Twenty-Four Hours in the Forest

I have spent an enormous part of my life in the forest.

I grew up beside one, going on fairy hunts and collecting plants for my potions—which were really just stinky mud water mixed in an old pot my granny had thrown out, while I pretended to be the witch of the woods.

Later, I went hiking through forests, took long walks when I needed to clear my head, and eventually decided to work in them. I've planted nearly half a million trees, slept in forests, eaten in forests, and been thoroughly happy and exhausted by them.

And still, whenever I have the choice, I go back.

So come with me. We won't go on the hardest hike, won't climb to the highest lookout.

It's just the forest and twenty-four hours in it.

There is a moment, somewhere between the first hour of walking and the first time I get hungry, when I forget about where I am going.

This is probably my favorite part.

I'm following an ordinary forest path, my shoes are damp from the morning dew, my backpack is slightly pulling on my shoulders. There might be another hour or even two until the view everyone told me about, or there might not be a view at all.

It doesn't matter.

I'm walking.

Somehow, walking through a forest never feels like doing an activity. It feels like doing what a human being is supposed to be doing.

We'd start our day early. Not ridiculously early, but early enough to feel like the morning still belongs to the birds. Early enough to feel like we might be the only people awake in the entire world.

We'd bring coffee. This is important.

There is something truly satisfying about drinking coffee outside when the air is still cold and the trees are wet from the night. We don't even need a table. A fallen log or a tree stump will do. A rock will do.

Breakfast tastes different outside, too, although I couldn't tell you exactly why. Maybe because there's no refrigerator ten steps away, no phone lighting up beside your plate, nowhere to hurry to.

I think food was always supposed to be eaten like this: slowly, outdoors, while looking at something that isn't on a screen.

We'd finish breakfast and start walking.

There is no ambitious route today. This isn't one of those hikes where we have to reach a summit before noon, prove something to our watches, or hit a target on the step counter.

We simply follow the path.

Sometimes the path is obvious. Sometimes it disappears beneath the grass and fern, and we have to decide which way looks more like a path.

We stop when something catches our attention. When we see a pretty mushroom that could go into a witch potion, a strange tree that looks like it might have been a person before, or just some berries to pick. A patch of moss so soft-looking that we can't resist touching it. I surely can't resist to touch moss, so you'd have to stop, too.

This is one of the greatest things about walking in the forest: you start noticing things you would never notice if you were simply trying to get somewhere.

The world gets bigger by getting smaller.

I learned this kind of walking on the Camino.

Somewhere on the pilgrimage path that led me through the forests of northern Spain, I once sat down on a rock that looked like a throne because my feet hurt so badly I couldn't walk another step. There was nowhere I had to be at that particular moment. Nobody was waiting for me.

I only had to reach the target I'd set for myself. But why?

There was no award waiting by the end. Nobody cared how far I got that day. Nothing would happen if I wouldn't reach the village I planned. I could stop anywhere, anytime.

So I stopped and just sat there. I don't remember how long I took before I started walking again.

That's what I remember most about the Camino. Not the daily kilometers, but the light filtering through the canopy, or the clear blue sky appearing at the edge of the forest. The ocean suddenly peeking between the trees around a corner. The road disappearing beneath mud, and unexpected finds on the ground.

I remember being hungry and eating whatever I had in my backpack: dried fruit, apples, crackers, trail mix. Filling my water bottle from a cold creek.

I remember how easily the day could become nothing more than walking, eating, resting, and walking again. There was no need to make it more complicated than that.

Around lunchtime, we'd get hungry again. So we'd find somewhere to sit. Canned tuna, a block of manchego cheese, cherry tomatoes and bread, slightly squashed in the backpack. Nothing fancy, yet it feels like a feast.

We could eat on the ground. Maybe even take our shoes off and let our feet breathe. Maybe we'd lie down afterward or find a patch of sunlight and sit there until the sunshine warms our skin.

We aren't resting so that we can walk more later. We're simply tired. Or maybe we're not. Maybe we simply want to be there.

How strange that this can feel unfamiliar.

How often do we sit somewhere beautiful without immediately taking a photo of it, reading something, answering something, listening to something, or turning the moment into content?

The forest is very good at making nothing feel like it's enough.

And it never stops changing.

The forest we entered in the morning is still the same forest, but it doesn't look like the same place anymore. The shadows move, the air gets warmer, and the light finds different spaces between the branches.

We'd stay long enough to notice.

I think that's the part we often miss. We arrive somewhere beautiful, look at it, take a picture, and leave before it has the chance to become something else.

But if you stay in one place long enough, you can watch the sun move. You can see the clouds changing shapes. You can see the forest changing colors. If you stay after sunset, the forest becomes something else entirely.

So we'd stay because I'd love to show you a different forest. One that you probably never saw before.

We'd make dinner.

Nothing elaborate. We don't even need a campfire. We can eat whatever we carried in and leave the rest to the mood of the evening.

The sky begins to darken, and the first star appears almost unnoticed. Then another. Then another. And eventually the sky is full of them.

Every time I look up, I tear up a little. I don't really know why. There is something about seeing the whole sky at once that makes me feel both impossibly small and extremely lucky to be here to see it.

Eventually, we'd set up our tents, or sleep under the stars in our sleeping bags. And we'd wait for the forest to become unfamiliar again.

You'd hear all the things you didn't notice before—a branch breaking somewhere in the darkness, leaves rattling, something small running through the undergrowth, your own breathing.

But I don't find this frightening in the way I once thought I would. You lie beneath the stars and listen to life continuing around you. And eventually you fall asleep.

The sleeping bag isn't as comfortable as your bed. You might wake around four in the morning, when the night is coldest. I always do.

You'll be cold for a while. But then, the forest starts making its morning noises again. And you realize you've slept through an entire night without walls around you.

This is usually when I wonder why we talk about going into nature as though we are visiting another world. Why do we need to escape into the wilderness? We schedule nature walks. We book cabins in the woods. We drive somewhere far to disconnect.

We have built lives that can make nature feel very distant. We wake up inside buildings, travel inside machines, work inside buildings, exercise inside buildings, eat inside buildings.

Then, when we finally go outside, we call it an activity. But I think the body still remembers. Just give it trees, dirt and daylight.

I've seen the forest as a workplace. I've seen it as demanding and exhausting. I've spent whole days there when all I wanted was to get out of it.

But I've also learned to see the other forest. The one that asks nothing from me. The one where a day doesn't have to become a story, a photograph, an achievement, or a post.

I can just be.

So the next morning, when the light returns, the air is cold and we wake up stiff and slightly disheveled, we'd make another coffee. And I'd tell you about a little girl who used to gallivant through the forest with an old pot full of berries and leaves, convinced she was a witch. And how one day she grew old enough to forget that her home was always in the forest.

So if you gave me twenty-four hours anywhere I know well, I would choose this. We might not do anything spectacular here.

But we can walk when we want to walk. Eat when we're hungry. Rest when we're tired. Look when something catches our eyes. Sleep when it gets dark. Wake when the birds start their day.

For twenty-four hours, we can let the day be enough.