Tangled tree roots. Fallen branches. Wet leaves. Raised rocks. My eyes dart and flit, scanning the path ahead, identifying hazards. I have gamified my runs, attempting to keep pace and grip, giving myself mere moments to calculate my next move as I bounce along the trail. Can I keep up with myself? is the game.

Thud. I stumble and tumble to the forest floor. 

During my mid-flight moments, I recognise my misstep. Ah, yes, a protruding tree root. Then follows the shock as I flounder on the floor and my brain and body try to catch up with reality.

I crouch in the dirt panting, composing, riding the wave of adrenalin while I pick sticks and stones from my palms and brush loose soil from my knees to reveal superficial grazes. With this comes the rush of nostalgia. In my early years, I was always outside, constantly scuffing my skin, wearing the wounds of a kid who played in streams, climbed trees and jumped wholeheartedly into puddles. Now that I live a life inside – adulting – these runs are my playtime.

I’ve come to realise that play is so important. It offers a safe space to be curious, explore and feel free, to take risks and test boundaries. In play, so-called failure is learning. When I fall, I learn how to get back up again. Undoubtedly, I carry these learnings into other areas of my life.

But most of all, play is fun – even with bloody knees. 

*****

You’d think I would know these trails well enough by now not to fall victim to their obstacles. And I do know most of them very well. I’ve been running them for years. 

Roughly four times a week, I close my front door and jog to the main road that forms the boundary between urban and rural, and cross the threshold. I head down the country lane. Over the stile. Into the farmer’s field with rolls of harvested hay. Into the next, where sheep flock under the shade of a stoic, buffeted oak. Down to the entrance of a secret world betrayed only by the modestly trodden path that leads to it. Down a muddy cut-through where the wilds of undergrowth vie for space. Across a stream that swells and shrinks with the rains. Up a gully, and along a forgotten trail, over fallen trees and among old-growth unreachable to loggers. And, eventually, I emerge in my woodland.   

Why is it mine? It’s certainly not because any deed describes it as such. Simply, it’s the feeling I have when I am here. Over time, we’ve come to know one another, me and this place. 

From here, momentary decisions determine which branches of the trails I take. I like to explore, so when I have the time, I opt for the path unknown. Sometimes the paths run out into undisturbed corners where years of autumn gather and expel the heady scents of soil in the making. Sometimes I spy the memories of bygone trails. 

And I’ve noticed an incredible phenomenon: something I’ve taken to calling the living lines of the forest. The trails morph and move. Sometimes they even disappear. Or new ones sprout. They wrap themselves around the outlines of fallen trees. They become furrowed as rainwater is pulled downhill. They bloat with the formation of quagmires and puddles, stealing green ground from the forest and turning it brown. They hide under dead leaves. They are reclaimed by the sprawl of undergrowth and new shoots. 

It’s almost like the trails themselves are living beings. 

Most often, they reflect the life that treads them. When paying attention, I can witness the gestation of these new paths: the faint lines of disturbed brush from, perhaps, an invisible deer passing through, the scent of which may later be followed by other wild beings or dogs, who deepen the cut in the undergrowth, laying the invitation for others to take this path.

I also participate in this making of place with the choice of trails I take. This is pretty magic. These slow changes, over years, remind me that the forest is a living place. Of course, it is. I know that. But it’s different to know it and to feel it and be part of it. 

*****

The aliveness of a place is most sharply experienced as it moves through the seasons. As with all that is living, our places undergo cycles – no matter whether they are deep in the forest or in the heart of the city. 

In my woodland, at this time of year, the bare broadleafs begin waking from their winter dormancy. At their feet, snowdrops and crocuses muscle and rustle through the decay to welcome in the new season. The trees outstretch their arms as if accompanied by a big morning yawn, and the flow of life begins surging through their limbs again; when the sap reaches their extremities, leaves start to grow. In the hollows of trees and crevices of the undergrowth, hibernating animals rouse and emerge from cosy nests. Those who have been hiding from the cold underground are signalled to reemerge by rising temperatures and the lengthening light of the day.

Migrating birds return to a waking world, bellowing their song through the woodland’s corridors, informing all who are still holed up that spring has arrived. The slowly warming air plumps with flying insects. Catkins droop and pollen radiates. Bluebells replace snowdrops, and wild garlic fills the forest with delicious smells. Wild fruit trees blossom with delicate white and pink petals, adding subtle notes to the layered perfume. The canopy crowds, incrementally stealing daylight from the forest floor until the sky and those who soar in it are hidden. Countless green solar panels use energy from the sun and grab carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to bolster the forest’s biomass. 

One season tapers into the next, and life abounds easily. The spirals of ferns unfurl. Wildflowers bloom and grasses tower in the dappled light and clearings; butterflies, moths, crickets, grasshoppers and a whole host of wee beasties busy themselves. A succession of fruits are borne: tiny wild cherries, crab apples and elderberries. The hazy heat of summer is staved off by the cool shade under the cathedral of trees. 

Berries begin to dash the woodland and surrounding hedgerows with colour. Nuts start to form on the trees. Squirrels scurry in preparation. The sounds of mating deer echo in the distance. Mushrooms, the fruiting bodies of the fungal network that knits the entire forest – nay, world – together, pop out of the soil, speedily growing until they burst open their caps, sending unseen spores into the air. As the daylight hours wane, a lethargy takes hold, and a parade of colours starts to adorn the forest. At this time of year, I ensure my runs channel through a stand of ash where the early autumn light pierces the yellowing leaves, casting the world in a dreamy gold. The onset of trees’ ecological mechanism for survival over winter brings so much joy to us humans – perhaps by nature’s design. 

Holes in the canopy appear, and the fading colours of autumn lay strewn. Harsh winds bring down the last of the leaves, and the rain mashes them into the humus of the earth. The slowdown is palpable. Many have already bedded in or migrated. But even as the forest appears to rest, there are still some that remain busy, their activities given away by their footprints in mud and frost or their quiet calls.

Every year, I watch this place cycle through the seasons in ways that are now predictable to me. I know when and where to expect the first bluebells, or where spring’s last flourish of wild garlic will be, or which trees will wear autumn first. 

I’ve come to know this place. 

*****

The adrenalin has worn off, my breath has slowed and my heart rate has returned to resting. The earth beneath me is damp, and my sweat begins to cool. I’ll need to get going again soon. But in this pause, I ponder these cycles of the forest. I consider all the seen, unseen and hidden beings nearby still resting for a few weeks more. My head dizzies with the thought of it all – all the life that’s here, from the microscopic to the gigantic. Or am I dizzy from stacking it? No. The life thing, I feel sure. 

But it is dizzying, don’t you think, to contemplate all the life that unfolds around us?

Though, actually, it is not just around us. It is also on and in us. 

As I sit on the ground, my microbiome and the forest’s microbiome intersect. A free flow of microbes lands on my skin and moves into my body with every breath I take.

Our sense of self is formed by our consciousness: the mind of one being. But in physicality, we are each an ecosystem, made up of gazillions of beings, without which we’d be an unfunctional heap of carbon. Our bodies, simply, wouldn’t work without the many who make us “us”.

Similarly, trees rely on microbes too, each with their own microbial community. Plants are also ecosystems in and of themselves. Stationary, they rely on other beings to get what they need from their environment.

Microbes are vital to all ecosystems and central to many ecological processes. They dissolve the boundaries between living systems, paying little attention to the physical borders between things, finding niches in which they can thrive. Microbes don’t care where the forest ends and a human begins. To them, we are all part of the same living system. 

I love this thought: that the forest and I are one, according to microbes. It’s goddam cool, really.

And imagine if we saw the world through their lens: we understood life as one coalescing mass. Of course, this is exactly what the world is. But it’s a struggle to always recognise it as such, don’t you agree? 

Though, when I do, I feel a certain comfort. I used to feel like a visitor to these woods. In many ways, I am: I don’t live here. I simply storm through in my pursuit of playtime. But nonetheless, I’ve become part of this place: as I meander, I shape its living lines; as I huff back hurried breaths, I inhale the exhales of the plants around me; as I pound the ground, plumes of microbes become airborne, entwining me physically with this place. 

My presence has a ripple effect that’s mostly invisible to me. The forest responds to my being there. In turn, I am influenced by it. I take it home with me, figuratively and physically. There’s an aliveness in me that just doesn’t surface from spending time in my climate-controlled home where most of what I interact with has a power supply. The science shows that we humans are wired to be outside – our physiology responds to it, with altered brainwaves, the release of hormones and the effects on our endocrine and immune systems. 

The more time I spend outside, the more pronounced the hold it has over me. When out there, I now notice, smell and hear things I once didn’t. Certain trees, rocks and broken branches become characters, and the seasons dress them in their changing attire. Or they become the stage for other characters: parades of ants, birds of prey, squirrels.  

There’s familiarity without banality because everything is in flux. It’s like seeing your neighbour in a new outfit each day and with a new haircut every few months. The same but also different. 

And it is in this familiarity that I find comfort. 

In many ways, coming here now feels like coming home. 

I carry this feeling of home with me, knowing there is always a place where I can run to when “life” – the label often given to the drudgery of human society – becomes a little much. When it does, I lace up my shoes, close the front door, cross the main road … and emerge into my woodland. Here, I can play, explore and be curious while continuing to deepen my relationship with the forest, experiencing it as it changes, participating in its making of place and being part of its fabric.