The Old Forest Path by Jamie Catto

Author Jamie Catto describes how lessons learned from nature shaped his lyrical new picture book The Old Forest Path.

Lessons from nature: The Old Forest Path

As a child I would see vivid faces in the trees outside my bedroom window and had all kinds of encounters in nature that gave me a sure sense that the countryside was alive and awake. Now I’m an adult with kids of my own, the ongoing journey of being fed and educated by the messages of nature is even more central to my life.

Here are a few things I can remember: my childhood friend Phil loved big sticks. On every walk in the woods, he’d find one and often, being a male-bodied child, would brandish it as if it was a weapon and even, playfully, menace other children with it. Nature stepped in to teach him a lesson one afternoon when he was thwacking a tree trunk with all his might. Not yet a student of the laws of physics, he attacked the tree squarely on so that upon building up to his most violent and mighty strike, the stick bounced powerfully back at his head and sent him flying. When he landed, barely conscious, in a brambly bush, no one was sympathetic.

I’ve been treated far more gently, but have still picked up, through observation, some truths which feel important to me: one of them is that nature knows when to stop growing. I see so many people in my circle who are on a mission ‘to grow’ and will often even drag their fragile selves non-consensually through all kinds of extreme processes and ceremonies and classes in the name of ‘doing deep work on themselves’. My slightly cynical judgement on the over-pious ‘seekers’ is that much of this frenzied activity is rooted in a deep feeling of scarcity. The idea that ‘I can’t love myself fully’ or ‘I’m not worthy enough’ until I am better at yoga or freer or wiser (or thinner or stronger or even – enlightened!)

I always ask, “If the Creator came into this room right now and told you that you weren’t going to get one inch more wise, thin, advanced, free, yogic, than you are now, this is as far on your growth journey as you’re going to get, would you be able to love and accept yourself 100% exactly as you are now?” My belief is that if the answer is ‘no’ there’s a problem. Although I did enjoy one person’s answer to me: “we are all perfectly imperfect with room to grow”.

But nature knows when to stop. Trees know when to stop. They reach the right height and stop growing. From then on, they are just the wonderful, unique expression of themselves, content exactly as they are.

One of my favourite teachers, and the Daddy of the Western spiritual and self-help movement, Ram Dass, who’s also hilarious and loves to confess his own melodramas as his way of teaching from ‘the middle of the mess’ says this: “When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and so on. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying, “You’re too this, or I’m too this.” That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”

Nature can remind us to stop needing to grow, and to stop being so judgemental with ourselves and others.

My last gift from nature that I’d like to share is about pace. The world has become so fast with its instant replies every time our tyrannical devices bleep at us. I miss the time when you’d write a letter and it would take real time to get there and you’d have to wait days for a reply. I’m not sure our psyches were designed to move at this exhausting speed and juggle so much input from different directions. And this is where I feel comforted and reminded by nature, because it moves at the correct pace. It doesn’t hurry. It breathes and pulses and flowers bloom and branches stretch, and mushrooms unfurl, and clouds pass and breezes blow, all at their correct pace with no agenda to hurry up or be more efficient. Nature teaches me to slow down to the correct pace of Life, and for me, rushing around from project to project, it’s a blessed relief.

My story, The Old Forest Path, invites the children and the fairies, and all of us, to dare to explore deeper into the woods, away from the accustomed, sometimes limiting pathways which society tries to make us follow.

We don’t always need to listen to the limiting consensus and its limiting notions of safety or ‘enoughness’. Sometimes it’s worth straying from the usual path.

Jamie Catto is a British musician, video director, photographer, and script editor. He was a founding member of Faithless, before leaving in 1999 to form 1 Giant Leap and co- created a documentary film with the same title. He wrote the self-help book Insanely Gifted published by Canongate. The Old Forest Path is his first book for children. It is published by Ragged Bears, 978-1857144963, and illustrated by Kanako Wakabayashi.

 

Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Federation.