Robin’s merry jokes.

Yet, isn’t that the lesson of this mortal life – that death is always the final chapter?

Okay.

Well, that got deep fast.

Or dark.

Maybe that’s not the lesson.

Bob Dylan said, “Just remember that death is not the end.”

So, obviously there’s more than one perspective here.

Anyway, thoughts of mortality aside, what is it exactly about the Robin Hood story that is so wonderful? For even though Robin Hood was killed in such a treacherous manner—shocking the child me—I still loved the story. I still loved the idea of the common man’s man.  

As I walk down the paths of Sherwood Forest beside the thick oaks and the tall thin birches, hawthorns, rowans, and hollies with all their leaves long ago released, I ponder the allure of the Robin Hood legend. The air has a touch of chill, but the occasional emerging of the sun takes off the worst of the winter’s edge. Matter of fact, it’s a perfect February day. I sit on a bench and look out at the trees.

Of course, Robin of Loxley was known for robbing the rich to feed the poor. And that seems noble. If you don’t think too hard about stealing. I mean, what if one of those rich had worked really hard to earn their money? What if they were going to use that money for good? What if it was a year’s worth of money that the person had saved up and was going to use to travel the world and now they had nothing because a man dressed in green took it away from them?

But that’s not what the Robin Hood legend is about. It’s not about whether Robin Hood and his Merry Band of Men were right to steal. It’s about the oppressed getting relief from the oppressors. It’s about one man standing up for the oppressed and saying, “This old way is not right. We’re not doing things this way anymore.” It’s about being able to have dinner when hungry, to have a drink to quench thirst. It’s about hope for a better future for those who struggle to survive. It’s about human rights. 

And it’s also about fun. About poking the bad guys and making them the butt of the joke. It’s about out scamming the scammers for Robin Hood robbed men who dressed up as beggars to trick those who passed by into charity. He robbed corrupt monks and abbots who stole for their own gain. He robbed the Sheriff of Nottingham of the taxes he’d collected from the already over-taxed country folks.  

The Robin Hood legend is all about the rebel with a cause. Everyone loves a proper rebel.

Well, everyone but the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Speaking of, it’s half term in Nottingham. That’s a winter school break for the kids and Sherwood Forest is teeming with families. It’s also Sunday, so the Forest is filled up with people out walking their dogs and with couples wanting some connection to nature and each other. It’s a day with glorious bits of sunshine, so here I am.

I get a cup of tea from the little kiosk trailer and sit on a bench for a while to watch the people walking by. Then after a bit, I stand up and go over to read the sign that tells about Robin Hood and Major Oak, the over 1150-year-old tree where Robin Hood and his men were reported to have hidden from his enemies, to have slept and sheltered under, and to have collected together for their forest forays. As I’m reading, a little girl standing just in front of me asks her dad, “Was Robin Hood real?”

It’s a question on the sign and I haven’t read enough myself yet to know how it’s answered.

“Of course, he was real,” the dad replies without hesitation. He doesn’t need to read. He’s sure. I listen to his tone to hear if he’s simply giving a Santa-Claus-esque assurance or if he believes that what he’s saying is true. I can’t quite tell. But the girl is satisfied. Her dad has said Robin Hood was real and that’s enough.

They walk off together and I watch them go.

After another reflective pause, I walk on in an opposite direction. I find a place away from the majority of the people and sit on another bench turning my face towards a charming collection of trees. An occasional dog comes up joyfully to greet me and I put down my hand for it to sniff as the owners labor by, calling the dog to come along with them. 

I sip my tea and think: I’m sipping tea in Sherwood Forest. Robin Hood was here. I’m sipping tea in a legendary place.

I look at the bare trees and wonder how different Sherwood Forest must look when it’s not wintertime. Did Robin and his Men have winter wear of brown? How did they stay warm during the colder months? Did they shelter inside the hollow walls of all the giant oaks? Or do legends only happen in spring, summer, and fall?

The birds call and sing. The Forest is full of life even in winter. It’s peaceful. It’s alive. It’s very alive. I could stay here sitting all day, but I have more trees to visit. So, I finish off my tea and put the empty cup in my bag. Pack out what you pack in, is my motto. I stand up and look around.

Just there, I bet, Robin Hood himself walked, and there too with Little John, Will Scarlet, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, and Alan-a-Dale walking alongside him, because of course, he was real. And, though his death made me sad to read about, his life still gives many, including me, hope that the oppressed will one day be free from their oppression. That’s a grand hope. To be sure though, that’s what legends do. Legends give hope. Legends live on. After all, what is death anyway? Don’t the trees die in winter and then come back again full leafed in spring? That happens here with these oaks and rowans and hollies. I look around at the trees and think that Robin Hood and his Merry Men could very easily appear and surround me now, laughing, seeing what money I have on me, and taking me off for a festive dinner around a fire built somewhere in the depths of the Forest. It could easily happen. For here, off the pages of a book, here among the trees of Sherwood Forest Robin Hood lives on.

  

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A Room of One's Own

I get dehydrated in Penzance. Which comes as a terrific surprise. I hadn’t been thirsty. It’s winter. Sure, the sun was out. Sure, I walked about six thousand miles over two days. Sure, I didn’t drink as much water as I usually do. But, come on now, am I getting so out of practice with survival that I can’t even take basic care of myself? How did I miss the signs? Maybe it was a case of water water everywhere and not a drop to drink.

Recriminations aside, I spend my final day in Cornwall recovering from the most splitting headache I’ve ever had in my life and wishing for something like death (because after all, death itself seems a bit drastic). I’d hardly slept the night before, my body aching and protesting (lack of water, as I know now), and wake up for the first time in my life unable to function. If I could think, I’d be grateful that this day is not my travel day. Very, very, very grateful.

Not thinking, I stay in bed and thank my lucky stars that I had planned to use this day to catch up on writing anyway.

I’ll write in the afternoon. I’ll write after a nap. I’ll write when I’m dead.

I hope I can move enough later to pack up.

Part of my liquid depleting could be blamed on a daytrip to St. Ives during which I did not drink what I should have drunk. I’d gone specifically to see the opening of an exhibition at the Tate St. Ives titled Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired By Her Writings. My host had told me about it and I was intrigued. A little jaunt down the coast in a train to St. Ives to visit a museum on a day when it was supposed to rain in Penzance, well, it sounded just the thing. And it was. It was really wonderful. Almost worth the dehydration.

I walked away from the exhibition full of conflicted thoughts. I wandered through St. Ives, along the waterfront, and sat for a while on a bench looking out over the beach at the lighthouse which was said to have inspired Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.

Of course, there was the beauty of Woolf’s writing set up with the work of such artists as Winifred Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Gluck, Gwen John, Frances Hodgkins, and Vanessa Bell among others.

An interesting thing of note was that Bell was also Woolf’s older sister. They, as artist and writer, encouraged and motivated each other. One of the plaques said that Woolf once wrote to Bell, “Do you think we have the same pair of eyes, only different spectacles?” I loved that.

And of course, Virginia Woolf is the one who famously wrote, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Woolf was born in 1882. At that time, women as artists or scholars had little voice in the public arena. They didn’t have the vote in England until 1918 and that was hard fought for. Even so, that granting of rights did not give all women the vote. All women didn’t get the vote in England until 1928. As a quick side note: U.S. women didn’t get the vote until 1920 and that was after nearly a century of their own protests. Sadly, that says something about what it takes to make change. Votes, of course, are also only one sort of right to pay attention to. So, with that example in mind, Woolf’s words can be seen to hold more than a charming desire for wealth and space.

In her writing and in her life, she worked for the equalizing of values between male and female artists and intellectuals. Another museum plaque said it this way: “For the adult Woolf there were two kinds of equality: one in which women gained admission into the world of men (the vote, access to education, financial independence, etc.) which she strove to attain; and another kind, which involved remodelling [sic] the very foundations of society to allow women and men to live on their own terms. She describes this in her 1931 essay Professions for Women: ‘You have won rooms of your own in the house hitherto exclusively owned by men. … But this freedom is only the beginning … With whom are you going to share it, and upon what terms?’” 

The exhibition showcases the equality that Woolf worked so hard to achieve for herself and others. It showcases feminism.

I wish there were a better word. I wish even more that it didn’t have to be a thing. But it does.

Here’s why. The exhibition features only female artists. And this seems, what, unusual? Feminist? A statement of some kind? An exclusion of men?

And yet, if it were an exhibition of only male artists featured against the works of say John Steinbeck, no one would blink an eye.

For me, the exhibition pulls me up short and makes me pay attention because I recognize my own reluctance to address the need for this female only exhibition. I don’t want there to be that gendered distinction. I don’t want to be reminded that I also happen to be, like Woolf, a woman writing fiction. While I would resent being known as a female writer rather than simply a writer, it’s because of Virginia Woolf and many others that I can be so finicky about a labeling. It’s because of Virginia Woolf and others that I have the creative space and freedom to live the way I live, that I can be a writer and be taken seriously in my craft. It’s because of Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell and all these other women that society, in however small a way, has been remodeled so that people, men and women both, can live on their own terms.

I make my way through the art filled rooms and think that we’re not completely there for everyone in every way, but maybe we’re a little, tiny bit closer.

As I walk away from the Tate St. Ives working on a case of dehydration, what I have most is an appreciation for all those women for pushing boundaries and making waves. For speaking up and for putting their art into expression whether through writing, painting, sculpture, or film. Because of them and many others it’s possible for me to have the financial independence and the space (money and a room) to do what I love.

With those thoughts lost somewhere within my aching head, I drink the bottle of coconut water I had (serendipitously, foreshadowingly?) purchased a day or so before. It’s supposedly teeming with electrolytes which are just what I need. I drink water. I drink some tea. I drink more water. I begin to feel less agonized and actually do some writing. It’s not very good work, but it’s done. I get packed up. Eventually, I curl back up in bed at some really early hour and fall to sleep. Ah, sleep, blessed sleep.

Let’s never do this again.

The next day, with my water bottle faithfully drunk and refilled and drunk again, over the ten hours it takes me to get from Penzance to Glastonbury, I gaze numbly through the windows and watch the landscape change from coastal scape to inland countryside. I’m not back to one hundred percent, with my day of rest I’d gotten myself to maybe 62 percent. However, my recovery is not helped by the fact that I’ve also developed an annoying head cold. I know it’ll pass in a day or so, but I’m really regretting that I forgot to bring along vitamin C. I’d meant to. If hindsight was 20/20 and I added that to my recovery percentage I’d be up to 82 percent.

Anyway, all that to say (at least I’m well enough to do simple math), I’m grateful to arrive to my house in Glastonbury with it’s welcoming bed, a jug full of water, a kettle, tea, and the view of a church bell tower out the window. It’s early yet in the evening and that feels like a gift. I’ve got the freedom to rest and so I do.

In the morning, I wake to heavy rain. My list of things to do in Glastonbury is much shorter than some of my other stays. While I’m only here three nights, I’m not in a rush to get out. My weather app says the rain will clear and the afternoon will bring some sunshine. For now, I allow myself the luxury of reading in bed with a cup of coffee. In between sips and sentences, I watch the falling rain bead on the windowpanes.

In the afternoon, the rain does clear and I decide to go out. If I get down the road and don’t feel up to the walk, I can come back. There’s always tomorrow.

I take it slow, making my way toward Glastonbury Tor. For once, the signs actually get me all the way to my destination via the Public Footpath. It’s been my experience so far, that often a sign will say “Awesome Site: 1 Mile” with a vague arrow that could be pointing straight ahead or off to the right. Then I’m left on my own to wonder if I’ve already come a mile, if I missed a turn off or a sign, if I’ve managed to wander onto private property, or if I should just head back the way I came and start over. Somehow, often with some extra walking or lots of direction-asking, I make it to where I want to go. But boy, my shoes are racking up some serious mileage.

The air is chilly and the wind is brisk. The ground squishes underfoot, damp and muddy. Following old Peruvian advice to cover my throat against the cold, I have a scarf on. I also have on my coat, a hat, and gloves. I get heated walking up the hill, but I stay mostly bundled up.

There’s a steady stream of people going up to and coming down from the Tor. It’s certainly a popular site. I stand aside for those moving more quickly than I am. I’m not in a hurry. I’m in no mood to overdo things.

At my own pace, I get to the top.

As with many places I’m visiting these days, the exact reason for the Tor (which is the terraced hill itself) is unknown. Some speculate that it could have been terraced for agricultural reasons, some say that it was done for defensive reasons, and others say that it was once a part of some elaborate labyrinth.

Many come to the Tor because of its ties to Arthurian Legend. Some say that the Tor was also called Avalon by the Britons. Others believe that the Tor could have been a location for the Holy Grail. Others link the Tor and some of the surrounding places to Goddess Worship.

I’m here because Glastonbury looked good as an itinerary point on my travel map and because of the Arthurian ties. A decade or two ago, I’d gone through an Arthurian phase and read nearly all I could find on the legend including The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck (speaking of Steinbeck). And why not visit these places while I’m here?    

At the top, the wind is going billyho. I have to brace myself against it.

Having mastered the Tor and my own corporeal form, I want to feel something (besides the wind) so I stand inside St. Michael’s Tower which dates from the 14^th century and is the only part of the Church of St. Michael that still stands.

I only feel cold.

For an instant though, like a tiny miracle, I have the Tor and the Tower to myself. And then a little whisper comes, it’s not an outside voice, it’s my own, and all it says is: At Glastonbury Tor the wind is god, but the walls of the tower still stand against it.

It’s not poetry, but it’s close enough. I’m satisfied.

I get my pictures, avoid getting blown away out over Somerset, and go back down.

It’s still early afternoon so I meander over to Glastonbury Abbey. The ruins here are beautiful and I’m eager to get inside the walls and walk around. Like the Tor, this site is also fairly peopled. Glastonbury Abbey is the place where in 1191 some monks dug around the graveyard to find Arthur and Guinevere’s bones. The bones were left there until 1278 when, under the direction of the then king and queen, they were moved a very short distance and placed in a black marble tomb which survived as long as the Abbey did, that is until 1539.

I have no idea where the bones are now.

There’s both a calm sort of energy (for lack of a better word) and a majesty here and after I explore for a while I find a bench and sit and stare at the ruined remains of the cathedral and the place of Arthur and Guinevere’s internment.

It’s nice to be still with the sun on my face.

Having walked several miles, I’ve reached my limit for the day and I’m glad I’m not far from where I’m staying. I’ve done much of what I came to Glastonbury to do and I’m content (if not completely well). 

I sit a little while longer, thinking and not thinking.

It seems a strange contrast to have so shortly come from Woolf’s mission of making “rooms” for herself and others, to this place – to an old world that celebrates the Knights of the Round Table and their constant rescuing of damsels (whether they needed it or not).   

I don’t know what to make of that. I don’t know that I should make anything of it at all.

What would Virginia Woolf make of it?

I sip a little bit of my water. There’s no real answer to that. Besides, it’s closing time at Glastonbury Abbey so I head for the exit and go in search of some Vitamin C and soup.

As I pay for my remedies, I’m glad that I have money for these things and that, however temporary my time in Glastonbury is, here I also have a room of my own. 






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