Louisville, Kentucky, circa 1982: my best friend and I spent a lot of time exploring the woods on our walks home after school. One fateful day we stumbled upon a not-so-hidden cache of adult magazines which blew our Catholic grade-school minds. I still remember the titles after all these years: Oui, Harvey, Gallery, and two Hustlers. One of the issues of Hustler had an article on Anton Lavey, which I’m sure had a profound impact on my juvenile mind. That same issue had a pictorial I’ll never forget: two female “space aliens” in silver outfits and rainbow-colored afros. It was the first time I ever realized that two women could or would ever kiss each other. My initial reaction was “ewww” right before my secondary reaction of “ohhhh.”

Up to that point I had snuck a few peeks at the old man’s Playboys, but I had never known that there was other stuff under those furry early ‘80s muffs. There were so many revelations in those treasures that at first sort of grossed me out, but then completely fascinated me to no end. It seems, arguably, in retrospect, that these magazines just karmically appeared out of nowhere at exactly the right time in my development. My friend and I split them up. He’d hold on to a few of them for a week, and I’d keep the others, and then we’d swap. To a pre-teen kid, prior to the Internet, finding and holding onto such riches was unparalleled.

It wasn’t until the Internet came along that I learned “woods porn” was a thing that was experienced by anyone other than me. I remember first hearing the term mentioned on a messageboard back in the late ‘90s. I was surprised, at the time, that someone else had had a similar experience to my discovery of forbidden sacred treasures in the woods. Others began to chime in with their experiences and I was shocked to find that it was such a common experience.

Over the years, I’ve seen discussions pop up from time to time where (mostly dudes) reminisce about the stacks of Penthouse and (always) Hustler (it seemed to be the woods porn title of choice) that were found in dry creek beds or under logs or in abandoned shacks or behind construction sites.

I’ve had to wonder if there was some sort of Johnny Appleseed of porn who traveled the country distributing perverse periodicals for the most inquisitive children to find on their explorations. Some have speculated about nasty gnomes or porn-faeries littering the woodlands with titillating treats.

Is it possible that stacks of pornography were left in remote areas as lures for pedophiles with nefarious agendas? In my hometown we had a registered sex offender albino shop-owner whose entire M.O. in procuring teenage boys involved offering them jobs “reviewing” porn tapes. Could woods porn have been bait in a trap that somehow hundreds of kids in the ‘70s and ‘80s managed to snag like mice snatching cheese without getting caught? I mean, there’s no anecdotal evidence I’ve ever heard to indicate that this is the case, but then again, maybe the parties involved aren’t able to tell their tales?

The truth is probably more simple and innocent than that: the woods offered some sort of privacy that couldn’t be found in the home . They were the ultimate safe space for kids or homeless dudes or henpecked husbands or whomever might have needed a quiet place alone to reflect on god’s creations.
 

Recreation of a typical woods porn cache. Photo by Bickel.
 
I recently asked friends on social media if they had ever had an experience with finding porn in the woods and within a day I had over 70 people chime in indicating that they definitely had found porn in the woods as a child. The stories of “secret spank banks” of “rain-mangled” magazines seemed to anecdotally indicate that woods porn was ubiquitous and finding it was a widely-shared common experience.

The stories told were sometimes frightening: one describing a massive “trash bag full that we found in the woods and when we shook it out to sift through it, a huge shit and blood-encrusted dildo fell out too,” and another who had found porn in the woods, but then stopped looking when a dead body was found in the same spot.

The subject of woods porn was brought up recently by my friend Robin Bougie. Robin is an author as well as an expert and historian of vintage erotica. His hand-lettered and illustrated Cinema Sewer magazine, in its 20th year of publication, shines a spotlight on the history of pornography, sexploitation, drive in movies, and other types of unusual cinema from yesteryear. Robin is also responsible for the porn comic series Sleazy Slice, and the coffee table book series, Graphic Thrills, which celebrates the lavishly painted poster art which advertised 1970s American pornography.
 

Robin Bougie’s excellent “Graphic Thrills”
 
Robin recently had a fantastic dialogue going on over at his Facebook page about the woods porn phenomenon, with lots of folks also chiming in with their experiences. Considering Robin an expert in the field, I asked him a few questions to get his take on this experience which has been shared by so many.

DM: Tell me about your experience with “woods porn”

Robin Bougie: Back in 1980, I had my first run-in with pornography. These were damp magazines covered in dirt and twigs that I found in the woods in second grade. I was with three little girls who were my playmates, and we thought it was utterly fascinating. One of these girls grew up to be a newscaster on an American television network, but back then she was just the daughter of one of my mom’s best friends. I remember clearly all the pubes going on in the magazine, and did not know what the hell to make of that. We spread the soggy magazines out on a tree stump to look at them, and ended up leaving them there, where I can only assume they were found by other children as well.

I remember really clearly seeing a vulva from the front in one pic, and thinking “Oh, that’s what that looks like”, and then turning the page, and it was a another woman doing a doggy style pose from the back, and the pussy looked TOTALLY DIFFERENT from that angle, and I was just utterly confused. I was thinking “So it’s different on each girl? No two are the same?!”

DM: When did you first become aware that “woods porn” was a thing that was experienced by many others?

RB: I became aware that it was a thing after talking to so many of my peers from my age range. The 1990s band Marcy Playground coined the phrase “I am a child of the ‘free to be you and me’ generation.” Free to Be You and Me was a TV special and book that many kids who grew up in the 1970s and early 1980s experienced, and its concept was to foster gender neutrality, and promote individuality, tolerance, and comfort with yourself and others. You know, hippie-dippy post-1960s shit, but really progressive and forward thinking at the time. How unlikely it would be today, to see 8, 9 and 10 year olds wandering around in the woods on their own? We weren’t raised perfect or anything, but man, our generation was amazing for stuff like that. Just pure freedom to discover the world as a child. We were free to be you and me. There was a “hands off approach” to parenting that is just totally in direct opposition with what we understand to be child-rearing today, with all its supervised play-dates and whatnot.

DM: Do you have a theory on why it was so prevalent in the ‘70s and ‘80s?

RB: My theory is that it was stolen by other children from their parent’s stashes, or shoplifted. They couldn’t take it home because it would be found in their rooms, so they took it to the one place a kid has privacy: the woods. There it was then found by other kids, and the cycle would continue. Another possible source: homeless guys. People forget that they need to jerk off too. More than most of us, even, because the body odor tends to keep away prospective sex partners.

The generation that first grew up with the internet (and they’re now in their 30s) didn’t discover porn the same way we did. All the ones I’ve talked to about it found it online as one would expect – usually with hentai anime being their gateway drug, I’ve found. Pokemon and Sailor Moon were both massively popular, and once you’re googling for that stuff, XXX hentai is only a few clicks away.

DM: Do you think the Internet made woods porn irrelevant? Do you think kids today have any kind of equivalent in terms of “sacred treasures” to be found through exploration?

RB: From reports that I’m getting, it’s still out there in the woods, just not in the same great numbers that it used to be. We hunted the buffalo to near extinction, and when we invented the Internet, we nearly eradicated “woods porn” too. But as I mentioned before, street dudes need to unload too. I think they’re still planting the seeds out there in the urban wilderness. If the younglings need woods porn, it might still be there for them if they’re lucky. But let’s face it, kids don’t go outside anymore. Not with all those awesome videogames to play and porn to watch on their phones. Who would? Their parents probably wouldn’t let them out, anyway.

I’m positive that kids have equivalencies to this experience, but these are adventures that are done digitally now. And I’m not some old crank. I don’t feel the need to detract from the validity of the modern version of these experiences, but I am here to honor the past and reflect on it as a way to bond with my brothers and sisters that lived through it with me.