Mitch and my husband made a bunch of good points, which means I'd better modify, clarify and expand:
> >there's certainly a skill to getting round in the
woods.
> Indeed, a skill most people who live near them
possess.
Not really. Most people stay on trails that they know in the woods, and they do it by starting at a place that they know, then using the correct turns when they come to a fork. These may be marked, or just memorised. Some landmarks will be used where possible. That IS their skill in getting around! Tell someone to walk five miles west offtrail, and you've generally got someone lost promptly.
> > Even when they go raiding, I'll bet there's
trails!
> I think there are trails everywhere. Trails that
were already present when humans first reentered the
area after the inhuman occupation. Cattle and sheep
trails abound as well.
Trails, whether made by people or animals, usually use a combination of the easiest and shortest ways to get from A to B. But, you have to concentrate on them because they may also mislead you dreadfully. Stray off the trail, and it can lose itself in a confounded hurry. Also, you can easily get diverted from the small trail that you want to be on, to one that looks the same, or to a vague line between the trees that you think is a path. Been there, done that, and been rather embarrassed.
Now if any area has much in the way of browsers and grazers, then the understorey is not very thick, and you can usually see for a hundred yards or so before too many trunks get in the way. Unfortunately, most trees of the same type look pretty much alike.
> Sartar isn't as wild a place as one might think.
There has been steady occupation and expanding
population for several hundred years (well for several
thousand really).
Sartar wasn't, AFAIK, much populated between the Dragonkill War and the human resettlement. Since there were around 500 years between those events, I'd say that any land that could regrow forest, did. Very vigourously! In fact, many places that had been cleared at one time would now be into their second or third generation of climax forest. Check out any of the abandoned farms in rural Ontario, and see how quickly the woods move back in. (It depends on nearby seed sources for the species mix you'll get, but there will be forest.)
> > As I've always considered much of Sartar and
neighbouring territory to be wooded like Ontario and
Quebec.
> I'm not a Sartar expert, but I don't see it as a
boreal forest like the Canadian areas you are talking
about.
Oh, definitely not just boreal/coniferous. I was thinking not of boreal forests, but more of the mixed hardwood/softwood forests of southern Ontario and Quebec, with lots of birch, beech, maple, ash, chestnut (?)(once, anyway), black walnut, butternut mixed in with spruce, fir, pine, hemlock and cedar, etc., plus appropriate Eurasian and uniquely Genertelan spp., since this isn't actually Canada. Depending on the local aspects, you can get almost pure stands of any of these species, and various mixes of most. The local Gatineau Hills have at least five distinct species mixes within hundreds of metres of each other, depending on exposure, soil, moisture, and accidents of colonisation and regrowth.
> (snip) I don't think anyone in Sartar lives
literally within the depths of an endless forest.
As stated, no. I would say that there are definitely some professions that live in the deeper parts of the forest, for all or part of the year, e.g.:
Hunters/trappers
Charcoal makers
Swineherds
Various religious hermits
Loggers
Forest wardens/stewards (Do these exist?)
> > There were wolves, bears, and rabid animals from
time to time. Plus if you did get lost and all the
grown-ups had to dump what they were doing to come
find you, there would be much worse trouble!
> I see the Sartar parallel being the sacred, magical
areas where humans aren't meant to tread.
I'd say, plus those hazards, not instead of them. Even more reasons to stick close to home.
Now, to round that out, it was Ian's opinion that the locals would know how to get to: local shrines or holy places in the woods; places of local interest (like where G-G-G-Uncle Gunther slew three broo singlehanded); the best berry patches, nut trees, fishing holes or other resources, etc, because these are all part of their stories of belonging to the tula. There's also beating the bounds every year during Sacred Time for everyone.
And if you're in a truly densely settled part of Sartar, Heortland or wherever, or somewhere that has been rased for large flocks of grazing animals, there just may not be large, contiguous areas of forested land left.
Even then, I would look back at the European experience for a comparison. Without saws, and with thousands of years of continuous occupation, there were still large forests left in France and Germany well into the 1500's. And they were considered dark and fearsome places inhabited by wild and dangerous creatures, outlaws, and powerful spirits. Rather like Sartar, in fact.
So I would still maintain that experts will know the woods well, and most others will know the fringes and important places only.
Alison
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