There's a line from a Mary Oliver poem, which resonates for me...
"If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much"
'How I go to the woods' from 'Swan: Poems and Prose Poems'
For only a handful of people have ever come to the woods with me, and all of them are my most loved people.
Going to the woods is usually something that I much prefer to do on my own (except for walks with Toby of course), because being alone in a wood is a wonderful sensory experience which is greatly diminished if you're chatting with someone else.
Alone you can walk quietly, listening to the forest sounds and concentrating on noticing small details: the curl of a leaf; the glint of a toadstool in the dark of a hollowed out stump; a leaf reflected in a small pool of silvery water cupped in the cap of a toadstool; the patterns in a decaying tree.
The woods feel safely enduring and impervious to the anguish and perils of the human world, and although this is of course a fanciful illusion, I am happy to embrace that feeling for an hour or two and let the woodland peace dissolve my disquiet.
Back home knitting is proving soothing too and I have a finished pair of socks and a few scarves still on the go.
I hope that you also have fortifying activities that gently reinforce hope, optimism and joy for you in these troubled times.
