‘There are two things we don’t do,’ our guide told us in a small clearing just off the busy forest path with its Saturday groups.
‘We don’t…’
I was daydreaming and didn’t hear the first one.
‘And we don’t share,’ he said, snapping me back and into mild confusion. Share what, I wondered. I hadn’t brought anything to share.
An American visitor, the guide told us, had asked whether the group would ‘share’ after the experience of forest bathing.
Oh, ‘share’ – with invisible quote marks. I got it.
We all laughed.
‘I mean, if you want to share, you can,’ Evelyn John said.
‘But we don’t encourage it,’ someone in the group ventured.
We laughed again.
One sensed a (shared) shudder at the prospect of having to sound ‘moved’ or ‘deep’ or ‘changed’ by what we were about to do.
What we were about to do was forest bathing*.
Our guides were Evelyn John – who spoke about trees and the mountain and the politics of plantation – and Hilary, who spoke about the science of petrichor and terpenes, about sound and smell, and health and bodies and research.
It sounds like there was a lot of talking, but there wasn’t. The stuff we learned floated down as unobtrusively as the falling leaves.
Mostly there was the silence of a busy forest.
We walked through the pine plantation into the Afro-montane forest. All along, and beyond, we stopped, looked, listened, touched and smelled. Later, we lay on the forest floor. We sat, or lay, by trees. ‘My’ tree had a foot like an elephant.
me, i am planted here, awake
and calcifying. my roots ache.
(From ‘Weed’**)
I saw Old Man’s Beard, mossy rocks, lianas like Rapunzel plaits, delicate creepers climbing like tinsel up stick-thin dead protrusions. I saw things unfurling, curling, rotting, sprouting, twirling or jutting. I watched the canopy shudder and sway. I saw roots splitting rocks.
Tell them it’s not just me who grows root-wild around the boulder of this kopple. Exotic once and now endemic, we’re all stubborn, but unimportant. Ignore us. Long after they’ve cut us loose, we’ll clench these places in our root-fists.
(From ‘Rock fig’**)
When all this silent communing was done, we sat by a stream and drank ginger and honey tea and ate snacks.
Autumn was drawing a chilly air into the forest as we were wrapping up. At a point where we were about to head down towards the crowds again, we stopped on the path to close off of the afternoon.
I was tuned out again. I can’t remember whether we stood there for long or short or what was said, but one of the forest bathers brought me back, sounding the same pragmatic note the afternoon had started on.
‘This is starting to feel like sharing,’ she said.
Our laughter shook us gently out of our dream and we dispersed into our various Saturday evenings.
When I finally get to Bhutan**
I will have to eat stars to be guided back.
The Southern Cross on my wrist. I will have to hold
Orion's Belt out to him. I will have to know
that the dust I breathe is home dirt just so
that I can carry it all back, carry it all on my back.
I will stand at the bare feet of Gangkhar Puensum
with Venus in my armpit and wind-dogs
at my ankles. I will wait there for a passort
or a transit bus or a bridge or loose roots
and think about the last climb. I will not climb.
I will drink a cup of water while I wait. I will be glad
to go home.
With love,
K.
* If you’d like to know more about the science of forest bathing, the book you should read is Dr Qing Li’s Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness. Dr Li makes the point that he is a scientist not a poet. I say that in case you were tempted to pooh-pooh forest bathing as woo-woo.
*Forest Bathing Cape Town is run by Evelyn and Hilary. Evelyn is a friend of mine. I did not receive anything in exchange for writing this – I just really wanted to experience forest bathing. I did, however, ask for a discount for getting a group of paid Love Letter subscribers together for the experience, and that was granted.
Stick with me, baby – I know people! Who knows what little discount I might shake loose from the matrix next?
**The poems here are all mine and are from my second collection called Navigate, published by Modjaji Books in 2017.
I can highly recommend this. Thank you for including me
So beautiful as always. I am so happy that I subscribe to Love Letter..it always inspires me as a writer and pushes me beyond the mundane. Thank you.