It was my first time, and my feelings had uncanny similarities with that other, more

famous shift from virginity to knowing and being known.

There was the thrill of finding out what this being – this thing I was suddenly so very

passionate about – could mean for me. I was ready to open up, curious to explore

how it would feel in my own body. Plus this: I had to trust the ‘other’ in this

relationship. Trust it might be able to care for me as I cared for it. To hold, even

without much confidence, the bright hope of reciprocity.

The Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides (ANFT)

During my hour and a half drive north to our meeting place, the skeptic chattered

soberly below the excited anticipation of the newbie. “It might not turn out to be all it’s

cracked up to be.”

It wasn’t a fumbling, accidental sort of loss of virginity – I had signed up for it in

advance, with a trained Nature and Forest Therapy Guide – but I still had no idea

what was coming.

I knew only this: I’d heard an interview, on the Embodiment podcast, with Amos

Clifford founder of the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides. I knew

being in the bush had inscrutable effects on my body, mind and spirit – irrational joy,

odd feelings of connection, profound quietude – and I knew whatever this forest

therapy thing was, I wanted to try it. And maybe I wanted to stick with it build a

relationship with it.

Pulling into the carpark I was almost giddy. How would it feel? How would it change

me? Don’t we all want to be changed by consummation with an idealized ‘other?’ In

my case it wasn’t a person, mission or faith but the enormous entity my culture

taught me was very much ‘other’ than we humans: nature.

Slowing down

Fiona McCowan is a horticulturist, a permaculturist and an energy healer but what

she mostly brought to our walk was warmth and confidence. This was not a walk to

identify species or deliver healing, the only expertise she had on show that day was

an intuitive inclusiveness that put her three participants at ease.

While we moved to the trail head, Fiona explained the walk was about 800 metres

down to Little Beach where we would sit and have tea before returning on the same

track to the cars. She would offer invitations that we could interpret any way we liked

and then, at the end of each 15 or 20 minute period, she’d call us together with the

sound of a crow. There was a composting toilet at the camp site by the beach. That

was the housekeeping done.

We stopped in a clearing just inside the gate that allows the ranger’s vehicles in to

the national park. Fiona invited us to look around, then to close our eyes and hear

and taste and smell. She asked us to take note of our breathing. My mind went into

critic mode. “Hmmm, I’m not sure I would do it that way.” “I’d have a proper breathing

exercise . . .” Without understanding or allowing her to guide me, my mind leapt right

into judging and chattering and turning my nervous uncertainty into controlling

blather.

“Hold your hands out. Can you feel them holding the air?” she said. “What would it

feel like if the air was holding your hands?” That’s weird. That’s cool. Yes, this air

around me has a sort of subtle substance . . . and once I switched into feeling mode,

my judging mind took a break. I had arrived.

With eyes closed, we turned around slowly, feeling into our hearts and stopping

when we felt guided to. When Fiona gave the invitation to open our eyes I saw a

dancing leaf – a eucalypt leaf dangling from an unseen spiderweb, spinning in

space. A joyful omen. We shared what we were noticing. I mentioned the leaf.

We set off on the track, slowly, silently, just noticing what was in motion around us.

Fiona asked us to stay behind her and she walked at a snail’s pace. After about 15

minutes she called us together again, to say a few words or not, there was no

pressure and, I felt, no judgment. Even from me.

Invitations to engage with nature

Fiona invited us to befriend a tree. I wandered up a hill and found two huge straight

gums, twin sentinels I imagined as a threshold for me to walk through and begin my

forest guiding journey in earnest. I chanted a little, gave thanks, and after my

impromptu, private initiation, I saw at my feet a scroll of scribbly bark. I couldn’t see a

scribbly gum – my favourite tree - anywhere nearby. I felt it had been tossed there as

a gift. The promise of a graduation scroll. I still have it.

We moved through imaginary invitations, engaging with the water in the stream by

the track, and the rocks at the beach. Our last exercise was to make an offering from

treasures collected while beach combing. I found a fishing lure with crystalline eyes

and opalescent paint – a shrewd decoy and perfect replica of a tiny fish. I found

equally tiny shells and made a mandala of miniscule treasures – gratitude for all the

fish I have eaten in the past, and praise for the preciousness of the subtle, the small

and the quiet.

Someone had built a rough, driftwood shelter on the beach. Inside it, Fiona laid out a

sarong with a tea set, some fruit, nuts and chocolate. She made tea from clover

collected on the walk and we sat under the shelter as it leaked water on us while a

squall of rain passed over. The drips on my forehead felt like a blessing.

Grief, gratitude and a goal

In our final sharing circle, Bonnie talked about the grief she’d felt on our walk – the

sound of a cockatoo had reminded her of her father, and the bird returned to her

awareness many times as we walked. The offering she made on the beach was for

her father. I had barely noticed the cockatoo. But it wasn’t there for me.

Kathy had found an answer to a question she’d been pondering for months – what to

call her new business. Talking with a tree, the perfect name came to mind. On this

seemingly simple decision hung her logo, website, marketing plan . . . all the

necessary accoutrement of a new venture and she was thrilled to have found it.

I found what I wanted to be when I grow up: a forest therapy guide. Grief, gratitude

and a goal. We all found something uniquely valuable wandering around in what I’ve

come to know as the tirelessly surprising, awesomely engaging more-than-human

world.

Maybe losing my virginity is not, in the end, the right metaphor. Perhaps it was more

like baptism, a rite of passage. But like that first loss of virginity, it was the very

beginning of a fundamental change in my life. It led to a birth and a new relationship

that reverberates through every one of my days.