There was a large patch of land that I used to enjoy when I visited my elder sister and her partner. It was lush forest where everything was a pinwheel of greens and browns with a variety of other little colours thrown in. It wasn’t the dry kind of forest but the damp kind, where you can tell you’re in Australia but it’s almost rainforest even though you’re not very high up on the coast. I would walk in and sit down and just pretend there was nothing else around me in terms of human structure. I was in my own world and I could be who or whatever I wanted to be for a moment. I liked the way everything lived meshed into one another, a scatter of different plants all trying to live cohesively with on another. Things like vines snaking up trees and little flowers popping up through the layers of grass or moss climbing all over rocks. There was something comorting about it. It was quiet and peaceful and I only remember it with fondness, especially when it was chilly and there was a drizzle of rain. I would rug up and take a backpack filled with an assortment of things and just want around. I liked hiding in the forest, just from people, I never felt alone, I just preferred the company of nature to that of humans, particularly during this time of my childhood. Everything just seemed right in the world for a while when I was out there. Out of the sun and lost in a damp world that expanded as far as I could see, a cosy little place where my thoughts and words were my own and it felt like I was in my own little pocket world. I haven’t been back to that land in about six or seven years, and it’s hard to find somewhere like that living in the city.