My life in forests

 Today, the 21^st of March, is the day designated by the UN as International Day of Forests. I stumbled upon this piece of information this morning, while researching forest-related issues for a future blog post. A little more investigation of the UN calendar revealed that yesterday was International Day of Happiness, another fact that had hitherto escaped my notice. Now that I know about these important dates, I feel I should mark them – and how better than with a celebration of the happiness that forests have given me?

 

I am a huge fan of forests. They are, almost without doubt, my favourite place to hang out. Add some mountains (or at least hills), and a lake or river, and I couldn’t be happier. Growing up in Auckland, I was always keen to head west to the Waitakere Ranges for a day’s walking in the bush. Rolling down the car window to get the first smell of it, getting out and heading down the track, surrounded by a gorgeous abundance of trees, ferns, and mosses, a rich mixture of different shades of green, whatever the season. Or better still, leaving the track and heading up one of the many streams that cut their way through the ranges. Wading (or occasionally swimming) through deep pools in dark gorges and scrambling up beside waterfalls, grateful for the knobbly surface of the volcanic rock. Clambering over massive logjams left over from the days when nature was there to be conquered and no one thought twice about cutting down a five-hundred-year-old tree. And always the bush around us – the tall tree ferns, the graceful nikau palms, the straight, solid kauri. Bird song, friendly fantails flitting around our heads, the occasionally whirr of wings when a kereru, a fat wood pigeon, took flight.

 

At twenty-one I left all this behind me to spend a year in Berlin. Away from home for the first time, I threw myself in the city’s cultural life, going to art galleries, theatres, operas, and concerts. I loved it. And yet the happiest day of that entire year away was one spent at the other end of Germany, in the Black Forest. While visiting a friend in Freiburg I took myself up the hill nearest the town, armed with a sandwich and presumably some water, and then kept on walking. Deciduous forest gave way to dark conifers growing on steep slopes; the sun shone, but among the trees it was cool and quiet. I don’t think I saw another person all day. I didn’t really know where I was – I didn’t have a map, and this was years before smartphones and GPS systems – but it didn’t worry me too much. I ended up in a sparsely populated valley some distance away from Freiburg, found a bus stop, and was back in town by evening. A highly satisfactory adventure.

 

My positive experience of big city life in Berlin encouraged me to choose London for the next phase of my studies. Here, though, I quickly found myself disenchanted with urban life and craving contact with nature. My first year was spent in Mile End, where the nearest open space was the large and beautifully tended Victoria Park. It was pleasant enough, but it wasn’t wild. You can’t immerse yourself in nature in an urban park. Things improved when we moved east to Leytonstone, and I could begin to explore the southern reaches of Epping Forest – patches of woodland interspersed with meadows, not a pristine wilderness but definitely less civilized than Victoria Park. And then at some point I acquired a map and realized that a short trip by car or by Tube gave me access to the beautiful beech forest further north, and all of a sudden life in London became more tolerable.

 

Epping Forest was a lifesaver, particularly after the advent of our children. Living in a two-bedroom flat with four small but lively children, we were hugely grateful to be able to bundle them all into the car, drive to Jack’s Hill near Theydon Bois, and head into the woods. We would leave the main paths behind to ramble along narrow side tracks, or leave the paths altogether and just take off cross-country. With small children in tow, we never covered any large distances, but we didn’t have to go far to feel surrounded by nature. Not untouched nature, granted, but nature that had been left for many years to do its own thing. The splendid beech trees, once pollarded, then left to grow uncut – their trunks smooth and grey, their leaves glossy green in summer, brilliantly coloured in autumn, then falling and adding to the thick leaf litter covering the ground, a warm brown brightening the forest in winter. Gnarled roots, cushions of pale green moss. Little streams for the children to play in, fallen trees for them to climb on when they were big enough. The occasional thrill of spotting a deer. But mostly just trees, and space, and the restorative calm of nature.

 

And now? Living in Chelmsford, I’m still within reach of Epping Forest, but it’s a little far for regular excursions. The woods I have access to near here are not as wild as the Waitakeres, not as vast and lofty as the Black Forest, and not as ancient as Epping Forest, but they have their own appeal. To the east of Chelmsford there are attractive areas of woodland around Danbury and Little Baddow, mostly oak and hornbeam, with lovely displays of wood anemones and bluebells in spring, leafy green shade in summer, vivid colours and fascinating fungi in autumn. On the other side of Chelmsford is Writtle Forest, dominated by sweet chestnut, more oak and hornbeam, and large herds of deer. These are woods rather than forests, and they don’t always offer that truly immersive, uplifting forest experience, but they’re enough to sustain me for the time being.

 

So let’s raise a glass – or maybe a thermos flask – to forests. Let’s look after them, wherever they are, and make sure they’re there for us humans, and for all the creatures that live in them, for many hundreds of years to come.