Where the Wild things keep me

They talk in town, the way folks always will.

If you linger near the feed store long enough, or you stop for a coffee where the old men hold court, you’ll hear it said like a warning, like a joke, like a prayer turned sideways.

“There’s a woman out there in the woods in College Grove, livin’ alone with goats and wild things.”

And I’ve learned to smile into it. I’ve learned to stand up straighter inside it. Because it’s true—and it’s truer than most things folks say.

The cabin is my grandparents’ old log place, tucked back where the trees knit their branches together like a quilt pulled up to your chin. The first time I remember it, I was small enough to believe the world had secret doors. I called it my fairy land then. Not the kind with glitter and make-believe, but the older kind—where you mind the creek, and you mind the woods, and you say thank you when the wind spares your roof. Where the light comes slantwise through the leaves and makes a person feel watched over by something that doesn’t need a name.

As a child I thought the magic lived out there without me, like it would keep on humming whether I listened or not.

But magic, I’ve found, changes with you.

Now I’m grown, and I came back to this cabin with a life cracked open in my hands. I didn’t come back for a sweet little memory. I came back because something in me knew the woods wouldn’t lie to me. The trees don’t flatter. The ravines don’t bargain. A cold night tells the truth quick. And I needed truth like I needed air.

I lost my marriage while I was finding myself, and there ain’t a pretty way to say it. Some losses come like a clean cut—sharp, immediate, and done. Mine came like winter does in Tennessee: slow and certain, creeping in through the gaps you didn’t think were there until you felt the chill in your bones. I tried to patch it. I tried to warm it back up. I tried to be smaller than my own spirit so there’d be room for what was leaving.

But you can’t keep a thing alive by holding your breath.

So I came home to the logs my grandparents set, the place that raised my imagination, the place that made me believe in hidden gold and kindly enchantments. I came home, and the woods met me like an old, steady friend—no questions, no judgement, just that deep hush that says, You can lay it down here.

Out back, the goats became my honest congregation.

Goats don’t care who left you. They don’t care what you used to be called. They care if you show up, if your hands are gentle, if your voice is steady, if the feed bucket is on time. They watch you with those bright, old eyes like they’ve seen a thousand human dramas and decided not to be impressed.

They taught me routine. They taught me to laugh again, because you can’t stay solemn with a goat trying to climb a thing it has no business climbing, looking proud as a preacher in Sunday shoes.

And then there is Beauregard. My darling boy, Beau.

Beau has no use of his back legs as he was born with spina bifida, and if you’ve never loved an animal who requires a little extra work, you might not know what holy work it is. Beau moves through the world in his own way—sometimes slower, sometimes sideways, sometimes like he’s listening to music the rest of us can’t hear. He has needs you can’t ignore and a sweetness you can’t bargain with. He looks at me like I’m the safest place he could have ever found. I look at him like he’s an ancient god and he’s here to test that I still believe in his kind.

People call animals “just animals” when they’re trying to keep themselves from feeling too much.

But Beau is my best friend. Not in a poetic sense—in the the real sense. He is waiting for me at dawn when the world is blue and the frost still clings to the edges of things. He is waiting for me at dusk when the woods begin their whispering and every shadow looks like a story. He is there when grief tries to sneak up on me, and he makes me come back into my body: a warm head under my hand, a steady breath, a larger than life, stubborn goat that trusts me. That needs me.

Taking care of him saved me in ways I couldn’t explain to anyone who thinks love has to look a certain way to count.

Out here, love doesn’t always come wearing a ring.

Sometimes it comes with hooves and a limp, or with fur and bright eyes, or with a wildness that keeps its distance but still shares the same moon. The woods are full of neighbors if you learn how to live like you belong among them.

I used to be afraid of being alone.

Now I understand the difference between being alone and being held. I’ve learned to make friends with both.

There are nights the coyotes sing up on the ridge and it sounds like laugher breaking open in the dark. There are owls that speak like old women muttering warnings. There are deer that appear so quietly you’d swear they stepped out of another world. When the wind comes through hard, it can shake the cabin like it’s reminding you how very small you are.

And there are mornings when the sun lifts up over the trees and everything turns gold—dust, spiderwebs, fence wire, my own tired hands— and I feel something warm settle over my shoulders. Ancestors of mine and the spirits in the woods, perhaps, giving me a nudge that they are there, too.

‘Keep going’ I hear in my Grandpas gentle voice. ‘You’re getting better at this, Liza’ I hear him say under his breath, as if he’s still right next to me. The land will only give to you what sweat and blood you give back to it. And if you let it speak to you, it will tell you exactly what it needs.

Appalachian folks, twisted in with deep southern wise women, have always know that the woods are full of stories. We were raised on warnings—don’t whistle at night, don’t follow a light you can’t place, don’t call out to something that calls your name from the dark. We were taught to leave a little respect at the edge of the forest, the way you leave a little something extra at the graveyard gate.

But there’s another kind of story too, the kind folks don’t tell as loud:

That the land recognizes you when you come back with your heart split open.

That the old places don’t shame you for what didn't work. They just ask if you’re willing to begin again.

That there are guardian things in this world—some you can name, some you can't— and they don’t always show up with wings. Sometimes they show up as a stubborn little goat who needs you on your feet. Sometimes they show up as a rhythm: feed, water, hay, check the fence, breathe.

When people say. “She lives alone out there”, they mean it like a curse.

But the truth is, I’m surrounded.

I’m surrounded by animals who don’t require me to pretend. I’m surrounded by woods that have known my family longer than my sorrow has known me. I’m surrounded by the kind of quiet that lets you finally hear your own spirit speaking plain.

And I’m proud.

Proud of the woman I have become—the one folks whisper about. Proud of the hands that learned how to fix what breaks. Proud of the heart that survived loss without turning bitter. Proud of choosing a life that looks strange from the road but feels honest from the porch.

If there are fairies left in College Grove, they’re not the dainty kind. They’re the kind that live in the practical kind of magic: in the way a cabin can hold you up, in the way a herd comes running when they hear your steps; in the way Beau leans into my touch like he’s reminding me I’m still capable of gentleness.

This place was my magical fairy land when I was a kid.

But it’s more powerful now, because I’m more powerful now.

Now I understand what the stories were trying to tell me all along:

The woods don’t just enchant you.

They remake you.

And when the night falls and the goats settle and Beau is safe and the cabin creaks like its breathing, I sit with the dark the way my grandparents would've —like an old companion. I listen to the wild things moving out there, and I feel love around me, thick as summer air.

Let them talk.

Let them make a legend out of it.

I know the truest part: I didn’t come out here to disappear.

I came out here to find myself—and I did.

-Eliza Ross