Having spent a lot of the summer away from home, things have moved on without me, and the impossibility of being everywhere to see everything weighs heavy – a familiar, low-key fear of missing out. I decide to devote an entire morning to walking, regardless of gusty winds and persistent rain.
If I used a tracking app, my route would seem a strange one: I zigzag, stop and start, stride out, then dawdle. But an aimless wander gradually becomes a tour of old friends. I offer a few words to the grandest oak on the Castle Howard estate (though not the oldest), then pause at a trackless spot in the wood where once, in a bout of post-Brexit despair, I encountered a horned forest god who reminded me that I still belonged. He lives there still, but invisibly now.
