On the hottest day England has known, I try to follow one of the springs to its source in the woods, thinking the shade and cool water will be soothing.
I’m wrong. The humidity under the canopy is almost unbearable, the saturated ground sucky, the vegetation impenetrable. We spend so much of our lives in spaces designed for humans, it’s instructive to be reminded now and then how easily nature can keep us out, turn us back. Despite our felling and our fences, our concrete and cultivation, despite parcels of data relayed to our pockets by satellite, we’re not really in charge. I squirm and scramble and sweat, am scratched, stung, mired. I lose my sunglasses, am lucky to find them again. The wood swallows me effortlessly.
