Land. Essex: 1

Epping Forest.

Introduction.

September 1st. 2020

The day before my brother’s birthday I went to the Forest. I had wanted to walk in the Forest again for weeks but other things distracted me — they often do. It was a fine day. The sun gradually revealed itself and hung low in the sky as I walked to the train station — excited to be finally on my way out of the city. The oppressive city that I had been in for far too long; the oppressive summer of discontent. During lockdown I had taken a friend, and then my daughter, to walk in the green; emerging as it was from its slumber, the Forest called to us and held us in its embrace. Each time, we emerged differently — lost and found — smiling from ear to ear as Spring bloomed beneath and around us. Ducks and geese carefully nurtured their young on Connaught Water and the caterpillars ate their way through the fresh young leaves, dropping onto our clothes and hair as we sat and ate snacks beneath the trees. Pollarded trees grown far too tall had fallen creating sculptural forms, and patches of the earth beneath our feet still crunched with last years leaf fall. It was joyful to be in nature and to see that despite the situation we were all living in that nature just continued, regardless of us, despite us, benefitting from our absence as most people stayed at home. I wondered if challenged what I would say — was this an essential journey? It was. I needed to see the landscape open before me, to feel the sun on my skin, my feet on the earth.

Nature heals. I knew this. I wanted to be healed. I had experienced a sudden and painful loss and my grief felt enormous, weighty, long… Maybe I could find peace through being with the Land, like the Bundjalung people of Southern Australia who find solace and acceptance of loss through the practice of ‘goanna’. They take themselves to Country and connect to their Land, seeing their lost loved one as returning to the place from whence they came. Maybe I could I let go of my losses and see them as a natural part of life. We live, we die. Sounds so simple, so easy, compared with western notions of grief and suffering that are full of denial and a refusal to accept death, even as rituals and conventions convince us we should be able to deal with our loss and mourn. We hide our dead, ignore them, fail to honour them properly — it is no wonder they remain in our lives, long after they have left us. The whole world appears to me to be gripped in an intense death anxiety at the moment but oddly I feel no fear, I make no such denial. But I am still feeling loss, still at a loss. Aware that I have no Country or Land of my own I looked at the places I felt connected to. I felt overwhelmed. I have grandparents from all over Britain so there were multiple possibilities. I had my DNA tested and found that I am 31% of Scottish heritage and 69% of East Anglian heritage. I was born in Essex. I had a place to start. But when my little brother died unexpectedly I felt unable to begin. More loss. More death. More grieving. And then lockdown and nothing was possible. No trips, no days out, no journeying farther afield. But I did get to the Forest.

Then the summer was suddenly at its end and still no realised plans: no journeys felt possible. Apart from to the Forest. Twenty minutes on the overground from Clapton to Chingford and there it begins — Chingford Plain — expansive, wide, cradled by the surrounding forest — with paths leading into the vast stretch of land that is Epping Forest. On the edge of the city. Perfect for someone on the edge. So much to explore. So much potential. So I left the city to travel to the Forest the day before my little brother’s birthday. He would have been 52.

Forest Bathing, or Shinrin-Yoku, emerged as a practice in Japan in the 1980’s as a response to ‘tech burnout’. There was also an awareness of the need to protect the countries forests. Interesting, I think, as I consider the strange managements of forests and other natural resources in the UK. But that is a political agenda about controlling and utilising nature, and how can I know what sort of political agenda was present in 1980’s Japan. Still, they undertook research and found that even a mere fifteen minutes spent mindfully walking in a forest had an impressive affect on blood pressure, cortisol levels and the production of serotonin. Two hours of forest bathing has an even more dramatic affect, as long as you follow the guidelines and don’t talk, look at phones, use cameras, and immerse yourself fully observing and listening to nature. Alan Watts wrote, ‘If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected to everything.’ Get very quiet eh? Same concept, same principle, same thing humans have known for ever — how did we become so disconnected from nature? How did I? I intend to address this failing in my own behaviour even as I know that the culture I live in works hard to disconnect us for then it is better able to get us to comply, to behave, to conform.

It was the woodland and forest dwellers who lived and worked the land that fought the hardest against enclosure in 1773. Wikipedia tells me the Inclosure Act is still in force in the United Kingdom. Epping Forest, originally named the Essex Forest, and consisting of the both Waltham and Hainault Forests, is now owned by the City of London Corporation. Shady dealings and much contention over the centuries: lopping and grazing rights were taken away forcefully as those without power and wealth were written out of the history of this land. In his brilliant history of Britain’s woods, trees and hedgerows, (Trees and Woodlands in the British Landscape, 1976) Oliver Rackham details how Forests were created and are therefore not a natural element of the landscape. He writes that Forests ‘are responsible for nearly half the popular misunderstandings of the landscape’, claiming that the word Forest originally meant a ‘place of deer’. He informs me that what I now know as Epping Forest is in fact a collection of separate wooded areas with open heaths and grassland, where deer and wild swine would graze. He does not mention that people also lived in these wooded areas, prior to enclosure that is, but he does detail the history of its takeover by landowners, and how in 1851, the Crown enclosed and sold Hainault Forest, most of which was subsequently destroyed. Epping was at the time saved by ‘the tenacious commoners’, the Footpath Preservation Society, and the Corporation of London, before the Epping Forest Act came into play in 1878. Now all ‘forestal rights were extinguished’ and commoners could no longer pollard trees for firewood. Ownership was ‘given’ to the Corporation and the idea of managing the Forest came into being. Decisions were made, mistakes followed and despite some of this being addressed in more recent times, the damage is still visible and the violent act of enclosure, expulsion and control are still evident in the enforced paths that dictate your direction through the forest; the huge houses built by and for the wealthy bordering the forest effectively excluding the commoners; the visitors centre and shop that attempts to manipulate your knowledge about the place suggesting that they — the faceless Corporation — are protecting the forest for future generations, and the overgrown crowns of the fallen oaks that had traditionally been pollarded by local people for firewood. It is all a bit sad I think, as I try not to get sucked into the poor versus rich debate raging in the back of my mind. More politically conscious and knowledgeable people have already tried and that is not my intention here. But I do want to state whose side I am on.

I am a poor person. I was born into a family of servants. My aspirational parents wanted a better life for themselves but they were never able to afford a house bordering the edge of the forest. A semi with a back garden in an industrial town in the Midlands was the best they could do and it was there, in that garden as a child that I fell in love with nature. It was there that I talked to the fruit trees and watched the birds playing in the grapevine, happy to just be. It is this sense of happiness that I would love to feel again. Arriving at Chingford station on the day before my brother’s birthday I was full of anticipation. Would I be able to just be?

I entered the part of the forest known as Bury Wood at the bottom of Chingford Plain and followed a track that took me into the green. Canopies of leaves let pools of sunlight through illuminating the forest floor that was rough and crunchy underfoot. I had music in my ears and I smiled with joy as I strode purposefully, not really observing where I was going or where I had been. It was only when I sat down to eat that I took my headphones out and listened. I could not hear a thing. No traffic, no birds, no rustle of wind in the trees, it was deliciously still. I spent a minute or two taking photos and a one minute video where I stood in a clearing and simply turned, ending in the same place that I started, a perfect circle, an enclosing of time and space, recorded and documented. The tracks led in different directions and I had lost any sense of where I was so I just continued walking, sometimes encountering other walkers with dogs but largely the other forest visitors followed the designated paths; mountain bikes whizzed along them and horses with riders strolled by shouting at each other noisily. I crossed the path to avoid them and found self in a familiar spot, where a brook weaved its way through and around itself, seeming to return to where it began, and continued walking as I thought I knew which direction would take me to Connaught Water, a lake on the Northern edge of the Plain, near the main road. But I emerged onto a green space, tall grasses standing like sentinels, suddenly aware that I had now no idea where I was or how to return to the Plain, and there was no one to ask — no one seemed to have walked this way. Its ok I said to self. No need to panic. You have a phone with GPS, you can look at where you are and see which way to go. Confused I turned the phone upside down, sideways, trying to make sense of the paths it told me were there. I decided to follow a path until I found a place I knew but I still wound my way around myself for a while, ending up by Connaught Water but approaching it from a completely different direction. How could I have gotten so confused?

I sat by the water as the sun shone brightly, the trees and clouds perfectly reflected, the colours intense and vibrant. It seemed as if there was an identical world under the water. I watched the sticklebacks creating ripples as they came up to feed and I filmed the magical illusion before me, delighted at the result. Then I thought about how ridiculous it was that I got lost — again. How can I not know my way around this tiny section of the Forest? I have been here often enough. I decided that I would make this my task — to find my way around and map the Land. But I do not want to create a real map — I want to map it in my head, in my body, to embody this small part of the Forest and to feel confident that I know where I am and how to return. This I decide will be my plan: to visit once a week, every week from the Autumn Equinox to the Spring Equinox. A whole six months and the seasons will change before me — I will see Autumn emerge and transform into Winter. I will see the depths of Winter when the trees are bare, and then I will see it transform into Spring, buds and leaves emerging. I will know where I am. I will know how to find my way to and from and around and about and home again. Each time I visit I will film a one minute video, turning, as I did today, and then I will write reflectively about the visit, the journey, the experience. I will not listen to music, or talk to anyone, even if I walk with them. I will observe. I will listen. I will make friends with the trees. I will embody. I will test the theory with the practice. I will heal.

I realise that this is the only idea that has excited me for some months now. I have nothing on my agenda — no performances, no art shows, no teaching — apart from some online tutoring — no sharing, no collaborating, nothing is possible or achievable apart from this. This I can easily do. But the first anniversary of my brother’s death is almost upon me and I already know that this will be a challenge. The Autumn Equinox is a few days after, so I give self permission to be sad until then. Then I will embrace the notion of Forest Bathing and start to focus on healing, on letting go of sadness and grief. Of allowing self to just be. We shall see.