We walked this morning, before the sun burst into flames, through an Arboretum. It’s a wide expanse of trees, divided into countries. Today we moved from Africa to Asia. These trees, roughly 2,600 of them, were planted between 1959 to 1971, an inspirational Green Lung beside the River Berg in Paarl. As you can imagine, the trees in Asia are very different to the Indigenous ones in Africa. Long and wildy limbs with pompoms of bright green needles and fir cones large enough to knock you out, were you to be directly beneath as one fell. The shade is glorious, a softening for walkers and hot dogs, and the tracks wind on for miles, red sand, buffalo grass, benches for a sit down, bins everywhere and no rubbish. There is even the occasional security guard on his beat. It’s completely safe, unlike other such areas where big trees and bush proffer many hiding places. We wandered beneath the massive sequoias and gums, so old and so fat in the girth as to look as if they will last forever. I swear I saw clouds in the top of one of these giants on another day, one with clouds. Birds abound, skittering through branches, oblivious to us in their busy hunt for food. Sunbirds, sugar birds, such delicious names. Butterflies too, big and rainbowed . Everyone says hallo in passing. This place is a place within which to breathe and to ponder. The river, depending on rain, is either sluggish and silent or tinkling like timpany over huge rocks, white and sunlit.

Under the myriad Japanese oaks lie a gazillion acorns. Not small ones, the usual size, but easily an inch long, and just as we walked beneath the far-spreading bough, the wind luffed. It rained acorns. Pinging down, they made us ‘ouch’ and lift our feet in escape. We stood in safety to watch the fall until the whole wide circle of shade became a thick carpet of hopeful seeds. So random and so impactful and we laughed and thought of Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet and the others in the 100 acre wood. It was that magical. Walking back over acorns I thought of all the ground my feet have walked for 70 odd years. Through thixotropic mud, over pine needles and fallen leaves, over memories, rocks and mistakes, along dusty tracks and busy roads, over pavements and concrete, bad thoughts and poor decisions. Always moving on, no matter the journey, no matter the challenge ahead.

It’s what we do, those of us who decide to keep moving on and I was never going to sit for long. What inspires me, being among those trees, any trees, is that they have no care for our slightly ridiculous rush towards all the things which give us no nourishment long term. The way trees work is silent and beneficent, gifting shade, nutrition, food, homes, protection, love. We can only breathe because they do.

We can learn from that.