Tim's Tales: Woodland therapy

The sunlit evenings have been warm, encouraging us to make the most of them before they shorten and vanish under the winter darkness.

We have also been camping this month, twice, most recently last weekend. I had vowed it would be my last time spending a night under canvas, as I feel I’ve reached that time in life when my old bones have had enough of the nip of cold that creeps into the tent in the dead of night.

But my feelings changed as we sat by the crackling fire, under a dark, starlit sky, with a waning moon keeping watch.

The outline of trees were silhouetted in the faint moonlight and the sound of my children playing was mixed with that of an owl’s call from the dark wood which surrounded us.

We had earlier gone for a night walk through the wood, with head torches to guide our way. Perhaps at first it was eerie, unused as we are to the shapes and dark shadows.

But then we all switched our torches off and let the darkness engulf us. The moon gave us just enough light to see and I was glad the kids decided to carefully return to our camp in the darkness, using all our senses.

We knew the path, as we had explored it during the day, but it was a different experience at night. Our imaginations lit up our way more than the moonlight. We were with good friends, however, and having your tribe with you always helps.

We made it back to camp, where one of our friends had volunteered to keep watch over the flame. We all sat by the fire and recounted our sensations and experiences. Then stories, hot dogs and songs before bed. It sounds idyllic and in a real sense it was.

Magical experiences come in different guises and the best of them can’t be bought.

This was in a wood not far from home, in the depths of East Lothian. The owner was not keen for me to advertise it too widely and those who know it will know why. Trashing a beautiful place you come to enjoy has sadly become too common and I understood the owner’s caution. For him it’s not about restricting access but protecting the treasure of the wood.

As ever, a child’s observation can have more wisdom than a book of philosophy.

My youngest daughter commented, after returning from the basic compost toilet, that this wood was better than staying at a five-star hotel.

To prove her point, she looked up to the stars: “Count them dad, there are definitely more than five!” I had to agree.

Later, I lay in the tent, listening to my family sleep as I waited for my turn. The kids had gone out like a light after all that fresh air and outdoor playing, and our dog Ceilidh was curled up between them.

My wife was snoring contentedly; I’ve developed a jealously of her ability to fall asleep so quickly.

Outside the wind had picked up. I knew that because we were surrounded by trees and suddenly they began to whisper. Their whispering came in waves, as the breeze stroked their tops. Then the owl’s call pierced the night.

Perhaps it was the owl which roused my wife, for she then turned over and her snoring ceased. The trees seemed to notice, for they too fell silent, giving a moment of quiet, with the breathing of my children now being the only sound I could hear.

Then the trees began to whisper again. I lay there listening, it was incredibly calming, and now I felt lucky that I hadn’t fallen asleep so quickly.

I remembered there was a word for the sound of whispering trees: psithurism, which comes from the Greek word for whispering, psithuros. John Muir wrote of this, describing the “wind music” made by the trees as he spent nights in the forests of North America.

As I drifted to sleep, I was brought back by the sound of sniffling just outside the tent.

Perhaps it was a hedgehog, or even the badger whose recently cleaned-out sett I had discovered close by? But outside was no longer our domain. Whatever creature it was, they ruled the night now.

We spent two nights in the wood on that camping trip. When we arrived, I’d been stressed out by the worries and happenings of an often-too-busy life. In fact, I had nearly decided to cancel the camping. But we couldn’t let our friends down.

I was thankful when we left; the wood had done its therapy.

We needed to go shopping on our way home and I found myself in the supermarket, craving the embrace of the wood and the power of its connection.

That night, as I lay in my more comfortable bed, with the lights and sounds of urban life around me, I reflected on the words of John Muir: “Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally.”

And so, I suspect, I will go camping again next year.