Solastalgia

There’s a place in my local woods that is my secret sanctuary. I stumbled on it shortly after my dad died, when I was unwell and dazed. Wrapped up in my thoughts and not paying attention I lost the path and wandered down a badger track. Trying to cut back to the main path I squeezed through a holly thicket and found a secret clearing. Like a fairy tale, it appeared just when I needed it, opened up to me and invited me to sit.  Since then, I find myself there whenever I’ve got stuff to work out, when I need to be soothed and calmed. I feed the birds, listen to the trees in the wind, lean against an old oak and my troubles become a bit lighter.

Earlier this year, this patch of woodland was put up for sale. Now there are Private No Entry signs. At first I was panicked. This clearing in the woods has shaped who I am. I feel a stronger sense of belonging here than anywhere else. Here, I know where to find shelter when the wind is fierce and where the squirrels like to stache their acorns. I know the local bird population, who tell me with their silence when a bird of prey is about to soar overhead. I can find Pixie Cup Lichen or Acorn Weevils. I know myself here – and I think the forest knows me too. We are used to each other.

Shortly after the For Sale notice went up, a tree fell in high winds, and now lies rotting, dissecting the clearing. I have to clamber over it to get in. The holly has grown thicker, making it harder to find passage. I started to wonder whether this was a sign, that our time together was coming to an end, a new phase was beginning. But it seemed too neat. That the forest would reveal a safe haven for me, then close it off again when I no longer needed it. Too Disney. So I tried to find out who owned the woods, preparing to beg them for access.

Solastalgia is the word for the grief that we feel when a place that we are connected to is gone because it has changed. It is different to missing a place because you can’t get there. It describes a place that has changed beyond recognition. It often refers to people’s responses to climate change or processes like mining or logging. Perhaps I am beginning to grieve the version of the clearing that no longer exists.

No effort has been made (yet) to fence off the entrance points to the woods, so I still go there. But the pull is less urgent. My feet make dull thuds on metres-deep leaf-mould. The whisper of wind in the trees is met by the hollow echo of my heart slowing, settling. I have a sense of all the past versions of myself sitting here and realise I don’t want to invoke ghosts of the past.

I am still nervous of what will happen if my relationship with this place is cut off. Maybe I will always have a sense of solastalgia, of homesickness for my special place in the woods. But I’ll take it with me, like I take my dad, into the next forest.