"When I am alone in a forest, even briefly, even within earshot of my friends ahead, I feel something settle in me that does not settle anywhere else. It is like recognition, as if some part of me is constitutionally forest-shaped and is only at ease when surrounded by the things it was apparently designed for. I am aware that this is probably a psychological artefact of spending too much time in modern environments and investing the natural world with a romance it does not reciprocate. The forest does not care that I am here. The forest does not care about anything. But the indifference of trees is, I find, much more restful than the indifference of institutions."

This or nothing