Caitlin Moran: why I love woods
‘I’VE been outed as a middle-aged tree-hugger. Believe me – you can get quite stoned on them’
WELL, it’s finally happened. My most mortifying secret has been stumbled upon. Worse than that time my sister and I, at the cinema, very emotional halfway through Saving Private Ryan, started googling at the same time – then looked at each other’s screens, presuming we were both asking the same question.
She’d typed, “Volunteer charities PTSD?”
I’d typed, “Tom Hanks hot son real life?”
Anyway. This is worse than that. This morning, a man walking a schnauzer in Queen’s Wood, Highgate, saw me hugging a tree. Not just a tentative lean – that might be explained away by exhaustion or stumbling. This was a full-on, I’ve been doing this for awhile, arms and legs splayed pose. Like a Muppet had been fired at a tree from a cannon.
As we are both British, he said nothing and I said nothing. He looked at me for a moment, startled, as I automatically stepped away from the tree in a polite, “Do you want to have a go?” gesture. He shook his head to indicate no, he wasn’t in the market to get off with an Ent, and then continued on his way.
I tried to finish off my trunk-clutching session – I’m usually “on” a tree for an average of five minutes – but the mood had been ruined. I’d lost my wood. I’d been busted going a bit purple hat, Om Mom, ning nang nong as I head into middle age. I’d been outed as a tree-hugger.
Obviously, I knew this day would come at some point, and I’ve been preparing my defence for awhile. Trees are, when you read about them, pretty wiggy. There’s increasing research to suggest that every woodland has a “queen tree” – the biggest and oldest, which uses a network of roots and fungi to send nutrients to other trees that are weak or under attack. Once you’ve read this theory, you can’t help but walk through woods looking out for the queen and nodding to her. A “Hey! I know what that’s like! You’re taking care of your saplings! I get you, Mamma Tree” vibe.
The Japanese government, meanwhile, has spent more than $7.2 million proving that trees’ phytoncide emissions lower cortisol, pulse rate and blood pressure, and boost parasympathetic nerve activity. In a nutshell, you can get quite stoned on trees. Only the Japanese aren’t council estate scrotes from Wolverhampton, so they don’t call it “getting stoned on trees”. They call it shinrin-yoku, tree bathing, and the government recommends it.
I didn’t know all that when I started hugging trees last year. I started hugging trees because the dog seemed so happy when she was in the woods – snuffling about, rolling around and leaping – that I wanted a bit of that joy for myself, and merely observing the woods didn’t seem enough. I wanted to come home, like the dog, covered in leaves and bits of bark, before collapsing with a sated “Hffff” on the sofa. I would look at her, jealously, as she slept – and then I realised that, when you’re coveting the contentment of a small, dim, clownish animal, perhaps you have much to learn from a dim, clownish animal. Perhaps it is time to put away the adult human things – wine, mindfulness apps, caffeine anxiety – and do something you worry might make you, too, look like a bellend. Besides, when you’re swimming in a big, cold lake every day you’ve learnt that, the more you get immersed in nature, the more it levels you out.
So I started off patting silver birches – but they’re quite an elegant, stand-offish tree, and I didn’t get much out of it. The first one I leant my face against – a beech – unexpectedly yet clearly wanted me to f... off. But then I found an oak on the bend of the path, which was, I feel confident in saying, loitering, in a provocative, get a load of my comforting trunk manner.
Checking there was no one around, I wrapped my arms around it, and felt my nervous system quietly go “Hffff” as a whole bunch of fretting just instantly ... turned off. “Why is this working?” I wondered, face pressed against the bark.
“How? Am I experiencing subtle
physical vibrations from holding something the size of a whale, which is remorselessly pumping gallons of water from the ground to the canopy above? Is there some primal connection between all living things on Earth?”
I pondered this, as I walked home – very, very chilled – and reflected that it probably was, in the end, caused by the fact that hugging the tree was the only interaction I’d had that week with something that I didn’t have to feed, wash, counsel, amuse, de-nit, brush, mend, hoover, wax, email, edit, sympathise with, find a fuse for, ring someone to complain about, hit with a hammer, or worry will start World War III.
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