Driftwood and Pine

Finding answers in the forest

Somewhere just beyond the M54, where the roundabout is littered with human detritus and a bloodied body of a pheasant, the fog breaks for the first time in days. The hedgerow that borders the single-track road has been flailed to fresh green. Thorny remains, like the needles of now discarded Christmas trees are splayed across the tarmac. It is just after 3 pm. We are chasing the sun west to the coast of mid-Wales.

At the border, the tallow sky has the lightness of watercolour. It holds a brightness that I haven't felt in weeks. The days that rose to the crescendo of Christmas were besieged with mud, murk and uncertainty. The 25th of December, a day that stands as a way marker for the choices we have made and those we have not, arrived in a mist. As the last days of the year rolled in, so came the inevitable question of what next.

Just after 4 pm, we reach the coast road. Beyond the sheep-sucking bog, silhouettes of gorse and dunes stand against a rich impasto sunset. Rose pink and feathered orange add layers of impossible beauty to the dying day. I wonder when I last saw colours so vibrant.

Before bed, I walk Juno along the cliffs. Clouds shadow the Cold Moon; darkness penetrates, blurring the boundary of self and sea. I step away from the path, unsure where the grass ends and the precipice begins. I close my eyes and listen to waves. It feels good to stand close to the edge.

I wake at high tide. Before day breaks, I switch on my head torch and begin to run. 300m above the beach, I follow a single track that ribbons through thick swathes of deep green forest. Beams of light stream through the fingers of pine. Thoughts focus on the present. Here, life thrives on interconnections and intricacy.

My breath reads the incline, and my feet the ground. I settle my pace and allow myself to feel the land, its energy, resistance and flow. I sense the tranquillity of the moss giving way to the grit of loose gravel. My eyes see only streams of sun, reminding me that the months of light are coming. I am warmed by their delicious possibility. Today, I am in love with the forest.

A soundtrack of surf and seagulls accompanies me as I follow the narrow path that leads home over the mud and sandstone cliffs. My legs are heavy now; the landscape presses against me, and the salt clings to my skin. I run past wind-morphed oaks and twisted hazels. The seascape has the power to shape us.

At the summit of the last cliff top, I stop to catch my breath. On the beach below, the petrified stumps of alder, oak and birch are exposed by the low tide. The air is salty and sulphurous with seaweed. The breeze is damp. In the relationship of movement and resistance, this stillness feels like surrender.

Between land and sea, permanence and impermanence, thoughts carry on the wind. In the way that a shell holds the sound of the ocean, I begin to hear what my body already knows. My future will be shaped by the landscapes I move through.

As I stand and stare towards the russet slopes of south Snowdonia, I know I am driftwood and pine. I move where the land and light call me. I am the journeys I make and the places I run.