No strangers to photograph today, as I’m back working in the writing shed. So it’s off to the woods to shoot trees instead. Leading a writing workshop in Spain last year, I took a group of students on a walk; we stopped to “talk to the landscape”, asking questions of gateposts, stone walls and – yes – trees. That might sound like a strange activity, but it’s rewarding if you take a chance and go with it; in Spain it produced some beautiful writing, which we read to each other over beers and leathery jamon. Standing in the woods today, the wind forced trunks and branches together. Listening to the creaking wood, it’s easy to imagine that nature is in a conversation with itself: one it’s worth listening to.
