The land remembers you.

What is it about a wooded country lane on a warm, still morning? Perhaps it calls to that part of us that craves something new and familiar all at once. Fool vibes.

In the day, the forest and I were one. I was an animal in an animal’s habitat. In the night, I was an unwelcome human being in a bustling community of other-than-human beings.

The gulls have been awake for hours already, if they ever slept at all, their calls loud and abrasive in the dark of the winter morning. They suit this place. Their cries ring out, triumphant in the face of winter, or perhaps relishing in it. This is their place after all.

The city's microclimates alienate animals and plants. But with a reconfiguration of belief systems about what city life can or should be, creating urban microclimates that invite animals and plants to thrive is feasible.

What if we finally learned to see this land as a family, a home, a partner, instead of a blank canvas? People’s love of P-22 gave me hope that maybe, amidst all the wanton destruction and erasure, that kind of connection was possible.

For the most part, such stories gave parents a bogeyman they could use to scare their young away from the dangers of deep water, for like fire, there is something alluring about water. There’s also a part of me, perhaps a more cynical part, that sees these stories as something else; our loss of connection to these wild spaces.

Isn’t this the power of music? To make us feel, to inspire?

Sometimes that music is beautiful, just like the singing of the birds or the wind through the treetops. Perhaps the music of the woods is my favourite. Standing there on that soft moss covered floor with warm, dappled sunlight on my skin with eyes closed, listening to the birdsong and the wind through the boughs is the most perfect feeling. Other times the music is louder, rougher, not unlike the wind atop of a high hill. Wild and invigorating. Both make you feel alive, albeit in very different ways.

How did indigenous people handle virus-drenched-mosquitoes?

The protagonists of such stories venture into the forest with warnings ringing in their ears, told to stay on the path, you know how the story goes and what befalls them when they inevitably leave the path behind. The forests are full of monsters; witches who wait to feast upon the flesh of fattened babes or wolves that gobble up grannies. But not all folk stories pitch the forest as places filled with monsters. The forest is still a place to be wary but instead of monsters, ghouls and ghosts, there is instead magic.

Mugwort grows here in the summer months, ragwort and wild rose too, the bare skeletons of the latter reach up from the winter grass, the hips bright red like oxgenated blood. The scent of fox urine fills my nose as I enter into the dog foxes territory. It feels like I’ve come home.

There is definitely something about being on a hilltop in autumn, surrounded by mist and the lonely call of the crows. If magic is a feeling, it is this feeling. But then I say the same about the woods, the ocean, the riverside and more. Magic is nature and nature is magic, I guess it really is as simple as that.

I also think that people are just unsure about how to prepare and cook foraged foods. Berries and fruit aren’t a problem, for the most part you can just eat them as you find them. Plums are so good fresh from the tree, sun warmed and bursting with sweetness! As July comes to an end and August is about to begin, it is the perfect time to get out there and find some tasty treats. Here then are some ideas on what to do with your foraged finds.

We are rediscovering that we have always been wild, we are remembering the power we have. We are reforming and building bonds with those like us, who no longer wish to be tame, who no longer wish to accept the injustices of this world that favours money over all else. We are ‘agents against history’. We are ’unbinding a supposedly bound totality’. We are becoming iconoclastic.

Soon the leaves will unfurl and the cherry fruits will begin to form and grow, ripening in the heat of the summer months. But that time is not yet here and the blossoms are still at their best. Perhaps Hanami is one of the best mindfulness practices, the most easily applied.

And so I take my memories of her and the lessons learned from her into the future, for isn’t that one way our beloved dead live on? And what would those lessons be? To live in the moment and fully, to experience it all with truth and with feeling. To honour family and friends. To guard and protect those who cannot do so for themselves. To love with my whole being and to sink my teeth and claws into my enemies, those that would harm me and keep me caged.

We see it time and time again. Hipster foods that make poor brown people starve because they can no longer afford a food that was once their staple; or crops that are grown for cattle to satisfy our demand for ever cheaper meat instead of to feed those people who grow them. It’s not those folks who benefit from this supposed growth. It is not you or I.

I awoke early as I often do, whilst everyone else still slept. Even my old girl kept her eyes closed as I crept from the bed, snuggling back beneath the covers for a while longer. I went downstairs, avoiding the boards that creak and the steps that groan, a hangover from the days when my babes were indeed still babes.

Yellows, purples and deep blues flit by, easily missed by most, or seen and unseen, scenery and nothing more. The beauty of the wildflowers, their existence forgotten if noticed at all and all before they’ve disappeared from view. All of this glimpsed as I stare out the window, seeking something other than the endless roads stretching ahead lined with traffic spewing fumes, the endless grey of industry and business.

Wherever we find ourselves in the world, we can build a relationship to the land, to nature, right there. We can meld the knowledge of our ancestors to the land and in doing so, we make ourselves stronger.