a day in the forest
I recently craved spending more time outside again, especially after being inside due to being ill so much last year. The idea came after watching āSense and Sensibilityā. So I made plans for a little forest date by myself. Packed two kinds of tea, rice cakes, fruit, my notebook and some wet wipes.
I think I miss this childhood thing of perceiving the public as a place to be and not just to pass through from point A to point B on the fastest way possible, just staying at approved spaces like a park bench or a cafƩ. I want to linger, I want to explore more, I want to make use of all this space and claim it. This is also something I recently talked to James about in an email :)
As a child, I was outside all day, just wandering around forests and fields and the village I grew up in. Everything was an invitation to sit, to climb, to touch and play. Now as an adult, I tend to tune out my surroundings in public, I donāt touch anything, itās often uncomfortable to sit somewhere. I remember in childhood, weād just sit in the grass pulling it out, or run and crawl through bushes, not worried about dirt, holes in the clothes, or ticks. Now we stay on the paths, we decide a route before we leave, it cannot be longer than xyz because we have this or that obligation later, and itās probably for some productive reason. What also further separated me from doing this before was all the pain and fatigue I used to have from my then-untreated illnesses.
So I wanted to hang out outside again, just wandering about, being spontaneous, no time limit or route. I chose a forest I know a little less than half of and wanted to explore some of the rest. In total, I walked 11 kilometers, and I was gone from about 10am to 4pm (6 hours). I spent a lot of that time sitting near lakes answering that quiz, writing in my notebook, eating and drinking, thinking, and replying to an email :)
In between, I mixed up two different lakes and picked a wrong path, accidentally ending up much further away than intended, oops. But I found my way back. I explored a lot of paths I hadnāt taken before, I climbed up some hills, sat on top of a cement structure overlooking one of the lakes, held out my hand while walking to touch all the tree branches, and saw cool stuff. In total, I saw about 20 dogs, a squirrel, some birds Iām still trying to identify (I think they were cormorants), four ducks, six swans, two herons and a lot of mushrooms.
In the end, it was a bit longer than it should have been; I was exhausted the last hour or so and was also starting to get a bit sick of the forest. Despite seeing someone every now and then, it felt lonely at the end, and everything looked the same. The green isnāt here yet, so itās just naked trees, brown leaves, and a gray sky. In the end, Iām happy about it and I will do this more often, but maybe not as long, with better weather, and without getting lost. And maybe with a powerbank, to be safe.
During the evening, I felt truly wrecked. I usually walk 7km at most, on good days. Now I had 13km in total, with the walk plus the other things I did. Thatās too much for someone who was mostly bedbound last year and had a cold last week, and for someone chronically ill. Well, shit.
Anyway, some visuals:
Bonus of what I messaged by fiancƩe while I got lost (including typo):
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Published 22 Feb, 2025