Woods are not like other spaces. Their trees surround you, 100m above you, pressing in from all sides. Woods choke off views, and leave you muddled and without bearings. They make you feel small and confused and vulnerable, like a small child lost in a crowd of strange legs. Stand in a desert or prairie, and you know you are in a big space. Stand in a wood and you feel ill. They are a vast, featureless nowhere. And they are alive. The woods are spooky. Quite apart from the thought that they may harbour wild beasts and armed, genetically challenged fellows named Zeke and Festus, there is something innately sinister about them -some indescribable thing that makes you sense an atmosphere of pregnant doom with every step and leaves you profoundly aware that you are out of your element and ought 10 keep your ears pricked. Though you tell yourself it's preposterous, you can't quite shake the feeling that you are being watched. You order yourself to be serene -it's just a wood for goodness' sake -but really you are feeling jumpy. Every sudden noise, the crack of a falling limb, the crash of a bolting deer makes you spin in alarm and stifle a plea for mercy. Whatever mechanism within you is responsible for adrenaline, it has never been so sleek and polished so keenly poised to pump out a warming squint of adrenal fluid. Even asleep you are a coiled spring.