Though I’ve become accustomed to living in the city, especially after all these years I miss the sound of natural silence. That sound that you get when you lay out in the field, and it’s just the wind and the animals speaking around you. It’s hard to find that here, amidst the motors and music and sirens. And I suppose that makes me yearn for it more.

Walking a trail amongst the trees, so thick that the forest will threaten to swallow me if I veer off in the wrong direction. Rain drips from where it accumulates on the edge of leaves, slowly rolled into large drops from the gentle showers above the canopy. I can hear the rain and my boots across the bracken, and sometimes the flutter of a bird. I have a backpack on, and it has an assortment of things that I think constitutes a survival pack—which for me, at fifteen, was really just pens and paper, scissors, twine, a mismatched first-aid kit and a jumper. And probably a pack of tissues as well. It doubled as my “runaway” bag, so make of that what you will. I loved to take pictures or sketch plants—though I had neither a camera usually nor any confidence in my art—and would always get as close to the edges of creeks as I possibly could. I’ll touch things and smell things and sometimes will just stare at how beautiful parts of the forest is, all the while trying not to slip on anything because my boots are really just thick, cheap sneakers. I pull my jumper out and put it on, the breathing of warmth into me making me all the more comfortable and safe. The flecks of water that dry on my skin in my clothes give a strange refreshing sensation, and I look forward to heating up.

Life really can feel peaceful and magical out there, where it’s just the sounds of the most natural layer of life breathing around you. One day, I just want a place of my own like this, where I can go and read and write, and just be enveloped in that feeling.