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forestbathing-studies-blog · 8 years ago

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. the effects of fire, human clearance and grazing probably limited forest cover to about 50% of the land area of Scotland even at its maximum. The stock of woodland declined alarmingly during the First World War and at the end of the war the Acland Report recommended that Britain should secure a strategic reserve of timber. The Forestry Commission was formed to meet this need. State forest parks were established in 1935.[10][11][12][4]

Emergency felling controls had been introduced in the First and Second World Wars, and these were made permanent in the Forestry Act 1951. Landowners were also given financial incentives to devote land to forests under the Dedication Scheme, which in 1981 became the Forestry Grant Scheme. By the early 1970s, the annual rate of planting exceeded 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) per annum. Most of this planting comprised fast-growing conifers. Later in the century the balance shifted, with fewer than 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres) per annum being planted during the 1990s, but broadleaf planting actually increased, exceeding 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) per year in 1987. By the mid-1990s, more than half of new planting was broadleaf.[7][13]

Historical woodland cover of England. The Domesday Book of 1086 indicated cover of 15%, "but significant loss of woodland started over four thousand years ago in prehistory". By the beginning of the 20th century this had dropped to 5%. The government believes 12% can be reached again by 2060.[14]

In 1988, the Woodland Grant Scheme replaced the Forestry Grant Scheme, paying nearly twice as much for broadleaf woodland as conifers. (In England, the Woodland Grant Scheme was subsequently replaced by the English Woodland Grant Scheme, which operates six separate kinds of grant for forestry projects.)[15][16] That year, the Farm Woodlands Scheme was also introduced, and replaced by the Farm Woodland Premium Scheme in 1992.[17] In the 1990s, a programme of afforestation resulted in the establishment of Community Forests and the National Forest, which celebrated the planting of its seven millionth tree in 2006

The writer must seek isolation, whether he or she likes it or not. So I walk through the forests and hills back to my train, marveling that yet again I found my way. Through Matsuo Bashō, veritable father of haiku, we learn that the true writer does not lead a sedentary life, and indeed must walk in order to express his or her syllables. Bashō walked for 156 days through Japan in his legendary 'Deep Road to the Far North' series of haibun that defined the term. Japan still remains a heavily forested country – at least 70% of the surface is forested. By doing so Bashō also demonstrated that the true haiku and haibun haijin’s tool is not the pen but the wooden staff. Not only does this staff lift branches and part bushes to see the dew drops and flower petals, but it can also be leant on when searching the sky for floating eagles, patterned clouds and drifting cherry blossoms. The wooden staff also taps haiku on a road perfectly, like a variant of morse code to nature; ”win—ter…is…o—ver…my…staff…is…carved…dog…barks…to…each…tap.”

A haibun journey is a pilgrimage, where what happens on the way makes the destination. And the wanderer is not only Quixotic in his, or her nature. A sword of any kind must therefore be put aside for other quests. As haibun merely take from what is walked through on paths onto lines on pages, and a blade only serves to distance the reader from the writer's words. The semiotic staff therefore takes on even more symbolic meaning.

wooden staff— reflected in the shine of samurai sword

Not Don Quixote, nor wandering samurai, then what? Like the Navajo in the south western states, who use wooden tools on mother earth lest they leave scars, I don’t set out to make an impression that might not heal.

samurai’s sword slices candle still stands, and burns and yet…

http://fractalenlightenment.com/16617/life/walk-in-the-forest-to-heal-oneself

Forest holidays. Saudi Arabia date plantation Hofuf Finland

I long for nature’s products. Not the creams from companies with names like Natura, or Flower, Plantigen, with pictures of flowers or berries on the front, and packed with goodness knows what chemicals in a plastic container ultimately destined for the garbage dump. Lies on the cover and junk in the container. Thank goodness we are finally waking up to the dangers of antibacterial soap and hand gel. And the lack of contact with germs may actually be much more harmful in the long run than we think.

When my copper shop was in full swing before it collapsed and went bust, we were trying to persuade health authorities to change door handles, kidney bowls, keyboards and other items to copper surfaces. There is no better antimicrobal surface in the world. None. Southampton hospital is changing door handles to copper or brass ones — brass is a copper alloy. If all hospitals in GB did the same it is estimated 20,000 lives a year would be saved. That is a serious estimate. Of course more lives would be saved if doctors did not wear ties, which hang down on one patient then onto the next.

We also developed an entirely natural gel we called Yakutia ● Copper Honey, then Yakutia ● Copper Dew, put into aluminium tins. Medical organisations use zinc creams for scar tissue reparation — and zinc shares very similiar properties as copper, except that these days copper receives controversial press. It didn’t use to. Traditionally copper buckets stored water and kept it fresh, and traditionally, and accordingly, many less people suffered from arthritis. When I take part in my pilgrimage through Siberia, with no destination, I wear copper insoles in my boots. I want a woolen sweater, not the popular fleece, which has plastic fibres now found in fish from the world’s oceans. I won’t wear the garish coloured technical performance sports shirts that are specially designed for people not on pilgrimages, but rather a hemp shirt and jute bag, both that grow naturally without draining an area of water like cotton does. I long to be properly back in touch with nature.

sunlit waterfall in my wooden cup the taste of a rainbow

I walked for hours, a little of it in the light of dusk, for in Siberia at this time of the year, now that we have passed through the longest night, we now get dusklight for a few minutes a day. I thought some of the snow had melted, and stepped out into the whiteness with less forbearance than usual. But I was misled by my windowpane and it's view, and that in fact between the footprints in the snow lay patches patches of dark, expressionless ice. We are in January. The sun will not rise until 11.00 am and the snow will not melt until June, so what was I thinking about? The deer have not even taken to the ice yet; they can smell the water, and they are still digging in the snow for the last of the Autumn roots, destroying the forests say the rich landowners, but they despise reindeer herders.

The sun will set just after 2:00 pm, though in fact it never really rises over the horizon anymore, but at least it will rise earlier and set later, and then we will no longer remember the almost total darkness for a few weeks, twenty four hours a day. During those days sanity is not a given, but a conscious choice, like an oxygen mask a diver consciously keeps strapped tight as he descends into the depths, ever tempted though, to succumb to the belief that he can breathe in the deep blue, like those here believe they can survive winter with a bottle and by keeping their watch off, or that they can walk home alone without being tied to another, so that in a blizzard they will only be found the next morning, if it is morning. The mist swirls around me like yesterday's troubles and tomorrow's uncertainties, making the horizon, like time, blurred. I am reminded of The Beatles, and The Glass Onion, and hum it without soul, ‛We fooled you all, the walrus was Paul..’ Winter goes on and on, motionless, humourless, and no longer virginal.

I arrived at my destination at dusk to pay a visit to a family of Bosnian refugees I knew from the old days. Arriving at dusk means arrived at about 1.45 pm and stayed for a cup of coffee, then set off for my train station again, for hours of walking in the winter dark can be a risky affair if one stumbles.

So why did you come so far

‛So why did you come so far, all my daughters are married!’ joked my Bosnian friend.

‛I’m on a haibun pilgrimage,’ I said, ‛walk, write, walk, write.’

He paused, nodding his head and stroking his chin: ‛Pilgrims and refugees are both the same,’ he said.

northern lights at the edge of the city nature whispers in colour

pots, pans and unknown medical cures. But not everyone is only a trader. A Siberian ethnic Yakut, distinguished by his weatherbeaten Asiatic features and headband takes my photograph on an old Kiev medium format camera, spending time to get the composition just right as I sit on my jute duffel bag. He tells me he can send me the photo, in black and white, if I give him my address. I tell him it is ok. I enjoyed my brief stint at fame and don’t need to physically possess the moment.

‛You have a Yakut heart!’ he laughs, confirming my guess at his ethnicity. They say that we are only ever six persons away from knowing any person on this planet, or there are six degrees of separation between us, so that a mazimum of six steps can be used to connect any two persons. The average distance of 1,500 random users in Twitter is 3.435 degrees. I scan the station. The possibilities seem almost endless.

sunlight through windows an orchestra of voices a beautiful departure!

Who has heard of Toliatti and its gulags? About 15 years ago I drank a glass or two of homemade wine on a front porch, with a retired postman who’d walked home from Toliatti, on the Volga. Yes, that’s right, he didn’t walk inToliatti, but from the non-descript decrepid town somewhere on a trainline in the middle of Russia.

Delivering the post had been his job — to the Hungarian eighth army who had invaded the Soviet Union in support of German troops during the Second World War, a not inconsequential fact when you consider the Russian/Soviet determination to ensure that did not happen again by creating the Warsaw Pact countries.

But János delivered mail. He collected it from the train, or trucks and delivered it to the front line troops. This is a more important role than it first appears, for a man cannot fight without news that has loved ones are well.

And love was what made János walk. In the middle of the Second War and the middle of Toliatti, János delivered his mail and kept walking. He walked out of Toliatti, next to the Volga, along the trainline, then through the taiga, through the trees, over the hills, across the river and in the meadows. He walked, and walked and walked, all the way back to Eastern Hungary, to the wine-growing town of Tokaj, back to his wife.

When he arrived back, he discovered his sister-in-law had been taken away, just taken to the gulags. So he turned around and walked, attempting to find her, somewhere in the hugeness that was Siberia. He never found out what happened to her, and only had stories of the bitter cold, and equally bitter sense of defeat.

As I sat in Tokaj, Eastern Hungary, drinking his delicious homemade wine, which he kept in his wine cellar dug into the hillside, I noticed her picture hanging on the wall; a beautiful young woman, the portrait soft in the evening glow. They never saw her again.

János spoke no English but the wine talked. We shared many a glass, glancing at the portrait of the young woman who died in the gulag.

sentenced somewhere deep in Siberia —memories make grapes grow

Fellow Travellers 1

American travellers busy sewing or sticking flags of Canada to bags and shirts is legendary and has almost become de rigeur. It is rare, however, that being an American is alone an offense, and cetainly not in Siberia. All the same, the three Americans across from me are very busy plastering Canadian patches on bags and clothing, before practicing the accent with a loy of lilted ‛ays.’

‛I am not sure all the matriachical train station guards in the small towns along the railroad tracks will spot the difference,’ I say.

‛Hey man, you gotta do what you gotta do,’ says one of the three,

‛Where’s Snowden anyway?’ says the other male, ‛I’d like to meet him, maybe even bring him in. There must be some kind of reward.’

‛Well, Canadians wouldn’t be saying that,’ I said, ‛and you never know what kind of microphones they have on trains.’

The two American males went quiet in contemplation, a silence broken only by the pretty sight of the slipping out of her flip flops and painting her toenails bright red.

‛I’d do this in the bathroom normally,’ she chuckled.

She was from Florida, and wasn’t exactly sure where the train was heading.

‛All the way to Vladivostok,’ I answered.

‛And no cute guys,’ she said.

She was good-looking in a disharming sort of way, with strawberry blonde hair, but as such did not stand out in the carriage, aside from her flip flops which set her apart from the high heels worn by the Russian women on the train. Inside the compartment it was too warm as usual in eastern Europe, but most passengers kept their sweaters on regardless, as if judging the temperature by the view outside, where patches of snow flashed by under the fir trees.

Linda put her heels on the seat beside me across from where she sat. ‛I could paint a little white maple leaf on,’ she giggled.

At a small station her two friends dashed off to restock on food, eschewing the fresh pine pastries being sold from baskets on the platform and buying instead overpriced stale buns in plastic packets from the buffet.

‛They even asked if we were American, man,’ said the taller of the two returning.

‛Only the mosquitoes weren't fooled,’ said the other.

http://www.myminnesotawoods.umn.edu/2012/03/the-memory-of-trees-in-a-modern-climate-epigenetics/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3586649/

I learn two things today. First that the population of Perm and the surrounding area are the closest of the Irish along with the Basque in Spain and France.

But I also find out that about 150,000 inmates were imprisoned in more than 150 camps in the Perm region during the late 1940s. This was about a third of the working population of the region.

Perm-36 Labour Camp

Daily Schedule of a Gulag Prisoner Time Activity

6:00 AM Wake up call

6:30 AM Breakfast

7:00 AM Roll-call

7:30 AM1 1/2 hour to march to forests, under guarded escort

6:00 PM1 1/2 hour return march to camp

7:30 PM Dinner

8:00 PM After-dinner camp work duties (chop firewood, shovel snow, gardening, road repair, etc.)

11:00 PM Lights out

Yekatinberg

We are on a journey this month, my partners and I, through Siberia, though the further down the train tracks we travel, the more opens behind us. I, myself, am searching for the Russian soul, that unique, raw soul, with all its flaws worn on its sleeve, where the vodka spills.

Today, we are in Yekatinberg, in the footsteps of Coelho’s words and of the Urals. I feel immediately at home stopping here on this journey, among these mountains outside Yekatinberg’s eastern balconies in pine-scented forests again. I am not a man of the pencil line horizon. So I walk upwards, to the nearest peak, to compose my haiku.

high in mountain forests where even shadows don’t reach nature inspires through silence

Tyumen

In Siberia at last, home to so many who live with nature. Winter is when traps are laid, and fresh water comes from holes dug deep in the ice. Soon the bears will be out again, and hungry, though a bear makes fine food. It is not possible to chase them away when fishing. They will always come back, so must be shot.

In a few months the leaves will shimmer in the breeze. In Tyumen I will only see the fort from far. I feel at home among the birch and pine trees.

Tyumen fort shines at night but I shine among the birch trees that rustle with such longing

pine trees gently sway is it the wind blowing or is it my mind?

I looked over at Linda, now applying another colour of nailpolish. I imaged her taking a few barefoot steps with snow melting.

she walks in the snow until the grass at the edge of spring

early blossoms are late how thoughtless yet another haiku about snow

Acrobats

I have come to the singular conclusion that a view must be merited, that it is a right that must be earned, and that this should be our quest. Working hard for a view of the world does not mean the same as slaving away for years for a front porch, in order to be able to sit there, gazing endlessly across a stretch that slowly develops into other front porches. On the contrary.

across river Ob endless taiga nothing else matters

For four hundred years thousands of mammoth tusks have been found in Siberia, from mammoths almost intact, with many organs perfectly frozen and stomachs half full of food - at times the blood still viscuous due to the 'anti-freeze' components found in the blood, so called cryptoprotective properties, as in Arctic amphibians and fish. But why so many in Siberia remains a real mystery. Why did millions of the woolly mammoth move to the cold in Siberia, and how did they die so quickly after eating? Did a massive cold front move suddenly from the Arctic? That would be a climatic condition that does not exist today. If this is the case, it would have been very cold - freezing a mammoth suddenly and quickly is no easy thing at all. It would have taken temperatures as low as -100C. The mystery is far from solved...

fifty thousand mammoth tusks found deep in Yakutia I step on ancients

Novosibirsk

with all its philosophical and spiritual messages. One of the messages is the exploration of Tengriism, which will happen here on this blog to further depth over the next few days, as our train ride through Siberia continues.

Some you reading this have shaman blood, but you do not know it – yet. I once journeyed with a shaman, taking an inner journey as well one that saw many miles rush under wheels. In many ways I am still on that journey, though already I miss my log cabin of an ever-deepening late winter, the dry, powdery cold and morning ice crystals on the window panes playing with light as I stumble around getting breakfast after yet another night without vodka and morning without hangover.'

I find the coffee, and now feel like the luckiest man alive, with Yenisei on the journey too, and the opportunity to roast some coffee on the charcoal dawn fire and serve it to her, as she purrs herself awake and unwraps herself, naked, from the fur.

charcoal from the embers she becomes my winter tiger nude and hot with stripes

I find it difficult in Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, and do not need to be in the capital of anywhere. Soon she will show me how to draw the birch sap from the trees, and I will literally taste the taiga.

within a ring of fire a story is warmed deep in Siberia

Yenisei

among the pine trees only one set of footprints- mine

It is a long way. Much of the railroad has been laid by the bare hands of prisoners from labour camps, whose prison was Siberia itself. Gulags rarely needed fences or guard towers. Escapees were never going to get far. And the railroad still crushes the bones of those who perished building it.

Not everyone who laid down rail lines in Siberia was a prisoner. Many volunteered, and even stayed afterwards. Those people have a special inner peace about them. An understanding of nature, and a deep respect, too. They are people who prefer the numbing colds of winter to the pleasant summers, full of unforeseen dangers and reckless laziness.

Winter is a time when travel is often easier, across solid lakes and rivers and through frozen forests. It is a time when hospitality is offered, and when bears are not around near villages, nor dangerous ticks and bothersome mosquitos in swampy, muddy forests.

And life is more bare in winter, survival more of a test. It is first an appalling mix for the novice, but soon an appealing one. The sense of freedom is like nothing ever experienced elsewhere, and maybe all the more so because it is worked so hard for.

Freedom in the land of gulags. It is an interesting thought. But for all its history of brutality and horror, Siberia is a vast, mystical land, of shamans who reach where the church or mosque doesn't, and where temperature plunges so low that cement or metal foundations of buildings are useless next to the hardy wooden ones of the taiga, thus proving, once again that nature wins.

inhaling pine scent calmed by the breeze rustling trees spirits of the wild

A Prophecy

Up near the Arctic Circle, there is magic afoot at this time. We know here, that Santa was a shaman in his big black boots, collecting the Fly Agraic mushroom, red with white dots from the forest, and feeding it to his reindeer then drinking the mix when their livers had removed the toxins, or putting them in a big sack and later hanging them to dry above the fireplace. And these magic mushrooms that grow under the fir trees, with ethereal fertilisation, are symbolised now with the draping of silver-coloured tinsel over the so-called Christmas tree, in reality the world tree, the tinsel symbolising sperm.

Of course, after eating the magic mushrooms the deer fly, and Santa laughs, with red cheeks. The Siberian tribal and Saami people's myth of the world tree is real. If you would like to treat yourself to one of these mushrooms, make sure you boil it first, unless you have any reindeer around. And then come North, and see our northern lights, and watch, touch our magic, none-materialistic world. Just remember the Swedish saying, 'there is no cold weather, only cold clothes.'

northern lights the magic world speaks shaman inspired

Therapy from another culture

Almaty

If I remember right, when I was working in Kazakhstan, I measured the country to be as wide as Ukraine to Portugal. Hearts pretty much as wide too.

For Kazakhs, hospitality is a tradition learnt from deep within. A guest into a Kazakh home is welcomed with a cup of Kazakh tea; fragant, with indefinable and potent herbs — potent because there must be something in it to have your mind soon dreaming of never ‘’returning home’’, and of putting your own yurt in the grasslands next to the forested mountains.

It is a country of the future, possibly to rank alongside China and Brazil. Sudden new buildings seem to slide up from nowhere, almost, in the bare steppes of Northern Kazakhstan, in the new capital Astana. Almaty retains its former grandeur as capital, greatly aided by the mountains around it, where cool pine trees border paths. Yet each building’s modern, intricate design often reflects a homage to the past. The golden egg building is one, with the Kazakh theme of start of civilisation, and other buildings use much of the Kazakh connection to wildlife and nature as influence.

But I worked far from Astana, at an oil refinery near Tengiz, in Eastern Kazakhstan, somewhere far from anywhere. In the evenings the Kazakh women of the base (proud, as Kazakh women are the only Muslem women who do not wear the hijab, or cover their heads, and more Kazakh women are in upper management positions than in North America) would sometimes perform Kazakh folklore, wearing traditional dress and playing local instruments.

Here is one thing I learnt which I want to share here, as it works: After eating we stood upKazakhs briefly bring their open hands up to their cheeks or neck, flat palms facing the body and about 2'’ or 5 cms or so away from the body. They bring their palms down slowly past the chest down past the stomach and then away from their body in a wide downward movement. The action takes about 5 seconds, and can be repeated. It can also be done at any time, though definitely works well after eating: without any question of a doubt it aids digestion and brings a relaxed, yet ‘’perked-up’’ feeling.

When I tried to climb the Mont Blanc I remember when I took my gloves off, to try to keep the tent pegged into the glacier during a blizzard. I could barely move my fingers. And that was in July in France, in weather so cold I suppose there should not have been a blizzard, except maybe it wasn't. The wind was howling so strongly it may have just looked like one. It swept away my foam mattress, too, which made for a very difficult night, and movement was not possible in waist deep snow and a cliff edge somewhere, even with a headlamp.

in the taiga I long for no more than taiga

Stragglers are we. Thousands of miles over kilometres of bones. All for what? Sometimes, like now, its good to get off before the end of the journey, then the journey does not end.

The traps are set. The night is young. The snow is fresh. I’ve seen the tracks. The conditions are difficult for the elk right now. The snow is not strong enough to support elks, so they often get stuck, making easy meat for hungry wolves and awakening bears. And an elk, or caribou in north America, can provide food for a long time.

Good. I am nearly all out of frozen fish. I set off this morning into the cold snap, lowering temperatures now hovering at minus twenty two degrees. The cat is huddled on the bed in the cabin and frozen wood has been placed onto the fire. I could do with a cup of tea but will have one when I get back.

long polar winter no sunrise or sunset not asleep not awake

Shamans

Shamans, in yurts, teepees, chant their song Resounding rhythm flowing, to the drum Echoes tapped across the wintry sun ☼ And the sun, a pale echo Tipped so far from the horizon in its trance That the snow shines only by moonlight ☼ While the signs that show Spring has come Are still the sounds of the Shaman's drum The shaman, her eyes lit by fire, the yurt by song ☼ So dance, beauty, dance, dance until the sun rises For soon you will chance upon fields of fresh flowers And lie in meadows perfumed by long-melted snows

The Road of Bones

On the Road of Bones you never travel alone. Here breath suddenly freezes, and drops in tiny fragments, tinkling like a wind chime. In this cold words travel no further than a few feet, and they say words themselves freeze when the temperature drops far enough to make metal crack. This is the notorious road built by the prisoners of the Gulags, the torture camps.The road stretches to Magadan on the Pacific ocean, from Yakutsk in Yakutia, a vast mysterious republic within the even larger emptiness of Siberia. A republic that would be the eighth largest country in the world if fully independent, with a population of just 1 Million.

Here in Yakutia the temperature can plunge to -60C, rendering the road a gamble that only those needing to escape a misdemeanor take, or those imbibed with a certain madness. But who would go in summer, when the mud and mosquitoes make escape well nigh impossible and madness well nigh sure?

So the best time to go is in late winter, before the melting of snow and floods, when the cold is loosening its bitter grip - but even then it is dangerous, for when the temperature rises it begins to snow heavily again, after being too cold to snow during the winter months. And the wolves are hungry by then. And I mean hungry. Last winter a pack of 400 wolves killed 300 horses before they were finally driven away. But we gamble. We leave behind the rugged Yakutians who want us to stay until June, the summer solstice, and the start of the new year in Yakutia, when the republic is full of festivities, and greets the rising sun in the morning as one. We take the Road of Bones, where if voices have really frozen then the painful sounds of the Gulag prisoners is best not heard during the thaw if one is to keep one's sanity.

sun rises ice on pines tinkles in breeze drum - snow from branch hits ground

Ulan Ude is near the Mongolia I always wanted to walk through, and the Kazakhstan I know and like so much. Kazakhstan, perhaps the most tolerant country in the world.

All our thoughts are different in Ulan Ude. It is a chance to explore the Buddhist nature that lies within each of us. I sit facing the last of the taiga, the last birch tree, and compose my haiku.

pine needles make a comfortable rest oh! stinging ants!

And I return to the train. The Tran-Siberian, and stare at the early morning dawn.

Mud

I have seen the draining mud. Like many I played in the creeks for endless childhood hours, vagrantly defying, yet again, rules about set dinner times and sleep in my fantasy of youth, captured and explained now only in my imagination.

But I knew then, as part of my defiance, that mud is glorious, and a natural plaything. In the childhood of our civilisation we knew that too. When I walked the River Nile and sat with villagers for tea they still complained, years later, about the lack of life-giving floods, that used to provide nutrients to the parched and starved land, now changed in the name of control and real estate by the river, but for the select few.

And sitting in fountain square, in Baku, Azerbaijan, I learn from my Bengali friend, recently escaped from the latest Bangladesh flooding, how harmful the dykes and walls we built through the past generations have been, how these blockades were cleverly-designed to contain the rising waters from the Himalayas. Now the rivers rise no more. They spill, and rush over the walls suddenly, when there is barrier no more at a certain height, a masse of water spreading miles wide, all at once.

It is perhaps the same people who always carry umbrellas who conceive of the notion of blocking nature, the ones who want to disinfect themselves from the pleasure of kicking a puddle just to see. They, the seekers of sand beach and cement house can only think vertically, and can only watch a sunset from the umpteenth floor of an office insulated from the earth where it sprouted.

In the creek across a field now of memories I too made little boats from leaves and twigs and watched them float downriver slowly, or more quickly when the rains came. The creek, like my childhood, is no more, and the skill of building the best tiny boat has gone too, from lack of practice or opportunity, replaced instead by plastic models bought with cereal packs full of the latest ways of modifying taste.

But my memories are still fashioned by twigs and trees and leaves, by not avoiding puddles and staying away from the concrete of car-strewn streets wherever I can.

after the storm colourful pieces of sky in mud puddles

The Gobi

When I arrived in Baku 15 years ago, I spent the first night in a caravanserai. There, I bought a chain; a set of prayer beads, in turquoise stone. I say 'bought' but I had no local Manats, the Azeri currency.

"No problem," said the street sales man, "pay me when you see me next."

A few weeks later I saw him, in a crowd surrounding the then president Aliev's walk though the old town, near the caravanserai. I paid him, and thus became part of the mutual trust we shared for each other.

in a caravanserai on the edge of the orient I told my own fortune

Chita

I did what he asked, and only opened the small rice paper holding his three lines a few moments ago, in order to finish my passage with the haiku. It was written in Buriat script, so I was forced to call upon a Mongolian friend far in Mongolia, in Ulan Baator, to perhaps translate it. He could not, but in turn called his friend living in northern Mongolia, a Buriat living near Chita, in Ereentsav, to help. His friend told me he had a pair of Buriat winter boots he was sure I might like, and very useful for the cold Lappland winters. In turn I remembered my gortex jacket, bought once in a mountain town but too small for me, and promised to forward it.

The haiku he wrote

rain tinged with sand the storm brings dust from the steppes grasslands lands among me

We often talk about taking the train, but of course, the train takes you, just like a dream does. Everytime one steps up the steps of a train carriage, one steps into a dream.

on the train deep into the soul of Siberia we share bread and dreams

The ice patterns blown onto plants are more beautiful than the flowers that briefly bloom in summer, and more fragile. But my journey into Siberia brought me equally tender and graceful moments. They are moments on the landscape of my mind that is the memory of a journey, ever eastwards from Moscow. We passed through many temples that passed through different moments in history themselves, and are in reality only remnants, reminders of former days and ideas. For the true Siberian religion is shamanism, and it is not possible to travel through the Siberian taiga without meeting a shaman, and without taking another journey into the spirit world without one of the shamans encountered on a muddy village path, or up in a grassland meadow.

I know shamanism well from the Saami people in Lappland, and indeed fell in love with a shaman once, and travelled far with her. But that is a story I have recounted elsewhere. Still now, though, I find female shamans are able to reach further into the sky, and shamanism is a part of Tengriism, with its spiritual home of Kazakhstan, but also Yakutia, in the north.Tengriism is the religion or philosophy of open spaces. No traveller or journey man or woman can remain untouched by its simple and compelling spirituality.

to know your path follow the shadows of the tracks above you

Amur

Amur sounds like 'Amour' in French, which means Love, and is a most-fitting theme as we near the end of our journey. Amur, love, mila, in Latvian, uthando, in Zulu, liubav, beautifully, in Croatian, like Russian. And then I remember it is 'rakkaus,' embarrassingly, in Finnish, and I understand the lack of romance in that country, that I left behind in my thoughts. In Swahili it is upendo, Polish miłość, echoing somewhat nearby Latvia. In Javanese it is katrasen, which disappoints somewhat. In Khmer it looks the nicest, ក្ដីស្រឡាញ់, and I think of languages like Persian, Arabic, Japanese and Mandarin, and their beautiful calligraphy, and reflect on how important that art is.

I look at the flow of the Amur, nature's caligraphy, alive, moving, even though frozen on the surface now. But it is underneath that I took my journey, that we took our train into Siberia. I know I will be back. Back to watch the sun rise over the sparkling untouched snow, and carve its rays through the trees of the taiga, when I will be able to unwrap my haiku by hand with my wooden staff, onto the sandy banks of the river that sounds like love to some.

haiku not yet inscribed -promised for a return journey then drained into sand

There is always one person willing and able to break the mold, one who has that rebellious soul, and sometimes I am lucky enough to meet them. Each time I do, I recognise that innate need to step forward, or even sideways, to walk out of step or in another direction. They carry me. For them I will do everything, and they are much more rare than you think. They are not the ones who tell you they speak their own mind in a self-satisfied grin, but are instead the ones of small gestures at significant moments.

There was the Russian soldier I knew who had served in the Gobi desert and Afghanistan, who had a permanent karate tic, that is to say he was always chopping the air suddenly, in supermarkets and other not-natural karate chop environments.

We lived together, rather ludicrously, in the Russian embassy in Budapest - a long story if there ever was one, and our job was a little more ludicrous; to look after some high-spending Ukrainian teenage girls who thought we were the two most uncool people walking the civilised streets of bourbonville, but as they seemed impeccably connected all the way up to president Yeltsin of Russia, we remained uncoolly present, and very uncool to any cool young men who approached them, which made us even more uncool in the Ukrainian pink-outfitted teenage eyes, which further developed my Russian ex-soldier friend's karate tic, and wiped supermarket shelves of produce alongside the Danube river that cuts Buda from Pest. Those were uncommon days.

Three years later he called me from Korea, where he was studying ancient medicine similar to acupuncture, but with tiny burning pots, to congratulate me on the birth of my first daughter of three in Aberdeen, Scotland. How he got my number, or knew where I was, who knows.

there are people to meet while we walk that make it important to walk

one eagle in the blue sky

one wolf among the trees

one heart beat

hawk flies free but hunts for his master who feeds him

Vladivostok

Vladovostok is the kind of city I would like to arrive in at dawn. There has always been something fascinating about this last city on a train line one could start in Portugal if one so desired, and finish here, with a few waits on station platforms in-between.

In Vladivostok we are near the North Korean border but also near to Japan. Imagine, though, travelling through the whole of Russia, of Siberia, and arriving here, in this mysterious city. One does not immediately think of beginning another journey, and on the Trans Siberian we skirt close to Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan, they must be experienced too.

For now I would be satisfied to sit on a bench facing the Pacific. And I remember Irina, in Western Ukraine in 1991, joking with me about coming on the Trans Siberian, when the price was a carton of Malboro cigarettes, and smiling when I said "Vladivostok or bust!"

hello Irina! I am here at last, facing the sea -without you

her beauty

thousands of miles away

in the immediacy of my mind

It is said the if Bill Gates needed to assign someone to a complex, arduous project, he would give it to a lazy person, because they would simplify it to the easiest level.

Edward de Bono advocated an even easier step; including random factors into the problem to force thought patterns that are not the norm. Costs too high? Here, bring them down using this orange in the equation. Travel does that. Each next corner is different, and therefore subject to creativity and inspiration.

Into Ukraine

I dream of wheatfields, golden, waving slowly in the breeze, the sky spotless, and so blue, of embroidered sleeves, fingers with cherry red nailpolish ripping a chunk of bread, and dippping it in salt before handing it to me. I dream of mountains where carts trundle up mountain lanes, and pastures are decorated with haystacks yielding to the horizon, and pine trees linger next to their aroma on mountain paths. I dream of the Black Sea, in a world where simple enjoyments still have a meaning, of shashlik, of people who have endured a history not many in Europe have, yet remain proud of their almost unique hospitality.

On a geography field trip to Hyères, in the south of France late at night I stood in the sea. Technically, it was not part of the official activities of the school trip, and I stood in nothing except the sea, having removed bathing trunks. My Ukrainian classmate had lifted her flowery skirt up her thighs and walked in, as close to me as she dared raise her skirt, and beckoned. In the sea at waist height, each step was precious, but I joined her, and in fact she let the hems of her skirt drop down as we kissed, and I both learnt about and felt the passion of the Ukraine.

Years later, when I took a troop of Ukrainian college actors around Eastern Europe with a play I had written, called 'How to catch a man,' a tragicomedy, I stayed on to teach a while in a Western Ukraine fresh from the dissolved Soviet Union, and was seduced by the rustic charm of the Carpathian mountains, the people of which I knew as market traders in various countries on the border – in Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and what is now Serbia, selling all their household belongings in that turbulent era, rugs, shawls, knives, forks, samovars, skis, toothbrushes, jams that exploded from jars, barometres crafted in solid wood and gas masks from a variety of wars.

I bought the ornate samovars, plates, barometres and jugs, and an orange-coloured wine, which I sampled in the middle of a street with my Californian Chuck Norris-like US Peace Corps pal, newly returned from a tour of the country himself, in which he'd stayed with gypsies and nearly returned married. So thrilled was I with Ukraine, even its dangerous mafia, that I planned to set up a business in Sevastopol. It never happened, but I visited Odessa and L'viv, and of course Kiev, and now approaching a grey and silver age, I knew I had to again visit the country that had been so much in the news and in my life. and as we drove towards the border I sat note book in hand, pen ready, I felt the exitement of journeys old, and this one, new, to a country that had sealed my interest with its first kiss, thigh-deep on a beach at midnight in the south of France, all those years ago.

She returned to the Ukraine from Canada, as some maybe do.

`Ah, well done man!´ I said, in tailor-ruffled white suit, as my fifth piece of luggage, a large heavy chest, was pulled off the steam train onto a platform, where it landed with a clunk. `Smoothly fielded! After all, its full of champers!´

I did not really say that, and only thought it, but then that was really for a start to yet another novel without end, frequent notes in my pockets and bags, like train tickets from long-forgotten journeys with all-too temporary aims.

I would have taken my travels like that in another epoch no doubt, and somehow a travel book set in most eras including this one seem to lend themselves to the romanticm of travel that somehow quickly fizzles out in the reality of plastic bag-lumered crowds waiting at airports around the yet again the same branded fast food joints and industrial beers or that drink that still symbolised freedom in much of Eastern Europe in the early 1990s: Coca Cola.

Thirty years ago, after my first midnight kiss, I would have arrived romantically by train, had the Ukrainian girl herself been foolhardy enough to return to her motherland with me, thus following up on a challenge she had issued. But instead she headed off to Canada, and when I crossed the border in 1991 it was with other teachers in a tiny minivan, and took an hour to scrape through, as one did in Eastern European borders at that time.

This time we arrived by car, with author and photographer Ese Kļava as my translator and journey companion, though having read her fascinating book, Butterfly Thy Name, I was worried if I could pull off the literary conversation that might arise, as well as the raw intimacy that could be covered should her book be broached, which covered her innermost desires, all substantially more revealing than my baptising Ukrainian midnight kiss.

Ese was disarmingly frank. `I have an idea that half Ukrainian, half Georgian would be an exciting, exotic mix,´ she declared.

I met Ese in Burgas, Bulgaria, where she was writing her current bestseller.

`I think will need to base my main character on you,´ she said by way of introduction, `as we'll be spending time together.´

`But you'll have to drop your pants. It 's an integral part of the book.´

`And an integral part of me,´ I said.

`I'll use that line if you're not careful!´ she said.

While I proofread her manuscript she drove up through Bulgaria.

Ese was disarmingly frank. `I have an idea that half Ukrainian, half Georgian would be an exciting, exotic mix,´ she declared.

I met Ese in Burgas, Bulgaria, where she was writing her current bestseller.

`I think will need to base my main character on you,´ she said by way of introduction, `as we'll be spending time together.´

`But you'll have to drop your pants. It 's an integral part of the book.´

`And an integral part of me,´ I said.

`I'll use that line if you're not careful!´ she said.

While I proofread her manuscript she drove up through Bulgaria.

Starý Smokovec was the ideal writer’s retreat. A small town in the Tatra mountains, with clean air, not too much to do except walk, and write, a language that I did not understand but was charming to the ear, and prices that meant I was able to concentrate on the book without worrying about where my next meal would come from.

The Tatra mountains were just right for the writer — easily accessible but out of the way, with those great mountain hikes and lubrication. Even the tea was good. I wrote in all seasons, in chalets and pensions and bars, over garlic soup, cheese and bread. I took trips to Moldavia, in the new Czech Republic, just as Dubček, one of the architects of the 1968 Prague Spring died in a mysterious car crash. I took trips down to Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, where I travelled with false documents as the Serbs in Belgrade tried to get rid of Milosovic and his Lady Macbeth, until the Serb police got rid of me.

Despite an ex-boxer prime minister who arranged to have the country’s president’s son kidnapped, beaten up, and dumped at the border, Slovakia was one of my favourite destinations some 15-20 years ago. More particularly, Starý Smokovec, in the Tatra mountains.

Slovakia was a country with an attitude in the early 1990s. In next-door Hungary the prime minister had just announced he was not prime minister of Hungary, but of all Hungarians; tantamount, just about, to a declaration of war. With its sizable Hungarian minority, history of being invaded by Hungary (the last time in 1968, as fighting strafed the streets of Prague during the Prague Spring), and while Yugoslavia nearby crumbled, Slovakia tensed.

Mercier, the infamous Slovak prime minister, argued for Slovakia joining the newly formed CIS, formed from the ex-USSR, to become the’’richest state in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) instead of the poorest in the European Union, and banned shops using only the Hungarian language on their signs.

I loved the atmosphere of turmoil in Eastern Europe at the time. Writers need tension, conflict and pressure — just ask the Czechoslovak authors who wrote the masterpieces they did under the communist regime, permanently fighting censorship or worse.

But most of all I loved coming to Starý Smokovec. I was in various locations in Eastern Europe in those early years of the decade, but whenever I wanted to add a few more chapters to my burgeoning book, I would head straight for the mountain town for a few weeks, in summer, winter, spring and autumn. I stayed in various different pensions, each one clean, charming, with a table in a room with a view. Considering the pensions started around €5 per night at that time, I was able to spend all my breaks ensconced in a room, coming out for breathtaking walks among trails, or a few Tatran beers, surely the world’s finest beer, if also the most unknown.

I took trips to Romania, during those infamous days when miners were paid to come to Bucharest to crack a few demonstrating student heads open, after the fake ‘revolution’ that got Ceaucescu and his own Lady M out of the way, and I traveled to the Ukraine, with its visas issued not to the day of departure, but hour. Then I returned to Starý Smokovec to write. Those were special days of change.

You might be surprised to learn of another reason: trees maintain a memory of their origin that helps them adapt to their local conditions. In this article I will discuss epigenetics: a novel area of research that pertains to both modern medicine and forestry. So what’s in a tree seed? Tree seed contains DNA, the genetic blueprint of the tree, along with carbohydrates for the developing embryo and a seed coat for protection. But DNA alone does not determine what the tree will look like. Scientists are learning that chemicals bound to the DNA influence how the tree looks and functions. These chemicals are referred to as the “epigenome,” and they function to turn genes ‘on’ or ‘off,’ much like a light-switch. This means you can have genes for a trait, but those genes might not be expressed. In fact, there is a field of science devoted to studies of the epigenome called epigenetics, Latin for “outside the genome.”

Genes are inherited from parents, and the epigenome maintains a “record” of life experiences that you inherited from them. Sounds like a science fiction novel? Here’s the rub: the epigenome shuts genes on or off based on life experiences. For example, a child’s brain is in a heightened state of development and wiring. Life experiences can switch genes on or off through the epigenome, essentially leaving a record on your DNA. The really crazy part about epigenetics is that the “position” of the DNA switches, whether “on” or “off,” can be passed on to their offspring. In this way, your grandparents’ life experiences may influence the way your genes are expressed. between obesity and diabetes. In medicine, scientists are just beginning to understand these trans-generational links between health and inheritance that complicate studies of disease and susceptibility to disease. The epigenome provides an important mechanism by which experiences are imprinted onto our DNA to help us adapt to modern life.

Back to trees. Trees, like people, experience a huge range of environments during their long lifespan. Unlike people, they cannot run from bad environments, and spend a great deal of energy reproducing to disperse their offspring to better novel environments. In this way, trees are masters at adaptation. Like humans, experiences can be imprinted on seeds. In this case there is an evolutionary advantage at stake: trees imprint clues about the local photoperiod and possibly local temperatures onto developing seeds. Scientists recently, and unexpectedly, observed this mechanism in Norway spruce trees. Scientists in Norway conducted a simple experiment. They selected Norway spruce trees with established pedigrees that reliably produced tree seed adapted for reforestation in the northern part of the country. These parent trees were copied through grafting, and the new grafts were planted into a location farther south. After the trees matured, seed was collected from them and planted back north. Much to their shock, the seed from this southern orchard more closely resembled trees growing in the southern environment than their kin in the northern part of the country. The growth rhythms of the seed from this new southern orchard were more in tune with the day lengths and temperatures of the southern environment. In fact, the seed from this southern orchard was not suitable to plant in the northern part of the country. Genes, assumed to be the blue-print for tree growth patterns, had been trumped by the effects attributable to the epigenome. The scientists later learned that they had just witnessed adaptation due to epigenetics. This was one of the first reports of this phenomenon in trees. The effect was pronounced within a single generation. I had the good fortune to meet one of the scientists at a meeting in Thunder Bay, Canada last summer. I asked Dr. Johnsen how his colleagues accepted the news that he had essentially made a discovery that contradicted Darwin’s basic theories of evolution. Epigenetics works alongside natural selection to provide an additional mechanism for trees, and other organisms, to adapt to their environment. As the climate changes, developing seeds receive environmental cues that allows them to make adjustments to improve their ability to grow in a novel climate. At some point, our climate may change too drastically for

In order to write wtn I decided to live in Chamonix, France, next to the Mont Blanc, highest mountain in Western Europe. I took a job as a mountain refuge warden there for a while, at some 2,000 metres altitude, but soon enjoyed reading the mountains more than a reader would have reading my never-appearing novel, so I moved down to the centre of town as winter set in. I loved Chamonix.

In the town I enjoyed a friendship with the PGHM, the mountain rescue team, a friendship I struck when working at the refuge, and particularly when one night a hammering at the door woke me; a man in a terrible state, having stumbled and jumped down the steep mountain side to the refuge after watching his wife fall over a cliff. The rescue helicopter went up to look with searchlight and found her, but radioed back they could not get near her in the cliffs at night, and that anyway, she had not survived the fall, that much they could see. I had gone up anyway to find her, especially after the helicopter team told me in no uncertain terms not to tell the man his wife had been killed in the fall until morning, as he might very well just step straight over a cliff himself at the news. So I went up the mountain in order to not have to answer his questions, and after a few hours saw she was not in a state of survival, and I waited till morning, standing at the door of the téléphérique, the cable car, to tell him, at which he crumpled onto the floor of the cabin, and the big moustached cabin operator later remarked:

‘’you know Hamish, I would have expected him to fly at you in a rage and hit, beat you.’’

‘’Yeah, great. Thanks.’’

The PGHM had recovered her body and then got into an argument with the local police, who wanted to take the man back to the scene for ‘questioning’.

‘’I’ve seen it before,’’ the station head of the PGHM had remarked: ‘’we’ll have two bodies over cliffs. He’ll jump.’’

There were other solid friendships; with the ski instructor, a woman who had skied down the very difficult Bossons glacier, after walking up with her skis for over eight hours, and who giggled at my British reserve when she and her friend had thrown their tops off to sunbathe at a mountain lake only hours after meeting me; and there was Catherine D’Estivelle, the climber, who that summer had climbed the Aiguille Verte —the Green Needle, alone, over eleven days, bivouacking on the rock face, and the woman who owned the bar that let me keep a tab running all winter, the bakery owning couple who made the freshest bread on the spot, which I ate where it was cooked, and the other mountain people, who regarded the tourists with mild indulgence; the tourists who had a penchant for acting like tourists — you know what I mean, of which perhaps the most touristy were the Swedes, who drank copious amounts of booze but would not touch the water, for fear of it not being pure, who boasted of a clean Sweden while uprooting all the Christmas trees in Viking exuberance and drinking coffee slowly each morning, wearing heavy mountain gear that clinked and jangled and jarred on their nerves.

And I decided to leave. To leave the town I loved. The blue/green late afternoons in the shade of the pine tree slopes of the mountains, the cream mornings of snow-capped mountains between open shutters, the newsagent who gave me my morning newspaper and coffee every morning when I walked through the door, and the mountains, again, and my mountain climbing partners and the seasons.

My last season in Chamonix was late summer, in the Saami definition of eight seasons. I was living my last few weeks in a tent at the bottom of the Mer de Glace glacier, and my morning plunge into the water rushing off the bottom of the glacier brought a new definition to the word cold, as well as embarrassment, when one morning I had jumped in, lay down briefly in the current and clambered out quickly, and heard a ‘’coooeeee!’’, looked left, looked right, looked behind, looked in front, my skin growing red, my vital parts shivered to mere millimetres, and then heard the ‘’coooeee!!’’ again, looked left right front back sideways and finally..upwards, to see a woman on delta wing, circling before landing, and laughing at my lack of restraint.

And the morning I left I met a silver-haired solitary Czech climber, who was hammering nails in his boots and knotting old ropes — his dream happening at last: climbing Mont Blanc, his food with him in cans, his home a tarpaulin over a wire, his happiness complete.

I was going to Oymyakon, the coldest town in the world (lowest temp recorded -71.2ºC/ -96.16ºF) , in Yakutia, Siberia, and chosen because I was sure that sitting in a hut in the coldest town in the world was a sure-fire way of writing, and importantly, completing a book. Immediately I set about planning an expedition through Yakutia, until I remembered it was to write I was going, and to attempt to ensure I was getting myself stuck into a small cabin, with a pile of logs, tea pot and long lost love deep in fur. The last one was not actually a requirement, though it was true that having someone to cook always means a necessary routine can be installed into a writer’s drab existence at the table, which is in reality a window of course. Yakutia, and in particular Oymyakon, fits some requirement’s of a writer’s retreat, but not all: it was exotic, not pricey — the cash flow is going in 1 direction after all, if the book is to be scribed — and the fish can be caught and cooked, a welcomed way to meditate. Oymyakon is a small town, the nature is beguilingly beautiful, but it forces you back to the writing table quickly, and the natives are not too restless. The town is found on the infamous Road of Bones. It does get a sprinkling of tourists, which is nice, and not all are similar to the Norwegians who got stuck and needed rescuing, claiming to be broken down, or the Germans who also got stuck and chose not to leave their vehicle when being rescued to thank the rescuers. (They would have been charged in another country of course, in places like Vancouver, but then would have probably found ways to sue for being charged for stupidity, as some do.) The fact that conditions were harsh, and risky, like the mountains of Chamonix, is something of a bonus for a writer. But it is also a pleasure when the little luxuries are available — bananas were prevalent, which was comforting, because at -55ºC ( -67ºF) they are more useful to hammer nails into wood than a badly made hammer, and don’t stick to the tongue like the head of a hammer does — something I can personally vouch is true, and if you don’t think you look absolutely stupid walking around town, even in Oymyakon, with a hammer stuck to your tongue, then think again. The wolves do hunt at night, and it if true that if the cold mist descends with the plummeting temperature in the deep snow and you are lost, then you have about 15 minutes to unlose yourself and find your way. After that your chances get pretty slim pretty quick, except your chances of being found next morning when the day is clear, a mere few metres to your cabin. But this provides the tension for your novel, so is worth the risk. Did I write the book? Yes. Did I find a cook deep in the fur, in a cabin down the road? The culture in Yakutia is captivating. And for those against fur, I can honestly tell you from experience that artificial fur just shreds; falls apart at those temperatures, and not keeping warm is not a question of fashion. Everything is different in summer though, when they welcome dawn on the longest day of the year at the summer solstice. Travel narrows our horizons — the more we learn about other cultures, the more sure we are about universal truths. And in Yakutia a universal truth is hugging cooks keeps you warm, as long as you compliment the mammoth steaks - tens of thousands of mammoth bones or even frozen mammoths have been found throughout history, so there’s a chance...

Some benefits of Forest Therapy

Lower concentrations of cortisol (indicator of stress)

Increased Natural Killer Cell count (enhanced immune response)

Lower pulse rate

Lower blood pressure

Greater parasympathetic nerve activity

Lower sympathetic nerve activity

Results of physiological measures show that forest therapy effectively relaxes people’s body and spirit (emotional state).

Heart rate during forest walking was significantly lower than that in the control. Negative mood states andanxiety levels decreased significantly by forest walking compared with urban walking.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2008/05/02/national/forest-therapy-taking-root/#.VFiY6DSUdAU

Notes from a train window

A forest cannot be tamed

time is different among the trees

baby milk powder, in Africa, cutting down trees, removes happiness from the equation.

There is no other forest like the pine forest. When I write in my haiku that I fall asleep under the boughs of a pine tree, I mean that can happen for a night, or even during winter, where heavy snow does not make it under the thick boughs that trap the warmth. I am writing a book about the benefits of forests on health, specifically pine forests, and I can honestly say that a few hours spent filtering thoughts through pine branches while dozing off under a tree is a natural way to recharge. Perhaps it is the scent I like most, as well as the gentle grandeur of the pine forest.

seeking comfort

I sleep on a mat of pine needles

I am rejuvenated

Among the many reasons to preserve what is left of our ancient forests, the mental aspects stand tall. The notion that forests have a special place in the realm of public health, including an ability to refresh the weary, is not a new one. Medical doctors, including Franklin B. Hough, reported in early U.S. medical journals that forests have a “cheerful and tranquilizing influence which they exert upon the mind, more especially when worn down by mental labor.” Individuals report that forests are the perfect landscape to cultivate what are called transcendent experiences—these are unforgettable moments of extreme happiness, of attunement to that outside the self, and moments that are ultimately perceived as very important to the individual.

In 1982, the Forest Agency of the Japanese government premiered its shinrin-yoku plan. In Japanese shinrin means forest, and yoku, although it has several meanings, refers here to a “bathing, showering or basking in.” More broadly, it is defined as “taking in, in all of our senses, the forest atmosphere.” The program was established to encourage the populace to get out into nature, to literally bathe the mind and body in greenspace, and take advantage of public owned forest networks as a means of promoting health. Some 64 percent of Japan is occupied by forest, so there is ample opportunity to escape the megacities that dot its landscape.

Undoubtedly, the Japanese have had a centuries-old appreciation of the therapeutic value of nature—including its old-growth forests; however, the term shinrin-yoku is far from ancient. It began really as a marketing term, coined by Mr. Tomohide Akiyama in 1982 during his brief stint as director of the Japanese Forestry Agency. The initial shinrin-yoku plan of 30 years ago was based solely on the ingrained perception that spending time in nature, particularly on lush Japanese forest trails, would do the mind and body good. That changed in 1990 when Dr. Yoshifumi Miyazaki of Chiba University was trailed by film crew from the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) as he conducted a small study in the beautiful forests of Yakushima. It was a test of shinrin-yoku, and NHK wanted to be there. Yakushima was chosen because it is home to Japan’s most heralded forests. The area contains some of Japan’s most pristine forests, including those of select cedar trees that are over 1,000 years old. Miyazaki reported that a level of physical activity (40 minutes of walking) in the cedar forest equivalent to that done indoors in a laboratory was associated with improved mood and feelings of vigor. This in itself is hardly a revelation, but he backed up the subjective reports by the findings of lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in subjects after forest walks compared with those who took laboratory walks. It was the first hint that a walk in a forest might not be the same as a walk in a different environmental setting.

Since then, university and government researchers have collaborated on detailed investigations, including projects to evaluate physiological markers while subjects spend time in the forest. The research team from Chiba University, Center for Environment, Health and Field Services, has collected psychological and physiological data on some 500 adults who have engaged in shinrin-yoku, and a separate group from Kyoto has published research involving another 500 adults. These studies have confirmed that spending time within a forest setting can reduce psychological stress, depressive symptoms, and hostility, while at the same time improving sleep and increasing both vigor and a feeling of liveliness. These subjective changes match up nicely with objective results reported in nearly a dozen studies involving 24 forests—lower levels of cortisol and lower blood pressure and pulse rate. In addition, studies showed increased heart rate variability, which is a good thing because it means the circulatory system can to respond well to stress and can detect a dominance of the “calming” branch of the nervous system (the parasympathetic nervous system).

Forest Therapy, Tree Density and Cerebral Blood Flow

Research has certainly shown that the emotions of pleasure and happiness are elevated with an increase in tree density within specific settings, even in urban settings. The bigger and denser the trees, the higher the scenic beauty scores—up to a point. If trees are too tightly packed—if a trail is too narrow or obscured—the scene becomes foreboding and fear will be increased.

Adding to the strength of the research, in many of the studies, the objective measurements were also recorded in urban environments as a means of comparison. Here, the researchers controlled for physical activity, time of day, temperature, average hours of sunlight, and other factors. In other words, they weren’t stacking the deck by recording the objective measurements in rainy and cold urban settings compared with sunny and warm forest environments. In one study, the researchers went so far as to bring an instrument capable of measuring brain activity out into the urban and forest settings. The time-resolved spectroscopy system (TRSS) device allows for a reading of oxygen use in the brain via the reflection of near–infrared light off red blood cells. The Japanese researchers found that 20 minutes of shinrin-yoku (compared with 20 minutes in an urban setting) altered cerebral blood flow in a manner that indicated a state of relaxation. More specifically, the total hemoglobin (as found in red blood cells) was decreased in the area of the prefrontal cortex while in the forest setting. Hemoglobin levels are jacked up in this area during anticipation of a threat (stress) and after periods of intense mental and physical work—complex equations, computer testing, video game playing, exercise to exhaustion. So essentially, a decrease in levels means the brain is taking a time-out while in the forest. Although sedatives are also known to reduce activity in this area of the brain, they can have detrimental influences in cognition. Stress hormones can compromise immune defense; in particular, the activities of frontline defenders, such as antiviral natural killer cells, are suppressed by stress hormones. Since forest bathing can lower stress hormone production and elevate mood states, it’s not surprising that it also influences markers of immune system strength. Qing Li and colleagues from the Nippon Medical School showed that forest bathing (either a day trip or a couple of hours daily over three days) can have a long-lasting influence on immune markers relative to city trips. Specifically, there were marked increases in the number of natural killer cells, increases in the functional activity of these antiviral cells, and increases in the amount of intracellular anticancer proteins. The changes were noted at a significant level for a full week after the trip. The improvements in immune functioning were associated with lower urinary stress hormones while in nature. None of this was observed during or after the comparison city trips. As mentioned, the reduction in stress is almost certainly at play in the improvement of immune defenses. However, the natural chemicals secreted by evergreen trees, collectively known as phytoncide, have also been associated with improvements in the activity of our frontline immune defenders. Li has measured the amount of phytoncide in the air during the studies and correlated the content to improvements in immune functioning.

This is an interesting finding in the context of the century-old reports on the success of the so-called forest cure in tuberculosis treatment. In the mid- to late 1800s, physicians Peter Detweiler and Hermann Brehmer set up sanatoriums in Germany’s pine forests, as did Edward Trudeau in the Adirondack forests of New York. All reported the benefit of the forest air; indeed, contrary to expectations, the results seemed to be magnified when the forest air trapped moisture. There was speculation among the physicians of the time that pine trees secreted a healing balm into the air, and in yet another twist of the shinrin-yoku studies, the existence of an unseen airborne healer is being revealed.

Shinrin-yoku is alive and well today; the word has entered the Japanese lexicon. At present there are 44 locations approved as “forest therapy bases.” These are sites that have been not only the subject of human research indicating benefits to stress physiology; a team of experts from the Japanese Forest Therapy Executive Committee ensures other criteria are met before designation, including accessibility, accommodation (if remote) cultural landmarks, historical sites,, variety of food choices, and comfort stations. Chiba University’s Miyazaki, who played a massive role in taking shinrin-yoku from a throwback marketing concept to credible preventive medicine intervention, continues to perform research and is now looking at the physiological effects of time spent in Tokyo’s major urban parks.Since Ulrich’s original observation, there have been additional studies confirming that the mere presence of flowering and foliage plants inside a hospital room can make a difference. Specifically, in those recovering an appendectomy and randomly assigned to a room with a dozen small potted plants, the use of pain medications was significantly lower than that of their counterparts in rooms with no potted plants; they also had lower blood pressure and heart rate, and rated their pain to be much lower. As well, those who had plants in their rooms had comparatively higher energy levels, more positive thoughts, and lower levels of anxiety.

Since a view of nature or a few potted plants can influence subjective and objective measures of stress, and maybe get us out of the hospital faster, it seems likely that nature can keep us out of the infirmary to begin with. The first indication that this might be the case was in the reporting of architect Ernest Moore in 1981. In examining the annual sick records of the State Prison of Southern Michigan, he noticed there was a glaring difference in health-care utilization based on cell location. Specifically, those inmates housed in the cells facing outside to a view of green farmlands and forests had far fewer visits to the medical division than did those inmates housed in the inner half, with a view of an internal concrete yard. In addition:

Norwegian research shows that having a plant at or within view of an office workstation significantly decreases the risk of sick leave. A 2010 study from the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, reported that levels of anger, anxiety, depressive thoughts, and fatigue all reduced over a three-month period, and not just by a little bit—these parameters were reduced by about 40 percent, while reported stress was down by 50 percent. On the other hand, those without the stress buffer of a visible plant indicated that stress levels rose over 20 percent during the study.

• Installing plants within a radiology department of a hospital reduced short-term sick leave by 60 percent.

• Research published in 2008 in the Journal of the Japanese Society for Horticultural Science showed that greening select high school classrooms with potted plants for a four-month trial period significantly reduced visits to the infirmary compared with age-matched students attending classes without the visible plants.

In Chechnya if you are not mafia the chicks don’t dig you. The capital of Chechnya is Grozny, and the Grozny football team, run by some mafia head who may also be president of Chechnya, one forgets these days, tends to win most of it’s home games. Getting into the stadium is not exactly easy, with all the machine guns around — bodyguards, security, police, passerbys with machine guns. Since the guy who runs the team, who also has mafia written all over his black shirt black tie black sunglasses black Mercedes Benz, and may also be president of Chechnya, is very rich, some very famous stars play for Grozny, and pledge absurd alliance to this poor, developing football team. Brazilians, Africans, ex-European footballers of the year. They train thousands of kilometers away somewhere in Russia then fly in for home games and fly out again immediately. They just love the club of course, in a wry sort of way.

That’s Chechnya, and if you don’t have cash bulging out your pockets you grow a beard like the kind they would not dare in some Arab countries, and then pretend you don’t care if the chicks don’t dig you and take to the hills, where if you shout ‘freedom for Chechnya!’ loud enough and proclaim faith to a god you did not find before at the bottom of a bottle of vodka, then someone somewhere will subsidise you, not necessarily some disparate Arab group, who know you do not fully understand what Jihad means, but perhaps even a spy agency from a land yonder who likes the idea of you harassing Russians.

Some of that changed, after Beslan, where nearly 1,000 people were held hostage without water for 3 days in North Ossetia, Russia, a part of Russia that has a dialect of Iranian as the regional language. The Chechyans, who arrived fully armed for the siege and easily bribed their gunladen way passed police check points, then massacred a few hundred fleeing victims, nearly 200 of them poor children, during a totally bungled-up and quite disgraceful attempt by police and army to break the siege. Chechyans were no freedom fighters; they were really bad guys.

Being a really bad guy in the Caucasus Mountains, where Chechnya is located, puts you in good company; it’s where Stalin was born in nearby Georgia, and for that matter Sadam Hussain was born only 300 kilometers away. But it’s also a beautiful area of the world. “When God was handing out land for different countries,” they say in the Georgia, ‛he forgot about us, because we were eating and drinking and dancing when we should have been queuing up for our land. Since he’d already given all the land he had to give, he was forced to give us the special parts he was reserving for himself.”

And in the Caucasus refusing a gift can start a war. Name two republics there and they’ve probably fought each other. It’s where the world’s first Christian nation is located, and the first holocaust of the last century. Near the mountains is Kolmykia, the only Buddhist republic in Europe they say, where chess is taught as a school subject, but the rest of the countries and republics are divided between variants of Christianity or Islam, and often a mix, where traditions include bride kidnappings, when the woman is plucked off the street by a gentleman on a horse, or worse, and instantly is therefore married to him, or these days bundled into a black Mercedes.

Paganism has long been associated to the worship of trees - and particular trees have been allocated different roles, almost similar to the role of a saint in the Catholic religion.

Quite rightly, too. Place your palm against a tree trunk and feel the energy. What if the energy is coming from you, and not the tree? So what, it is flowing - and what if you feel it is only your imagination? Even better, for imagination is more important than intelligence. And that comes from Einstein so don't take it up with me.

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forestbathing-studies-blog · 8 years ago

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Shinrin-Yoku: —The Art of Forest Bathing

I remember turning on the television. The camera moved down the normally sand-coloured dirt road, now churned into a red sticky mess by the latest rains, with oil puddles of ominous grey and brown refusing to melt into the earth. They glimmered with a splattering of rainbow colours, but the oil was still and stagnant.

The sky was grey, no clouds or anything. The camera crew had walked up to a little coffee-skinned boy who stood in the lane smiling, periodically pressing his palms together, fingers outstretched. He looked at the reporters, eager to please.

“And have you ever seen a flower?” One of them asked.

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“No,” said the little boy, shaking his head and smiling.

I finished packing my bags and scribbled a haiku to pin on my front door as my traveller's message.

what if you are fooled- that rainbows are scars in the sky you applaud and let bleed?

As I walked to the edge of my forest the boy's answer came to me again who had never seen a flower in the mud of his shanty town, who trusted those that sent the bombs tt would set him free, free of a family to love him, free of the need to go to school any more, and free to choose which crater to sleep in, now that his house stood no more. I was leaving in my pursuit of forest study and specifically to further research forest bathing, a science started in Japan that I saw also as an art, and I knew that ultimately this study would benefit in those who had been robbed of the nature to nurture them. With this in mind I set off on my journey.

It is true that my own log cabin in the wilderness has no lock. No lock means a certain feeling of freedom. But freedom must be fed to flourish. It is not something you can give up, when your health suffers, or finances run low. You must build up your beliefs and values and experience them, and learn to learn them from others. That is the real reason to get in touch with nature, for walking in a forest also means stepping away from civilisation.

With my bag over my shoulder, I paused at the last tree before walking out into the meadow to pin my goodbye haiku to a tree trunk.

the aroma of pine

and the young morning’s fresh rain

reach my words

An early morning mist lay streaked with sunrise over the grass on meadows. A few rowers were already gliding down the river that bordered the large expanse, dipping their oars in and skimming along the calm surface, tiny whirpools in their wake. There was an elegant, timeless quality to the scene before me. Standing under an old oak trees, I thought if I was writing a novel, this is where I would start it, just as the hardy young rowers swept by, seamlessly almost, in the mirrored river.

the sturdy oak tree

gives some ancient shade

to my thoughts

In truth my journey started in-between Panama and Colombia, in a village called Paya. I wore a red loincloth in the jungle of the Darien Gap, between Panama and Colombia. I stayed with the Kuna Indians almost exactly on the border, deep in the rainforest.There have been many efforts from colonial missionaries and sects to prise the Kunas of the Darien Gap away from their belief in the Nana Dummad, Mother Hearth, a belief closely associated with respect to the nature around them. All failed. These people, who live in the jungle remain closely at one with their environment. This seems to have a real benefit: Kuna people have a low average blood pressure (BP, 110/70mm Hg), and, do not experience the age-related increase in blood pressure that is common in Western society. Death rates from cardiovascular disease and cancer, the first and second causes of death in the western world, are so rare in the Kuna that they are almost non-existant.It is impossible to say there is no connection between living in the equatorial forest and these figures. A parallel can be drawn to the jungles of Kerala, in southern India,where the local people enjoy a remarkably healthy existences among forests, where fresh food is available almost freely throughout their environment. If there ever was a model for sustainable development, it is the State of Kerala in India, and its jungle patterned by waterways, in hich reed and wooden boats float past idyllic villages set among the trees. No slash and burn here.In both the Darien Gap and Kerala, inhabitants are literally able to pluck food from branches. Freshness is always an important issue, and their food from their respective forests is high in vital flavonoid content. Flavanoids existabundantly and naturally in cocoa trees, but are often removed from chocolate, even dark chocolate because they can be bitter, and milk interferes with their consumption.Among the Kuna, I witnessed forest life first hand. Contrary to what one sees in news reports about people who live in these environments, everyone was healthy, and fit. It was only when leaving the settlement of Paya in the jungle, and heading towards the town of Turbo across the huge bay, that settlements began to look ragged, and disorganised, and people listless, with ill-fitting, ripped clothes, and vacant expression.In the green jungle there was always work to do, though more leisure time too, after the work had been done. Pollution was basically a foreign affair, and the Kuna carried much knowledge about the nutrients, health aids and poisons in their environment, as well as which areas were mosquito-ridden, and therefore likely to have the malaria parasite, and which areas of the rainforest were free of mosquitos.Living in the jungle, or even travelling through a jungle, is an enthralling experience. In sweltering heat as healthy as a sauna, and better than any exfoliant or moisteriser, every day is an adventure, and a detoxication for the mind.almost But problems occur when our world reaches into the areas of wilderness. I discover sad news after I leave the Darien Gap that , Víctor Alcázar, my guide and good friend was caught in an attack by a Colombian right wing squad, an attack that killed four Kuna Indian spiritual forest leaders and terrorised the harmonious settlement I had stayed in. Victor, who escaped suffering from bayonet wounds, was accused by police and prosecutors of being an accomplice of the invaders. It is inconceivable that such a kind, gentle person, who lost previously lost his front teeth demonstrating against Noriega, the Panamanian dictator, and a much-experienced guide in the jungle, could have done anything like that to destroy his own business. The veteran jungle guide, who had complained frequently about how the lack of police presence in eastern Darien hurt his business, told reporters he was a scapegoat for the police failure. I have never been able to get further information about what happened to him, this wonderful Carib of the Darien jungle, who had found himself under great stress and pressure, a man of great happiness and humour who harmed no-one, who I had corresponded with for a few years, with an unbelievably simple address of Víctor Alcázar, El Real, Darién jungle, Panama. among the treesshadows and thoughtstravel for miles 木木木

木木木

Siberia: it is no wonder this great expanse spawned such unparalleled works of literature. Every person one meets is a perfectly described character, a walking story, ready for a novel to step into. As for the land mass itself, there is simply too much of it to describe. Many don’t even try, and rarely even glance out of a window from their train invariably traversing through the immense taiga, but none will admit to any monotony of the journey. Most travellers on trains here are not romantics. Siberia pulls on more than the mere sentimental. The concept of time and space take on a new condominium for those who do stand or sit looking out of the train windows. The trees are lyrical, and give rise to great orchestral symphonies of the mind. These pines, birch, spruce and larches may not have been the forests that padogas and fancy pavilions were built from, nor the dark, luxuriouds wood of Balinese carvings, but on these tree trunks and logs whole cities had been erected over permafrost, the wooden stilts serving better for the purpose than concrete, which starts to crumble in the plunging cold. At these times temperatures slide to such nonsensical figures that bananas become hammers and even vodka freezes. But vodka is an imported drink here, from wheatfields and grasslands, and made for drinking around kitchen tables up in high-rise flats that circle cities. From these tables and bottles trains are watched below as they made their way through the taiga. Those who take those trains across Siberia are not people who succumb to the self-indulgent charms of wanderlust. True travellers, they are mostly teatotal. The true Siberian traversing his or her native land cures and heals not with vodka but with pine oil, which he or she imbibes, or rubs on ailments and heats as a natural aroma.

Chita (Чита) is situated right where two rivers meet, the Inogoda and river Chita, from which the town is named. The two rivers come together a couple of hundred kilometres north of Mongolia, in Eastern Siberia. Chita is distinct. There are only two cities in the world where on the same hill at the same time are three temples of three different religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity, and Chita is one of them. In the ancient part of the city on the top of the hill (the old prison used to be there, too) there is a synagogue, a mosque and an orthodox church. This is why Chita is called the second Jerusalem. Even the flag looks Palestinian, with a yellow triangle replacing the Palestinian red one, and three stripes of red, white and green.

“I understand there is no key to your log cabin, where you said you live, so if you don’t need a key, what are you searching for?” said the wizened old man, sitting on a wooden ledge lining a thin bed of small growing roots. With his thin white beard and green shawl he looked like a curator of bonsai trees.

“You mean why have I travelled so far?” I asked, the traveller in me long adept at turning philosophy around like the spinning of a coin, but only to help the conversation grow, to water it, give it life.

“In miles or in ideas?” the man replied, hand on his beard, a little tug, “or perhaps the key is only in the questions.”

I looked at the little man, at his amused eyes. He could have been from Tibet, or Kalmikiya, or of Hazara descent, living in the middle of Afghanistan. Chita was not part of the Siberia of pine, spruce or birch tree anymore. Here one felt the bleakness of the Central Asian grasslands, the steppes. The old man was a Buriat, of Turkic, Mongolian origins; a Buddhist.

“I’m just looking for my way forward,” I said.

“Ah,” he said, “then in miles!”

He tugged his silky white beard again, once, twice, a third time. “A pity,” he said, “in ideas is more fruitful.”

“If I hadn’t come all the miles across Siberia we would not be chatting about this,” I said.

“And nor would we if I had crossed over Siberia the other way” he replied. “It is a good thing all I did was sit here, otherwise I would not have had such a delightful, perhaps only an inconsequential moment, but I am rather sure that from here, near the end of your journey, it is your ideas that will now travel.”

“The importance of my journey then is not what I feel about it, but in what others find in it,” I said.

“That is the real journey,” replied the man. He lifted his hand up flat, horizontal, so that it cast a shade over the small plants growing in the fresh spring soil. “It is not my ability to lift my hand that is important,” he said, “but the shade it provides so the flowers can grow and bloom without over-exposure to the direct light.”

He stood up. “Ah, see, you are taller than me. You are offering me shade,” he said, giving a chuckle, “but others kilometres away will only receive shade from the ideas you have.”

He offered his hand and I shook it.

“If you must travel far to find the right way to provide shade of ideas for others, so be it,” he said, “but remember one must travel for that reason, not to count the distance.”

From within a slip of a pocket at his chest he pulled out a small booklet, with grey cardboard cover. “When you think about our meeting, and exchange ideas about the trees, then please make one of these haiku in here part of that exchange. Only open and look when you have collected your ideas and tell others.”

I took the booklet, and slipped it into my chest pocket. I wanted to tell him that everyone needs space, and some need movement, too, the creaking of a rolling wagon wheel, ruffled flapping of a sail or click of train wheels.

Then this small, alert man on the edge of the large flower bed surprises me, placing his hand on my arm. “my niece will accompany you, the taiga is her home and she is returning there after visiting me,” he says, “her name is Yenisei. Tell me what you learn from the trees, if we meet again. If not, tell another.” BELOW SYRAIGHT AFTER leaving forest part: 木木木

It took a childhood of intermittent tramping through pine forests in the Alps, where I grew up and a decade of living in the empty deserts of the Middle East to understand forests. That and spending an afternoon in the ethereal Redwood forest, in California. I thought I’d never seen anything more exquisite and majestic. Exploring the taiga of Siberia is awe-inspiring. There is also something else, that the more time I spend in forest areas, the better my chronic and inexplicable breathing difficulties I have improve.

the pine cone that feeds all the forest is the forest

l long for nature’s products when I walk among the bushes, shrubs and trees. Not the creams from companies with names like Natura, or Flower, Plantigen, with pictures of flowers or berries on the front, and packed with goodness knows what chemicals in a plastic container. TO REMOVE

sunlit waterfall in my wooden cup the taste of a rainbow

misty morning droplets of forest poetry I touch the sky

木木木 By name alone, Yenisei sounds beautiful. Yenisei. Names become more exotic the deeper one ventures into the forests of Siberia, in the endless boreal forest, or snow forest, of coniferous trees, pines, spruces and larches, and the white trunks of the birch trees. Yenisei is my guide, and is named after the River Yenisei itself, one of the three great rivers of Siberia. She is sleeping under the boughs of another pine tree, under great branches that trap the warmth. My guide is the niece of the man I met in Chita, and related by DNA and language to many of the tribes of Northwest America.

The forests ripple over the horizon. I am under the impression I will take this mysterious, beautiful forested land with me wherever I go, spiritually, in my heart, and soul. Already mentally, and physically, it has had a positive effect after only a couple of days. There is no other forest like the pine forest. I try to write a haiku about falling asleep under a pine tree, where heavy snow does not make it under the thick boughs that trap the warmth, but just can’t get it right. No matter, I am content merely to be, among the trees. Perhaps it is the scent I like most, as well as the gentle grandeur.

pine tea for the soul starts with a harvest of needles and forest air

Yenisei is not necessarily my guide for distances we will cover in the vast interior of Russia, but also my guide for my own interior. For that purpose, I will accordingly learn all I can about the forests of Siberia. Yenisei lives in the taiga, in the forest, usually in a small community, with other ethnic Evenks, who live a nomadic life among the trees, setting up camp a while then moving on, for the pleasure of moving as well as living. On a mat of pine needles am rejuvenated

木木木

Here, at the other end of the thermometer from many, in Siberia, it is cold. My hands are already numb as I light the third match. The dried grass and hay, though, is still unfrozen. This time, with cupped hands not feeling the naked flame, it catches alight, a whisper of smoke then glowing tips. The herbs start to smoulder and flare, minute pinpricks of light, and soon I sip pine nut tea and offer some to my guide, through the large snow-covered branches. She smiles, and has her own forest herb brew to boil up. She hands me some dried Valerian flower roots. “Chew them,’’ she says, ‛’the flower grows here. It will help you sleep well, with nice dreams.’’ “I’m having wonderful dreams already!’’ I answer. It is only now I understand how much I appreciate the company of fir trees, and only now that I am consciously learning how healthy they are for our physical and mental health; our chemical balance, and for the soul. The landscape of rolling forests is peaceful and mystical at the same time, and we are near the top of a small hill, among thick pine trees, in scenery that looked tame enough for a Christmas card, but far enough from any settlement to see by the light of the stars and moon alone. I open the old man from Chita’s little grey cardboard book and read the first haiku. without roots we cannot flower 木木木

The first time I heard the term ′forest bathing’ was at 4 am, in Banff, Canada. It was the middle of January, and I was half way up through the trees of Sulphur mountain. I had a long knife in hand in the absence of a pick axe or walking stick, to stab at the icy snow on the steep incline and a heavy old rubber mattress thrown over my shoulder, and twisted together at the hip. The plan was to climb the mountain, blow up the rubber mattress and speed down again, and continue my journey all the way to the Darien Gap, and Kuna Indians, over the next few months. It was tough work going up the mountainside. Not so much because of the steepness, but because of the deep snow up to my waist, and I wanted to widen a path, so that my ride down would happen at speed. It was also tough work as I had not quite got over my long summer and autumn’s work, first tree planting, then burning old tree tumps, followed by carrying heavy loads of water on my back to put out smouldeting tree stumps, before finally graduating to lumberjack, and felling trees for miles and miles into late autumn. No-one could accuse me of idealistically falling in love with forests — my relationship had been physical. The Japanese woman on the ledge had been watching me for a while when I arrived. I had started at 4 am. She had started earlier, or more likely had trekked up faster. Or both; she had been on the Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition a few years earlier. Our conversation was brief, some might say terse, or aphoristic: to her quizzical look I had offerred an explanation of enjoying being on the forested slopes in winter. “You ever heard of forest-bathing?’’ she asked. “Oh, you mean because of the rubber mattress?” I answered, lifting it off my shoulder. “No. It’s what you’re doing. Getting in the good air,” she said. “They studied the benefits in Japan a couple years ago, and it’s called Shinrin-Joku. Forest bathing.” somewhere far in the woods under the pine’s speckled sunlight a tiny acorn gives birth

I blew up the inflatable mattress, jumped on and sped down the steep hill through the forest, down the gulley I had made walking upwards. At the bottom of the mountain my travelling partners arrived by pick-up. I duly got picked up, and we drove down to Central America. And I forgot about forest bathing until Guatemala, a few months and many miles later.

under the trees leaves and shadows of leaves only shadows stay

木木木

When I arrived in Guatemala I befriended two honey collectors in the lush bushes up the sides of a volcano. The path we were on went straight up, no matter how steep the side of the volcano became, straight up through the trees, then areas of grass, then trees. And they walked fast. Fast meant really fast, up the slope. It was a lesson learnt, in many different ways — in general, our lifestyle is worse than many in the developing world. Of course, on that day on the volcano I had very little style, and not much life in my limbs either. They stopped, politely.

“I will let you go,” I said, “you are too fast!”

The elder of the two men patted his midriff and smiled: “Have some wild forest honey!” he said in Spanish.

He put his hand in the bag he had slung at his hip, and took a glass jar out, opened it, then took a tortilla out and dipping it into the jar, gave it to me. I chewed the honey-dipped bread. It was suitably delicious.

The forest honey on my tortilla was a dark, deep amber; real medicine, and strongly antibacterial. When honey is applied on a cut, graze or scrape, an enzyme from bees called glucose oxidase activates the release of H2O2. Forest honey, the most medicinal of all honies, can even kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA. It is also hydroscopic and pulls water away from an infected wound by osmosis. Dryer wounds heal faster, but honey also pulls lymph fluid to the wound, making balanced healing, and this honey’s low pH of between 3 and 4, makes it acidic. Bacteria cannot survive in an acidic environment.

The unrefined forest honey on the tortilla was my excuse to immerse myself into my environment. I waved goodbye to my companions and admired the view through the trees, thankful for the cover as the rain poured. As I sat, I thought of ways to render the exotic appeal of the surroundings onto paper in haiku, to convey the atmosphere of purity and harmony.

Below me in the tinsel light of the rain, I saw a shining river winding its path between the hills, and made my way downwards towards it. Great Mayan cities were carved out of the jungle here, cities now so hidden that one can really only stumble on them by accident. I took out my notebook and waded into the river, and sat on a small smooth rock to watch the current stream pleasantly by, the clear surface of the river broken by the fast patter of raindrops. It was then that a rubber raft came drifting around the bend, with four occupants, three men abnd one woman, in mid-conversation.

“Ah’m tellin’ ye!’’ shouted the man in front, in broad Scots dialect, and bright red Celtic hair . “Tha’ bloody rum’s poison man, gie’ us a whisky any day!’’

“Nah,’’ his colleague insisted in Carribean lilt and big laugh, “there is nothin’ compared to rum man!’’

Seeing me just are they were seen by me, they both expertly swivelled the rubber craft round with their wooden paddles to where I sat.

“Join us man,’’ said the Carribean, all smiles again contrasting with ebony skin. “My name’s Claymore, that reprobrate there is McGillan,’’ he laughed, in a fitting Jamaican accented musical tone, “and this is Beatrice, from Canada, and there’s Guillermo,’’ he said, pointing to the third man holding his oar as a rudder, having pioted the dinghy alongside me.

I got in. Beatrice, long-haired with red bandana, red-flowered wrap and bikini top, sat on the opposite side of the dinghy and I picked up a paddle amd dipped it into the river, swivelling it back.

“Well Ah’m nae normally one tae argue mind,’’ McGillan continued to Claymore, in full swing, “Ah’d waste neither disinfectin’ yer backside frae the tooth marks of tha’ croc over there!’’

We turned quickly to see a small alligator floating slowly in our direction, snout causing a few small bubbles to escape as it watched us guide by.

“Hey man,’’ said Claymore, “the alligator that bites your butt gets a drink from me!”

“You bloody men,’’ said the woman called Beatrice.

The forest murmured constantly with almost electric activity, but not all the noises blended in, just as the flash of colours of a macaw startled against the background of green, so a high pitched cry or deep rumble caught the senses sharply. Large butterflies, in translucent blue fluttered out of reach, almost in a dance, and no again near the riverbank on either side there was a sudden plop! As an animal quickly jumped into the water as we swept by; frogs perhaps. This was haiku country, and surely Bashō would have felt inspired among the lush, green vegetation.

Then Guillermo said: “Look!’’

Beatrice was still finishing a drawing. “The calm tranquillity of the woman’s mind,’’ she had just said, as she sketched in a long thick phallic tree trunk that bent slightly upwards over the water. Guillermo seemed to see things that we did not with our untrained eyes. He stood watching the jungle from the raft, looking at things that had happened here years ago, gesturing at what was indistinguishable in the thick forest. He quickly and easily leapt ashore picking a leaf and chewing it, then picking another from a different tree, We stepped out of the raft, causing Beatrice to look up, and waded to the river bank.

“I am Lacandón Mayan,’’ Guillermo said, as he led us up the steep bank into the forest, “my people live here long, long time ago. We came to the jungle to escape the Conquistadores, and have been a forest people since. When we farm in the jungle, nosotros, us Lacandon, we farm with nature. We mix plot of land with different plants so we don’t starve mother earth. We grow lemon, onion, pepper, corn, watermelon, all in same place. We grow banana and papaya trees to shade, so the rhythm of the forest does not change. We don’t have disease spreading on our land because we don’t grow only one kind of plant. The earth keeps strong because different plants’ needs are different.’’ He looked around. “Here we can build a incense burner renewal ceremony hut.”

The jungle looked untouched. To Guillermo, however, the pattern of the jungle had been modified, and soon we came up to some light undergrowth. We walked around what appeared to be a large mound, and pulled at the tangled branches.

“I think there’s a way in here,” said Claymore.

“Do ye then?” Asked McGillan about thirty minutes later, as we pulled and chopped and cut. A passage way finally appeared, and we slithered into the entrance, an entrance that was paved with chunks of stone. There was room for one down the small rectangular corridor, and room for two in the small chamber at the end of it. Rough scratched on stones set around patches of earth were all that was left of the probable etched hieroglyphics and artefacts.

“People have been here before us,” said Guillermo, “only the forests have stayed.” He looked up towards the treetops. “The name Guatemala comes from Nahuatl Cuauhtēmallān, ′place of many trees,’ a translation of the Mayan K’iche, ′many trees’,” he said.

in my forest I hunt for words -trees are stories

木木木

Up near the Arctic Circle, there is magic afoot during the winter months. We know that Santa was a shaman in his big black boots, collecting the Fly Agraic mushroom, red with white dots from the forest, and feeding it to his reindeer then drinking the mix when their livers had removed the toxins, or putting them in a big sack and later hanging them to dry above the fireplace. And these magic mushrooms that grow under the fir trees, with ethereal fertilisation, are symbolised now with the draping of silver-coloured tinsel over the so-called Christmas tree, in reality the world tree, the tinsel symbolising sperm.

Of course, after eating the magic mushrooms the deer fly, and Santa laughs, with red cheeks, and the Siberian tribal and Saami people’s myth of the world tree is real. If you would like to treat yourself to one of these mushrooms, make sure you boil it first, unless you have any reindeer around. And then come North, and see the northern lights, glowing, moving behind the silhouettes of pine trees and watch, touch our magic, natural world.

snowflakes drift

as plum blossoms open in Seoul

and in my memories

The world tree has been ursuped and used in many homes as the Christmas tree, but if people wanted to follow the Nativity scene more closely they would use a palm tree. Palms are wonderful, magical trees in their own right.

two tall palms

in monsoon rains

give a coconut kiss

I briefly mentioned living in the deserts of the Middle East. What I meant was working as in-house environmental consultant for the Saudi Arabian oil company, based in a desert town called Abqaiq, meaning Tiny Bug, over the world’s largest oil field, the Ghawar Field, and on the edge of Al Ahsa oasis, with its 30 million palm trees, in the Eastern Province. 30 million trees is a lot of dates.

in only one date the taste of paradise — never eaten alone

Walking through the immense date plantation, shaded by the broad patterned leaves in a day exotic with heat was always a thrill. Meeting bedouins in the evening, who had nothing to offer but the best hospitality and warm sand dunes, under a backdrop of a wide, clear sky full of stars and the aroma of roasted cardamon coffee, the cardoman, as always, from the Guatemalan highlands, and the coffee possibly too, served with fresh, frothed camel milk and genuine conversation; a life at its most luxurious.

in coffee friendship

embers from the dancing fire

-floating stars

At the fringe of the large date palm plantation I stopped one evening, and walked towards a small oasis set in the wavy, curved lines of the desert sands. The oasis was surrounded by lush green palm trees, some tall and stooped, and some thick and rigid. I knelt down and reached deep into the cool, fresh water, and lifting my cupped hands drunk some and splashed my face. When I looked up I saw her sitting at the waterside about fifty yards away, opposite me, between the trees. Her legs were in the cool water of the oasis and she’d pulled her black abaya up to her thighs. I had startled her and she started to pull the abaya downwards but stopped when I smiled and touched my forefinger to my lips.

The oasis took on a creamy glow as the sun set in the desert somewhere in the distance. She kept her abaya up on her thighs, kicking in the water, softly, as I sat on the opposite side of the oasis, taking in her etheral beauty. Finally she stood up, carefully letting her abaya drop from uncurling, long fingers. Pushing a large palm leaf aside she turned to walk away in the sand, and glanced back for one long moment before making her way up the sand dune behind her.

Only in Saudi Arabia could one share such an illicit, sensual spell.

the setting sun

melts into shadows

and shadows melt into night

木木木

I am reminded again of the inbuilt need of western culture and civilisation to proletise, often found these days through the workings of charities, who go to great lengths to inform us of noble savages around the world who need our help to care for their environment and develop, by which the charity companies really mean they want our money.

In Kerala, sitting on a houseboat made from reeds on one of the many waterways through the jungle, I was told thatt the first tree huggers were from India; 294 men and 69 women of the Bishnois branch of Hinduism, who died in 1730 while trying to protect the trees in their village from becoming raw material for building a palace. They clung to the trees while being slaughtered. But their action led to a royal decree prohibiting the cutting of trees in any Bishnoi village. Thee days the villages are virtual wooded oases amid an otherwise desert landscape.

The Bishnois inspired the Chipko movement (chipko means “to cling” in Hindi) that started in the 1970s, when a group of peasant women in the Himalayan hills of northern India threw their arms around trees designated to be cut down. Within a few years, this tactic, also known as tree satyagraha, spread across India, forcing reforms in forestry and a ban on tree-felling in Himalayan regions.

among the trees only thoughts and shadows move

木木木

The traveller, farmer, writer or must seek isolation, whether he or she likes it or not. So I walk through the forests and hills back to where Yenisei has fashioned a small yurt from branches and canvas, marveling that yet again I found my way. Through Bashō we learn that the true writer does not lead a sedentary life, and indeed must walk in order to express his or her syllables. Bashō walked for 156 days through Japan in his legendary ′Deep Road to the Far North,’ series of haibun that defined the term.

By walking on his long walk, Bashō also demonstrated that the true haiku and haibun haijin’s tool is not the pen but the wooden staff. Not only does this staff lift branches and part bushes to see the dew drops and flower petals, but it can also be leant on when searching the sky for floating eagles, patterned clouds and drifting cherry blossoms. The wooden staff also taps haiku on a road perfectly, like a variant of morse code message to nature:

win—ter—is—o—ver

a—dog—barks—to—each—tap

of—my—carved—staff

My journey is in fact a journal of nature—a kikôbun. Ahaibun is a pilgrimage, maybe only of ideas, but a kikôbun has no destination, despite being a journey. The travel journal that is the kikôbun denotes a wanderer that is not Quixotic in his or her reveries, but rather seeks to record. A sword or lance of any kind must therefore be put aside for other quests, as a kikôbun merely takes from the nature that is seen when walked through, to put onto lines on pages. The semiotic wooden walking staff therefore takes on symbolic meaning.

My wooden staff— the kikôbun’s sword carving thoughts

Not Don Quixote, nor wandering samurai, what, then? Like the Navajo in the southwestern states, who use wooden tools on mother earth lest they leave scars, I don’t set out to make an impression that might not heal.

my staff slices the trees still stand and yet…

木木木

The ice patterns blown onto plants are more beautiful than the flowers that briefly bloom in summer, and more fragile. But my journey into Siberia brought me equally tender and graceful moments, landscapes, untamed, grandiose, full of proud fir trees, and the natural home of Siberian religion, for the true Siberian religion is shamanism, and travelling through the Siberian taiga is also taking another journey into the spirit world with a shaman encountered on a muddy village path, or up in a grassland meadow.

I know shamanism well from the Saami people in Lappland, and find female shamans are able to reach further into the sky. Shamanism also has a spiritual home in the steppes of Kazakhstan, and Yakutia, in the north. From Kalmykia on the shores of the Caspian to Korea, true shamans listen and interpret what nature is trying to say. No traveller or journey man or woman can remain untouched by this simple and compelling spirituality.

to know your path follow the shadows of the tracks above you

I realise my guide Yenisei is a shaman first through her commitment to her forest environment, even before watching her use different herbs for nutrition and salvation, spiritual purposes that involved intricate rituals.

northern lights

the night sky whispers in colour at the edge of the town

Yenisei teaches me to be at one with the forest around me She does this by encouraging me to sense the forest as well as merely see it. As all simple messages, it takes time to fully understand and grasp, but as I do I feel real comfort.

pine trees gently sway -is it the wind blowing or is it my mind?

Her rituals are deeply personal, and intimate, and it feels like such an honour that she lets me watch, and participate, showing a trust one only finds among forest-dwellers. And I don’t take notes. The rituals of the shaman are not to be broadcast wherever one feels like, so I will give only the most basic of impressions here.

Before any sacred shaman ceremony, juniper is burnt. The very first step is the connection with nature, and the juniper must be sought and found. Yenisei chose the juniper bush carefully, studying the texture of the berries and tasting a few, before deciding on the right bush in the right location. She put her juniper berry mixture into some oil in a small bowl, which she heated with a candle in her hand and walked the perimetre of a clearing she had found with longest view facing northwards.

She took the rest of the juniper needles and berries and boiled them into an immune-strengthening tea that helps heal the digestive system, pulling energy into the solar plexus. This juniper berry tea acts as a diuretic to help support the function of the liver and kidneys and expel toxins, energising the endocrine system. Pine needles from other pine trees can also be used for tea, or birch bark, and nettles.

She started softly tapping her shaman drum. The rhythm of a drum further energises and awakens the inner senses., and she had specified no shyness or holding back when transprted by the beat of one’s rhythm. Then came the hush. My Evenki shaman listened, especially for the sacred cuckoo bird, a symbol of good luck: hearing it could improve your spirit and feeling — if we let it, and we listened to the sounds of nature for strength.

Yenisei then spoke, softly. She said juniper pine needles were dropped nto the hands of those taking part in the shaman ceremony. The closed hands are passed over the incense or oil lamp a few times, and palms are opened to reveal the pine needles, which are ‘read.’ Being right, or wrong, was not important. What was important was to come to a consensus about possible meanings, and that in this concensus the healing may begin.

sounds of the drum

through the trees echoes tapped

shaman

her eyes lit by fire

the yurt by song

We sleep a while. Then from my bag I take out a packet of coffee made by an Italian friend, roasting the coffee on the charcoal dawn fire. I serve it to Yenisei, as she purrs herself awake and unwraps herself, naked, from the fur. In front of our shelter a beautful sight: a ring of green fire, the Aurora Borealis.

midwinter night a dark sky's lights dance in the wolf's eyes

northern lights the magic world speaks shaman inspired

木木木

I find it difficult in Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, and do not need to be in the capital of anywhere. Soon Yenisei will show me how to draw the birch sap from the trees, and I will literally taste the taiga. Today, though, Yenisei, my mysterious shaman has other duties to take care of, and so will make her own path alone, and let me make mine. We will part ways, my shaman and I, my guide, in more ways than one.

among the pine trees only one set of footprints- mine

And I write one more haiku, as I wach her become a small dot on a space between trees that is my horizon, walking lightly in the soft snow.

snowflakes and I on the path this morning even the trees are lonely

木木木

We often talk about taking the train, but of course, the train takes you, just like a dream does. Everytime one steps up the steps of a train carriage, one steps into a dream.

on the train deep into the soul of Siberia we share bread and reverie

My travelling ccompanions on the train eastwards through the forests are American. American travellers busy sewing or sticking flags of Canada to bags and shirts is legendary and has almost become de rigeur. It is rare, however, that being an American is alone an offense, and cetainly not in Siberia. All the same, one of the Americans across from me is busy plastering Canadian patches on bags and clothing, before practicing the accent with a lot of lilted ‛ays.’

“I am not sure all the matriachical train station guards in the small towns along the railroad tracks will spot the difference,’’ I say.

“Hey man, you gotta do what you gotta do,’’ says the young man. “Where’s Snowden anyway?’’ he adds, “I’d like to meet him, maybe even bring him in. There must be some kind of reward.’’

“Well, Canadians wouldn’t be saying that,’’ I said, “and you never know what kind of microphones they have on trains.’’

The American goes quiet in contemplation, a silence broken only by the pretty sight of his travelling colleague, Linda, slipping out of her flip flops and painting her toenails bright red.

“I’d do this in the bathroom normally,’’ she chuckles.

She was from Florida, and wasn’t exactly sure where the train was heading.

“All the way to Vladivostok,’’ I answered.

“And no cute guys,’’ she said.

She was good-looking in a disharming sort of way, with strawberry blonde hair, but as such did not stand out in the carriage, aside from her flip flops which set her apart from the high heels worn by the Russian women on the train. Inside the compartment it was too warm as usual in eastern Europe, but most passengers have kept their sweaters on regardless, as if judging the temperature by the view outside, where patches of snow flashed by under the fir trees.

Linda puts her heels on the seat beside me across from where she sat. “I could paint a little white maple leaf on,’’ she giggles.

At a small station her male colleague dashes off to restock on food, eschewing the fresh pine pastries being sold from baskets on the platform and buying instead overpriced stale buns in plastic packets from the buffet.

“They even asked if I was American, man,’’ he says, mournefully, returning.

“Don’t worry, only the mosquitoes weren’t fooled,’’ says Linda.

winter morning- the scenery paints itself into my imagination

木木木

I find out that about 150,000 inmates were imprisoned in more than 150 camps in the Perm region during the late 1940s. This was about a third of the working population of the region:

Perm-36 Labour Camp Schedule

Daily Schedule of a Gulag Prisoner Time Activity

6:00 AM Wake up call

6:30 AM Breakfast

7:00 AM Roll-call

7:30 AM1 ½ hour to march to forests, under guarded escort

6:00 PM1 ½ hour return march to camp

7:30 PM Dinner

8:00 PM After-dinner camp work duties (chop firewood, shovel snow, gardening, road repair, etc.)

11:00 PM Lights out

Much of the railroad has been laid by the bare hands of prisoners from labour camps, whose prison was Siberia itself. Gulags rarely needed fences or guard towers. Escapees were never going to get far. And the railroad still crushes the bones of those who perished building it.

Not everyone who laid down rail lines in Siberia was a prisoner. Many volunteered, and even stayed afterwards. Those people have a special inner peace about them. An understanding and deep respect of nature. They are people who prefer the numbing colds of winter to the pleasant summers, full of unforeseen dangers and reckless laziness.

Their sense of freedom is like nothing experienced elsewhere, and maybe all the more so because it is worked so hard for. Freedom in the land of gulags. It is an interesting thought. But for all its history of brutality and horror, Siberia is a vast, mystical land, a land of shamans who reach where the church or mosque doesn’t, and where temperature plunges so low that cement or metal foundations of buildings are useless next to the hardy wooden ones of the taiga, thus proving, once again that nature wins.

the further one travels

the more opens up

behind us

木木木

Two decades ago I drank a glass or two of homemade wine on a front porch, with a retired postman who’d walked home from Toliatti, on the Volga, from the non-descript decrepid town somewhere on a trainline in the middle of Russia.

Delivering the post had been his job — to the Hungarian eighth army who had invaded the Soviet Union in support of German troops, during the Second World War. And János delivered mail. He collected it from the train, or trucks and delivered it to the front line troops. This is a more important role than it first appears, for a man cannot fight without news that his loved ones are well.

It was love that made János walk. In the middle of the Second War and the middle of Toliatti, János delivered his mail and kept walking. He walked out of the town, along the trainline, then through the taiga, through the trees, over forested hills, across rivers and sleeping in the woods on the edges of villages. He walked, and walked, all the way back to Eastern Hungary, across the steppes then great plain. He walked under stars, raindrops and hailstones, from sunrises to sunsets, to the golden soils of the wine-growing town of Tokaj, back to his wife.

When he arrived back, he discovered his sister-in-law had been taken away, just taken off to the gulags of Siberia. So he turned around and walked again, attempting to find her, somewhere in the hugeness that was the Siberian taiga. He never found out what happened to her, but still now missed the Siberian forests, and especially the tribespeople that were its inhabitants. As I sat in Tokaj, Eastern Hungary, drinking his delicious homemade wine, which he kept in a wine cellar dug into the hillside, I noticed her picture, his sister-in-law, hanging on the wall; a beautiful young woman, the portrait soft in the evening glow.

János spoke no English but we understood each other very well. We shared much, János and I, much of the same soul, as we refilled or glasses, glancing at the portrait of the young woman who died in the gulag.

water drop on a branch from a cloud far above — tiny tree magnified

木木木

We are in Yekatinberg. Among the Ural mountains outside Yekatinberg’s eastern balconies in pine-scented forests, I think of János and his long monthly walk, passing through here years before. I am not a man of the pencil-line horizon, and I walk upwards, to the nearest peak, to compose my haiku.

high in mountain forests where even shadows don’t reach nature inspires through silence

Siberia is home to so many who live with nature. Winter, when traps are laid, and fresh water comes from holes dug deep in the ice, is discreetly turning towards spring. I always miss the hard, yet pristine environment of the winter months in the forest. Winter is a time when travel is often easier, across solid lakes and rivers and through frozen forests. It is a time when hospitality is offered, when bears are not around near villages, nor dangerous ticks and bothersome mosquitos in muddy parts of the forests.

Soon though, the bears will be out again, and hungry. It is not possible to chase them away when fishing. They will always come back, so must be shot. The leaves will shimmer in the breeze. It will be harder to follow animal tracks, and easier for animals to keep their distance from hunters. In Tyumen I will only see the fort from afar. I don’t mind. I feel at home among the birch and pine trees, and castles all seem seem to share such similar histories.

Tyumen fort shines at night not as much as the birch trees -such longing

I look over at Linda, now applying another colour of nailpolish. I imaged her taking a few barefoot steps with snow melting.

she walks in the snow until the grass at the edge of spring

But by the time I have scribbled my three lines and looked up again out of the train window it is snowing:

how thoughtless-

spring blossoms are late yet another haiku about snow

木木木

Stragglers are we. All for what? Sometimes, like now, its good to get off before the end of the journey, then the journey really never ends. Until then, the traps are set. The night is young. The snow is fresh. I’ve seen the tracks. The conditions are difficult for the elk right now. The snow is not strong enough to support elks, so they often get stuck, making easy meat for hungry wolves and awakening bears. And an elk, or caribou in north America, can provide food for a long time.

But the taiga used to be home to a much larger mammal: for four hundred years, thousands of mammoth tusks have been found in Siberia, about fifty thousand of them, from mammoths almost intact, with many organs perfectly frozen and stomachs half full of food — at times the blood still viscous due to the ‘anti-freeze’ components found in the blood, so called cryptoprotective properties, as in Arctic amphibians and fish.

It is quite easy to imagine that at some point in the future a mammoth is going to be cloned using that viscous blood. Large animals like the woolly mammoth could help stabilise the ecosystem in parts of Siberia.

But why so many mammoths ended up in Siberia remains a real mystery. Why did millions of the woolly mammoth move to the cold in Siberia, and how did they die so quickly after eating? Did a massive cold front move suddenly from the Arctic? That would be a climatic condition that does not exist today. If this is the case, it would have been very cold — freezing a mammoth suddenly and quickly is no easy thing at all. It would have taken temperatures as low as -100°C. The mystery is far from solved…

so many tusks found far in the Siberian tundra we step over ancients

木木木

On the Road of Bones you never travel alone. Here, they say, words themselves freeze, dropping in tiny fragments, tinkling like a wind chime. This is the notorious road built by the prisoners of the Gulags, the torture camps.The road stretches to Magadan on the Pacific ocean, from Yakutsk in Yakutia, a vast mysterious republic within the even larger emptiness of Siberia. A republic that would be the eighth largest country in the world if fully independent, with a population of just 1 Million.

In the distance

more forest

—and more distance

Here in Yakutia the temperature can plunge to -60°C, rendering the road a gamble that only those needing to escape a misdemeanor take, or those imbibed with a certain madness. But who would go in summer, when the mud and mosquitoes make escape almost impossible and madness almost sure?

sunrise- drumbeats of snow thud

from high branches

Yakutia means a chance to also explore the Buddhist nature that lies within each of us. I sit facing the last of the taiga, the last birch tree, and compose my haiku – peacefully, I thought.

pine needles make a comfortable rest oh! stinging ants!

And I return to the train. The Trans-Siberian, and stare at the early morning dawn.

trees touch sunlight something blossoms in me I ask no more of my forest

木木木

The train nears the Pacific coast, near to the land of volcanoes called Kamchatka, but on this journey we are only passing by, and our last stop will be Vladivostok. Vladivostok is the kind of city I would like to arrive to at dawn, and there has always been something fascinating about this last city on a train line that one could start in Portugal if one so desired, with a few waits on station platforms in-between.

In Vladivostok we will be near the North Korean border but also near to Japan. But for now I would be satisfied to sit on a wooden bench facing the Pacific. I think about Ese, photographer and writer who drove up from Bulgaria to the beautifully forested Carpathian mountains of Western Ukraine, to be my translator and travel companion at the start of my journey through Siberia. Together we hiked from village to village, tasting the homemade wine and raindrops, sleeping in bales of hay and cottages, walls covered with local hammered tin art.

While trekking a trail that wound up through pine forests on steep hills where small brooks and streams tumbled, and Carpathian chamois carefully took their quick morning drinks I sat against a tree trunk and edited a draft of her fascinating book, Butterfly Thy Name, a raw intimate journal covering her inner desires, while she joked with me about coming on the Trans-Siberian and adding another exotic chapter. Ese was disarmingly frank.

“I have an idea that a half Ukrainian, half Georgian lumberjack with fine equipment would be an exciting, erotic mix,’’ she declared, and smiled when I said “Vladivostok or bust!”

hello Ese I am here at last, facing the sea — without you

And then I know with rare certainty that when I arrive in Vladivostok I will already miss the trees of the Siberian taiga:

-her beauty

thousands of miles away

in the immediacy of my mind

木木木

Some notes on Shinrin-Joku, or Forest Bathing:

The history of forests is an alternative history. Yet looking back, we can see clear signs of how trees contributed to physical and mental heath. Tuberculosis, for example, was incurable only a smattering of decades ago. Up to the mid 20th century it was the norm to send people to the mountains in Switzerland, or somewhere where the air was fresh. But when those afflicted by the deadly lung disease went to the hills, where were they going, exactly? They were not going to the peaks, but in fact to the mountain forests. It was not specificaly mountain air that was healing, but perhaps more the forests, from the pines and fir trees, which grow on elevations from the sea up to 3960 metres on a mountainside. The Paimio Tuberculosis sanatorium, in Finland, was an example of this, where until the 1950s patients were wheeled out into the forest itself, which was more or less at sea level. Contrary to expectations, results also seemed to be magnified when the forest air trapped moisture.

Rehabilitation through interaction with forestry has long included psychological issues. When one is deep in a forest, on a path between tall trees all three potentially negative issues melt away. Among the many reasons to preserve our ancient forests, the emotional ones stand tall. Forests are the perfect landscape to cultivate what are called transcendent experiences—unforgettable moments, of attunement to that outside the self, and moments that are ultimately perceived as very important to each of us.

It was in 1982 that the Forest Agency of Japan unveiled shinrin-yoku, forest bathing, in the beautiful woods of Yakushima. Yakushima was chosen because it contains some of Japan’s most pristine forests, including those of select cedar trees that are over 1,000 years old.

The first findings of shinrin-yoku testing showed lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in subjects after forest walks, compared with those who took laboratory walks. It was the first hint that a walk in a forest might not be the same as a walk in a different environmental setting.

We know now that time within forests reduces psychological stress, depressive symptoms, and hostility, while at the same time improving sleep and increasing both vigor and a feeling of liveliness, and lowering blood pressure and pulse rate. Studies also show increased heart rate variability, which is a good thing because it means the circulatory system can to respond well to stress.

Research has shown that the emotions of pleasure and happiness are elevated with an increase in tree density. The bigger and denser the trees, the higher the scenic beauty scores—up to a point. Arguably the composition of the air intake, the serenity and at times majesty or beauty of the surroundings will all have a role to play. Forest bathing; spending time in forests, increases ability to focus.

It takes only twenty minutes of shinrin-yoku to alter cerebral blood flow to a state of relaxation and opyomose hemoglobin (as found in red blood cells). Stress hormones that can compromise immune defense are dramatically reduced. This is vital: activities of antiviral white blood natural killer cells are suppressed by stress hormones.

Since forest bathing can lower stress hormone production and elevate mood states, it is not surprising that it can also influence immune system strength, specifically increases in the number of white blood natural killer cells, increases in the functional activity of these antiviral cells and increases in the amount of intracellular anticancer proteins. In addition, the level of the hormone serum adiponectin is also increased. When this hormone is present in low concentrations it is linked with obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic syndrome, among other bodily disorders. These changes can be noted at a significant level for a full week after some time in a forest.

Natural chemicals secreted by evergreen trees, collectively known as phytoncide, such as a-pinene and limonene, have also been associated with improvements in the activity of our frontline immune system. Measurements of the amount of phytoncides in the air during studies have correlated the content to improvements in immune functioning. In the fresh forest air we breathe in the phytoncides. The trees give off these chemicals to protect themselves from insects. Phytoncides have antibacterial and antifungal qualities which help the evergreen trees and plants fight disease. When we take in these chemicals, our bodies respond by increasing the number and activity of a type of white blood cell natural killer cells. Increased activity from these important calls from three-day, two-night forest bathing trip lasts for more than thirty days.

Spending time in forests gives the cognitive portion of our brain a break, allowing us to focus better and renew our ability to be calm. Patients recover from surgery faster and better when they have a view of trees, and had fewer postsurgical complications compared to those who had no view or a view of a cement wall. The use of pain medications is significantly lower than that of rooms with no plants; patients have lower blood pressure and heart rate, and rated their pain to be much lower. Patients who have plants in their rooms also have comparatively higher energy levels, more positive thoughts, and lower levels of anxiety.

Since a view of nature or a few potted plants can influence subjective and objective measures of stress, and maybe get us out of the hospital faster, it seems likely that nature can keep us out of the infirmary to begin with. The first indication that this might be the case was examination of the annual sick records of the State Prison of Southern Michigan, which highlighted a glaring difference in health-care utilisation based on prison cell location. Those inmates housed in the cells facing outside to a view of forests had far fewer visits to the medical division than did those inmates housed with a view of a concrete yard.

Research in Japan showed that greening select high school classrooms with potted plants for a four-month trial period significantly reduced visits to the infirmary compared with age-matched students attending classes without the visible plants.

But forests need not be merely admired. Forest gardening is historically the prime source of gardening in tropical regions and the most traditional of land use forms. It is also probably the most resilient of agroecosystems, and are the most common form of land use in Kerala, in southern India. They are also common in Nepal, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Mexico and Java, and have been shown to be a significant source of income and food security for local populations. These gardens exemplify polyculture, in layers, building a woodland habitat, and conserve much crop genetic diversity and heirloom plants that are not found in monocultures.

Kerala has three and a half million forest gardens. Even the smallest forest garden can hold over twenty coconut palms, over ten cloves, over fifty banana and pineapple trees and thirty pepper vines, with additional fodder.

In Nepal, 70% of households have home gardens of an area 2–11% of the total land holdings, cultivated with a mixture of annual and perennial plants that can be harvested on a daily or seasonal basis. Biodiversity that has an immediate value is maintained in home gardens, as women and children have easy access to preferred food, and for this reason alone we should promote home gardens as a key element for a healthy way of life.

A natural forest is divided into seven distinct layers:

a ‘canopy’ layer

a ‘low-tree’ layer of smaller nut and fruit trees

a ‘shrub layer’ of fruit bushes

a ‘herbaceous layer’ of perennial vegetables and herbs

a ‘ground cover’ layer of edible plants

a ‘rhizosphere’ of plants grown for their roots and tubers

a ‘vertical layer’ of vines and climbers.

Forest Gardens are ideal projects for open spaces such as industrial wastelands, where trees can be planted, where even in heavily built up areas, new ‘city forests’ could contain perennial vegetables with little intervention.

At some stage forest gardening leads to forest farming, combining trees with crops or livestock, or both, on the same piece of land. Products typically fit into the following categories: edible, medicinal and dietary supplements, floral or decorative, or specialty wood-based products. Toyohiko Kagawa, who began forest farming in Japan during the 1930s, persuaded many of Japan’s farmers to plant fodder trees to conserve soil, supply food and feed animals. Then World War II disrupted communication and slowed his advances in forest farming, unfortunately changing the course of agriculture again.

Researchers in Japan and South Korea are re-establishing that connection again, with their scientific advances in the study of forest bathing. Perhaps one of the greatest benefits I personally discovered about shinrin-yoku, that stays with me, is the way it starts, and deepens long enduring friendships.

how many plants

Can I fit into

one haiku-

木木木

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