[Robert Macfarlane and Merlin Sheldrake have been walking in Epping Forest, and are preparing to camp for the night]

People begin to emerge from the shadows of the trees in ones and pairs: friends of mine and friends of Merlin, friends of our friends, invited by social network, by text, by phone, zeroing in on our location using GPS.  One brings a harmonica, two bring guitars, and Merlin’s brother brings two sets of bones and a small set of hand drums.

Moths dance around the flame.  Satellites blip above us.  The red landing lights of planes, visible through the crown shyness, cut paths between the leaves.  I have a strong sense of the forest looming around and over and below us.

I drink Merlin’s coca decoction, feel my mind rapidly sharpen.  The fir works its magic of storytelling and conviviality.  People talk, reestablish existing connections, make new ones, bring into being a temporary community in that fire-braced forest space.  […]

[…]

A young man whose nickname is ‘the Hand Owl’ plays bluegrass on his cupped hands alone, hooting and whooping.  Folk songs are sung – ‘Nine-Pound Hammer’, ‘Seven Drunken Nights’, ‘Brown Trout Blues’ – with people passing chorus lines and verses from one to another and back again.  Merlin plays the bones, clacking a beat for each new song.  The night chills us and the fire warms us.

Drums, songs, stories.  The trees shifting, speaking, busy making meaning that I cannot hear.  Fungi writhing in the birch logs, in the soil.

I sit with my back to a birch log, feet to the fire, next to Tara.  Tara is tall, gentle of speech, Greek.  She is a singer.  She grew up on a small island in the Mediterranean.  She learned song and voice from a Russian émigré who had been washed up on the island by the tides of history.  […]

[…]

Later, Tara sings a sad song from her island, and my heart breaks a little.  The flames die to purring embers.