Return to My Trees , livre ebook

Calon - Matthew Yeomans

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146 pages

English

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Description

When and how did we humans lose our connection with nature – and how do we find it again?

Matthew Yeomans seeks to answer these questions as he walks more than 300 miles through the ancient and modern forests of Wales, losing himself in their stories (and on the odd unexpected diversion, too).

Return to My Trees weaves together history and folklore with tales of industrial progress and decay. On his journey, he visits landmarks that once were home to ancient Druids, early Celtic saints, Norman Lords and the great mining communities that reshaped Wales. He becomes immersed in the woodlands that inspired the country’s great legends. At one point he even stumbles upon a herd of television-watching cows.

As Yeomans walks, he reflects on these woods’ uncertain future, his own relationship with nature and the global problems we need to solve if humans are to truly make peace with the natural world. from tree-planting in ways that are actually beneficial to the environment and local communities to embedding the value of nature into our financial and economic systems.

The result is a fascinating and funny adventure that offers insight into the past, present and future of Wales’s woodlands and shows what the rest of the world can learn from them.

Sujets

Travel

Great Britain

Wales

Europe

Informations

Publié par	Calon
Date de parution	15 septembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781915279163
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	5 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Matthew Yeomans, 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to Calon, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-91527-914-9
eISBN: 978-1-915279-16-3
The right of Matthew Yeomans to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the funding support of the Books Council of Wales in publication of this book.
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
The publisher acknowledges the financial support of the Books Council of Wales
For Mum and Al
There is a phrase in the Welsh language, dod yn l at fy nghoed that means to return to a balanced state of mind . Its literal translation is, rather beautifully, to return to my trees .
Contents
Introduction
PART ONE The Fall of the Trees
CHAPTER 1 The Wisdom of the Druids
CHAPTER 2 The Story of the Saints
CHAPTER 3 The Attack on the Forests
CHAPTER 4 A New Forest Economy
CHAPTER 5 The Original Black Gold
CHAPTER 6 Stranded Assets
PART TWO The Power of the Trees
CHAPTER 7 Reconnecting through Community
CHAPTER 8 The Science of the Trees
CHAPTER 9 In the Footsteps of the Welsh Robin Hood
CHAPTER 10 The Stuff of Legend
CHAPTER 11 Environmentalism s Romantic Past
PART THREE The Rise of the Trees
CHAPTER 12 A National Forest is Born
CHAPTER 13 The Rights of Trees
CHAPTER 14 Forest Politics
CHAPTER 15 The Business of Nature
CHAPTER 16 Sheep and Trees
CHAPTER 17 Making Peace with Nature

A Note on Sourcing
Acknowledgements
Introduction
H ere s when I first knew I had to write a book about trees. It was a warm, Friday afternoon in April 2020. I had walked five miles through the neighbourhoods of Cardiff in Wales and had reached the sprawling Pentrebane housing estate on the western fringe of the city. There, bizarrely, I discovered a public footpath that led into a large woodland.
I could see the path snaked up to a high ridge then disappeared in the trees. I had walked many parts of Cardiff but never seen this wooded route before. I was both exhilarated and a little scared at the prospect of entering this space. It would have been easy to turn back and walk the city streets I knew so well but I didn t. I stepped through the threshold and into the woods.
A few minutes before I had been walking in a busy housing estate. Now I was alone amongst the trees - hundreds of them standing side by side in a serene coexistence. Clumps of wild garlic grew on the sides of the ridge and shafts of sunlight bespeckled the ground where I walked. Right there and then in Pentrebane Woods, the power of trees and the natural world hit me. The beauty of this peaceful place and its sense of authority overwhelmed me - it seemed to hold a superiority over the messy city life I had left behind.
I walked back home almost in a trance, mesmerised by the sense of calm I d felt in the woods. It was addictive and I knew I wanted more.
When lockdown started in late March 2020 daily life froze and my family, along with everyone else in the UK, were forced to stay at home for nearly three months - only allowed out to do essential food and medicine shopping and for one period of exercise each day.
We all adapted in our own ways. My wife hunkered down into her hobbies with an application I could only marvel at. First, she went on a crocheting binge. Huge, fluffy packages of wool would arrive by courier to be transformed within hours (or so it felt like) into blankets, sweaters and ponchos. Then she was introduced by a friend to sourdough baking. Before long we were feasting on sourdough bread, focaccia, pizza and even naan.
My 14-year-old daughter coped by binge watching Netflix and Amazon - who knew they d even made 15 series of Grey s Anatomy ? My 17-year-old son, meanwhile, did what he always did - playing video games online with friends. Aside from not going to school, his life seemed to carry on pretty much as normal!
I didn t take to lockdown as easily. I was the only one of the family who had worked from home before the pandemic hit. But now that I had to stay at home I was going stir-crazy. Worse still, the bouts of anxiety that I had been fighting for the past few years now came daily.
I distinctly remember when I first became aware that I was struggling with anxiety. It was a few years before in San Diego in a packed auditorium at a big corporate sustainability conference. I was due to run a workshop the next day for executives from some of the world s biggest brands. It should have been exciting - the perfect opportunity to build interest in a new online platform I had created. Except I felt like a fraud.
For the past 10 years I d worked as a sustainability journalist and writer. I understood as well as anyone the issues that all these companies attending the conference needed to address. But, deep down, if I m being honest, I didn t believe in myself enough as an entrepreneur to build and run the business I had started. I felt both like an outsider and an imposter.
As I sat in the audience, I felt myself tensing up, my breathing becoming laboured. I was overwhelmed with a sense of being trapped. I snuck out of the auditorium and headed straight back to my hotel room. Hours later, I realised that I had strained all my stomach muscles through stress.
Once I returned home, things seemed to return to normal - or so I thought. In hindsight, the periodic waves of worry, the underlying and persistent sense of dread about everything and yet nothing should have been a wake-up call. That came a few months later.
It was over really before it had begun - a random act of road rage over the right of way on my own street in Cardiff with an aggressive taxi driver who, after screaming at me from his cab, jumped out, ran at my car and tried to grab me by the throat through the driver window. It was farcical to be honest. With a few choice words I sent him cursing back to his taxi. But the damage was done. When I got home, I sat down and realised I was shaking uncontrollably. My ears were ringing, my heart was racing, and I felt frozen, locked in place by fear.
That s when I did something I d been promising to do for months - I called my doctor. He called me in straight away. I was having a panic attack he told me. He suggested counselling and gave me prescription for beta blockers that would slow my heart rate and minimise anxiety.
Over the next six months, I took a couple of pills but, for me personally, I didn t really like the idea of being dependent on a drug - even one as benign as beta blockers. Instead, I turned to exercise, making my gym a second home and trusting the endorphin buzz of working out to counter my anxious feelings.
When Covid hit, my gym shut, and I had to find another option. Outside the weather was unseasonably warm and dry for early April so I decided to exercise and practise yoga in the garden. That would be just the peaceful, centring activity my body and brain required. But each time I settled onto my purple mat and tried to meditate my anxious thoughts away, noises from the neighbourhood, packed full of other families also confined to their gardens, ate into my brain. I tried playing music through my headphones but still I couldn t block out the laughing, barbecuing and general good-natured cacophony of people trying to the make the most of what was a very bad time.
The final straw happened one exceptionally warm afternoon when I was trying to work on my yogic breathing in the garden only to be soaked by next door s kids dive-bombing into their paddling pool. Outwardly, I laughed about it but deep down I felt desperate. There was only one solution. I had to escape.
So that s when I started walking - short distances at first around my neighbourhood and the local parks in Cardiff - but then longer meandering explorations of the city. Wherever I went - whether it be the hidden trails of Bute Park by Cardiff Castle, the tightly packed terraced streets of Cathays and Grangetown, the cycle route down to the Bay or the Taff Trail out to Castell Coch, the magical 19th-century Gothic Revival folly on the northern edge of the city - the same process would take place. I would start out anxious but, within 10 minutes of setting a steady pace, I would fall into a rhythm of walking, not thinking. As I did, I relaxed and my breathing (and the pounding in my chest that at home was so loud I could hear it as I tried to work) calmed. Soon I was walking seven or more miles every day and I was counting down the hours until I could start out on the next adventure.
I wasn t alone. It was remarkable just how many people had committed to walking on a daily basis. The parks were packed and even the local golf courses, normally reserved for the enjoyment of a privileged few, had been transformed into public spaces by families eager to embrace the outdoors. A national walking culture seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere.
Some days I had a plan for where I was headed. Other times I just put one foot in front of the other and went. Invariably I walked to music - specifically Spotify playlists compiled by myself and a group of old university friends. We would meet once a