A journalist’s life is full of surprises. The difference is that we’ve voluntarily chosen to get ourselves into trouble. To explain what it feels like inside a forest, I had to arm myself with my notebook and camera and venture into the trees far from the big city. All sorts of dangers were lurking.
The key to survival lies, follow me closely here, in surviving. On this, virtually all scholars agree.
Summer is the perfect time for forest bathing, which is what they call being an idiot and taking a walk in the woods these days.
Trees
The first thing that strikes anyone entering the forest is the existence of trees. It’s a surprising discovery, because I’m almost certain that none of them were there a hundred years ago. It’s possible that someone planted them, or that some little bird scattered seeds to create a forest. Nature has its own processes, and almost all of them are beyond human logic. That explains why I’ve been walking through a forest full of live animals for ten minutes and there isn’t a single bar where I can have them fried and washed down with a beer. The forest is badly designed. Big hospitality corporations keep putting service areas with cafés, shops, and showers along the highways, when what we really need is for them to be in the middle of the woods. It’s incredible that nobody notices.
By the way, trees have names. Some are called oaks, others might be eucalyptus, and the ones that spit out sea urchins, I think, are called chestnut trees. The rest are just trees, but if you want to impress your friends, tell them you spotted a birch.
Survival
The first man to experience survival was Pete Paleopolis, a Greek ahead of his time — very much so, since he lived several million years before Varoufakis was born. Like almost all cavemen, he lived in the mountains. Only the wealthiest could afford to live on the coast. Many of them had built huts high up in the trees. Perhaps that’s why we know today that all sleepwalking cavemen died before reaching adulthood.
Paleopolis thoroughly enjoyed his walks in the countryside, especially because he didn’t know that a little farther north there were movie theaters selling enormous tubs of popcorn. On one of his walks, he got lost and never made it back home. We know about him because he wrote everything down on his iPad, which was found next to mammoth bones. We assume, then, that either Paleopolis fed on mammoths, or a mammoth ate Paleopolis. Even though he was the first to document his commitment to extreme adventure, we can’t be sure his endeavor was exactly a success. When archaeologists found Paleopolis thousands of years later, he looked awful.
The key to survival lies, follow me closely here, in surviving. On this, virtually all scholars agree. To live, we need food and drink, although not necessarily in the same proportions. The rest of your basic needs aren’t a problem because they’re very cheap in the jungle.
Eating is easy as long as you know how to tell what’s edible from what isn’t. In the wilderness, everything that looks good is poisonous, and anything that looks bad probably is too. On the other hand, you can eat pears, blackberries, some berries, and practically any yogurt you find, as long as it’s been refrigerated. Pear trees aren’t easy to find, and birds usually eat the berries before you do, but that allows you to kill an ox and eat it roasted without feeling the slightest bit guilty, since no one can deny that this time you really did try to eat healthy.
Everything Stings
On my walk through the woods this morning, while researching this article, the first law of the forest was confirmed once again: everything that doesn’t prick, stings. If you find something that neither pricks nor stings, run, because that means it bites. The bites of forest animals are nothing like the funny little scratches you get from household pests. Bears, for example, don’t usually bite as often as they do in cartoons, but if you run into one and it finds you offensive — for example, if you forgot to shower and you stink — its attack will almost certainly be fatal. The forest is not governed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and most predators wipe their whiskers with the Geneva Convention. Human beings are met with hostility from the moment they set foot among the trees. You start wondering what all those mosquitoes feed on when you’re not out walking in the woods.
Leisure Activities
Without a doubt, the most fun I’ve ever had in the woods is archery. Naturally, I practice it from more than ten yards away, with an apple balanced on the head of my friend Bob, to whom I dedicate these lines as a posthumous tribute. He went down on the second arrow. Many others have followed, although my aim keeps improving. The previous time I was shooting in the woods, with Larry holding the apple on his head, I only sliced off his ear. Afterwards we glued it back on with pine resin because that’s another advantage of the forest: it’s full of natural remedies. If you’ve never been, let me tell you it’s like one enormous herbal shop. Just don’t sit around waiting for the saleswoman to emerge from the bushes. There isn’t one — I assume they’ve all been swallowed by bears — and if there is, she probably won’t know where anything is. People graduate from college these days terribly underprepared, even for something as simple as running an herb shop in a place where herbs are literally everywhere.
In short, despite a few minor disappointments, my experience has been extremely satisfying. Forest bathing is the perfect pastime for the urban vacationer. Not only because of the recreational activities, but because after spending fifteen days camping among the pines, you’ll jump for joy when you get home to a hot shower, a refrigerator, and a bed where the only bug is you — and, presumably, you don’t bite.
READ MORE from Itxu Diaz:
The New Reconquista: World Champions — and Something More
Food Selfies: The Great Summer Show-Off
The West Is a Superior Civilization (And I Don’t Care If That Offends You)
