Sherwood Calling

So, after a long work day after a long week after a long film festival, I finally drift home. The backyard, once landscaped, is lush with undisciplined life, and the birds roosting in a mostly dead tree have left some presents on my deck. The kitchen door argues, but finally bangs opens enough to allow me into the chaos strewn inside. Bag dropped, slippers on, and the day’s laundry already bucketed and escorted to the basement, I begin preparing for a long night of cleaning and blog updating. The festival report isn’t going to finish itself.

Then something pushes me to check the front porch. Sure enough, a box is waiting for me. What’s that rule about best-laid plans, again?

They weren’t supposed to arrive until the following week, but the new additions to my DVD collection are welcome: a low-key television western with Sam Elliott, a high school noir flick, and Buster Keaton’s last two silent movies. One more, though, ruins any best intentions for the evening--Robin of Sherwood (with Merries) has arrived.

When I think of Robin of Loxley, two screen personas spring to mind—Errol Flynn’s iconic swashbuckler, and the mythological Robin of the Hood. Back in the mid-1980s, when the BBC planned yet another version of England’s most lasting legend, writer Richard Carpenter concocted a strange mix of realism and mysticism--a young, misfit band of roughens finding a cause beyond simple survival, guided by a shaman of Celtic legend. Robin isn’t a disgraced noble--he’s a freeman whose freedom is stolen by the Norman Sheriff of Nottingham, a deliciously evil man with a hilariously horrendous temper. Little John is a man bewitched by an English lord fallen into the dark arts, and his duel of a meeting with Robin on the log is more deadly than the cheerfully playful one of tradition. Marian is a headstrong young woman as at home in the woods as surrounded by stone, so her fate as a pawn of the political church--represented by the Sheriff’s brother--is not one she accepts. Will Scarlet has become as heated as his name--in a devastating entrance in a prison pit, his features muted by shadow, Will tells the tale of his wife’s horrific death, of how everything he loved in this world was cruelly ripped from him. When he growls, “My name was Will Scathelock. It’s Scarlet now,” the never-absent hatred glows from within. A Saracen Muslim named Nasir joins the band, rarely speaking but wielding two wicked swords and a wry sense of humor. Then there’s Herne the Hunter--the aforementioned shaman, wandering around Sherwood granting Robin sage advice, weaving some naturalistic magic, and wearing Bambi on his noggin.

Tuck, on the other hand, is Tuck. Some things never should change.

For a nearly 25-year-old series, Robin of Sherwood is timeless. Clannad’s synthetic music doesn’t sound dated, only otherworldly. The strength of the series comes from the little things: the quiet camaraderie between the Merry Men, the affection between Robin and Marian, the give-and-take between the Sheriff and the childlike obstinacy that is Guy of Gisburne. These things, combined with unpredictable stories respinning the legendary tales in a different color, made Robin of Sherwood a series I never forgot.

Or maybe it was simply Sherwood.

When I reached my 8th year, my family moved from a Bill Cosby-like neighborhood filled with children my age to a small, quiet, dead-end street surrounded by woods. The youngest boys were in high school and didn’t want to have anything to do with the goofy, awkward new kid. The woods, then, became my friend. During the spring, after the snows finally melted, I would grab my cowhide backpack rescued from Dad’s attic and disappear into the wood for an hour or two, following the streams to map little islands and natural oddities like the Wooden Arch (that lasted all of two years), the hidden patch of Christmas wreath plants, the waterfall married with the crumbled dam, the grove of twisted and brittle swamp trees carpeted with fern. Although I never pretended I was Robin, I shared the comfort the fictional Merries felt within the underbrush and leaves. Hidden away from the rush of modernity, I discovered more than just a few personal landmarks in two acres of seasonal swamp and hillside woodland; the natural world became open to me for the first time in my life, and I’ve been drawn to it ever since.

These days seem further and further removed from those times, but I’m still drawn to the woods at Gambrill Park, where there’s a spot where all the mechanical noise can’t reach and true silence prevails. You can learn much from silence.

As I watch Robin and his crew crash through Sherwood, playing gracious hosts to sometimes unwilling guests and waylaying lords and knights, I’m a bit envious. Their time in the wood is perpetual and their life natural, even if forced on them by the official crimes of their time. I only get to return as my time permits. Maybe that’s why Robin of Sherwood left an impression on me.

Or maybe I simply had a crush on Marian.



Yep. That was it.