Fear of the Unknown, Fear of Yourself! #StorytellingOverTime

As a fervent traveller, I know from experience just how much travelling into the unknown has the power to transform. Through it, you can test your skills and wit, face dangers of both the natural world and human kind, and you can return with greater wisdom and self-knowledge. Many times have I landed in a new country with only a backpack and a good heart, unsure of the language or culture, unsure where exactly I would go or how I would get there, knowing only that I wanted to explore and appreciate different lives and landscapes. Such experiences broadened my mind and imagination.

However, there is also a reason why the ancient Greek god Pan was god of the wilderness, and why his name formed the basis of the word ‘panic’. Any wild, unknown place can be scary at first, and in ancient times there was far more wilderness than there is today. Most people lived and died within relatively short distances of where they were born, and wilderness hemmed them in on all sides – dark uninhabited forests, icy impenetrable mountains, vast thirsty deserts, perilous rough seas. Even travelling to the next town along could be fraught with danger, and thus all such wild unknown places generated stories.

Some stories of course recollected true events, but many more told of what might have been, what could have been lurking in the forsaken darknesses, and in doing so these stories enabled us to explore our deepest fears. For where else could we put what we imagined to be our greatest fears other than in unfamiliar places unconstrained by reality? Over the centuries, the wilderness was (and still is) the perfect space to expel all the scary things people don’t like – about themselves, their cultures and societies. Thus stories of the unknown are a paradox: at once unfamiliar and familiar, about us and not us.

When I was writing When Dark Roots Hunt, I thought about this when creating the swamps between the towering hillfarms of Palude. To my main character Sala, the swamps are a wilderness full of natural and human dangers, it tests her skills and wit – yet what ends up scaring her most about it, is what it reflects about human nature. You’ll have to read the book to find out what that is!

But as with other stories that venture into unknown wildernesses, the idea of ‘the wild’ is very much a construct of perception. It is up to us to decide where the unknown starts and ends, to come to see differences as not-so-different, and to see familiarity in the unfamiliar. What might at first be dangerous and strange can, for the very reasons that makes it dangerous and strange, offer us the opportunity to better understand who we are.

Perhaps if you come to venture into the unfamiliar world of When Dark Roots Hunt, you’ll find a part of yourself there. Either way, let me know!

More #StorytellingOverTime Posts:

• Who is Your Hero – all about the hero’s journey in stories
• Fear of the Unknown, Fear of Yourself – how we find a part of ourselves in wilderness stories
• No One Listens to Change – how stories can test out elements of progress
• The Power of Love & Betrayal – how stories help us understand the complex nature of love
• Monsters are Metaphors – how monsters are metaphors for the dynamics of society – to come!