What we feel when we play in the woods

I've been wondering where my messiness comes from. It’s a quality that I have tried to hide, a part of me that receives a lot of external pressure to change. And I've tried, to little avail, and usually a bit of shame as my living space descends further into chaos.I’m starting to think a bit differently on this. I’m starting to think that if we care for, and intentionalize, our clutter, a creative environment has the opportunity to emerge. Patterns arise, the shape of the spaces becomes apparent, a kind of clarity when the nook you fit into is surrounded. 

I’ve been in Texas for about a month, living in my childhood bedroom, discovering the habits and patterns that seep into me from the walls. Prior to being here, I was outside for practically the whole day (and night) for a period of roughly four months, and I needed a strategy to help alleviate the intensity of the transition back indoors. I began to spend a lot of time in the woods near my house, collecting objects and bringing them into my room; bringing the landscape into the home. This was a wonderful process, and a return to childhood in a sense. I spent a fair bit of time outside as a kid, but my transition to “someone who REALLY spends a lot of time outside” only occurred recently. It’s something that for a little while I have wished was nurtured in my childhood, to have had more childish adventures alone in the woods when I was, well, a child. But now is a good time for that as well. 

This is to say that, what we feel when we play in the woods is… well, it’s hard to pinpoint. The woods are shifting, breathing, relaxing, and contracting. In the woods, you can’t take a step without being a part of change, a squirrel scurries up a tree out of danger, the pine needles crunch beneath your boots, a drop of water taps your forehead. In the woods, the opportunity to witness time slowly bouncing along is at your feet, in that forward momentum there is an incredible amount of movement in the external, as well as the internal, world. What we feel when we play in the woods is, I suppose, what we are.