I Hugged a Tree
I hugged a tree last week. No, really, actually. I’m not using it as a metaphor for being environmental - for once in the series of Niamh’s nattering career, I am being shockingly literal. I hugged a tree last week, fingers to bark, arms to trunk, limbs around limbs. And now I’m left trying to answer the question: why?
It has been a chaotic year here at Niamh HQ. I’m heading into my third house move in three months. I’m working two temporary jobs and currently looking for lucky number three. No matter where I stand, it feels like the sand is shifting beneath my feet, which is frankly concerning because I’m only ever stood on concrete pavements. I figured I would try doing what tends to calm me in moments of chaos, so I laced up my hiking boots and went for a walk in the woods.
In 2020, like so many of us, I was stuck at home and crawling up the walls. I had done the same daily government-mandated stomp around the block for weeks and months. I needed something to broaden my horizons, literally, so one day I just kept walking. Past the block where I lived, through the park, over the main road, and there I found the path into the woods. Acres of woodland, open and expansive and empty, apart from a few dog walkers. The quiet vastness enveloped me. What started as a half hour ramble became an hour, then ninety minutes of gentle, solitary bliss. As the lockdowns eased I kept walking, and I found my mind eased too. But as the world crept back in, I got busy, and, like so many other positive gentle activities when times are hectic, walking was the first thing to go.
Flash to five years later, and I can’t remember when I last did this. My life has been too full of studying and working and moving house and teaching children dance to get up and get out. Wake up and smell the tree mulch. As much as I may have neglected them, the woods are still there for me, and I still get that same sense of glorious peace pretty instantaneously. And then my arms are around a trunk! Blissful.
In her book Losing Eden, Lucy Jones explores the science behind why nature is so vital for our minds. Reading it felt like suddenly everything made sense. Evolutionarily humans are primed to take comfort in areas that combine open space and protective canopies, my woods being a prime example. There is bacteria in soil which has been proven to relax an inflamed immune system. Even the fact that trees are made up of fractal patterns helps to calm beta brain waves, as human eyes (also made of fractals) find them inherently calming. It’s no wonder actually that in Japan they prescribe ‘forest bathing’ for a variety of health conditions, including chronic stress.
I can’t promise that I will be able to walk in the woods every day, especially with this latest house move taking me to the big bright lights of London. But I do know that standing on that rustling carpet of leaves is the first time I’ve felt on solid ground for quite some time and, as silly as it sounds, hugging that tree felt like hugging a friend. If I was ever to give you homework from a natter (don’t worry I won’t be handing out algebra worksheets in future) it would be this: if you can, when you can, go outside and find a tree. Hold it, hug it, as tight as you can.
Niamh Duncan is an author, theatre maker and knitter living in Norwich, England. Having graduated from the University of East Anglia with a first-class degree in creative writing, she is now engaged in answering life’s big questions, namely how do you pay your rent with a degree in creative writing. In her spare time Niamh loves drinking tea and cocktails (usually not simultaneously) and going for long rambling walks.