23-01-2023 | Road Tripping, Rainforest Trekking

The following piece of writing documents a field trip I took to Dartmoor National Park and its temperate rainforests. It acts as a physical manifestation of the metaphorical journey I’m taking through the forest, as I continue to explore how rainforest ecologies and mythologies can act as a framework from which to examine my family's domestic archive. Through writing, photography and field recording I experimented with methods of documenting my journey, with a view of using these materials towards a final major project. This field trip was revelatory for many reasons: firstly it exposed a hidden aspect of the ecologies found in the UK, those I thought only existed in tropical and sub tropical regions of the world. Secondly, it highlighted the importance of field work to my practice, and how without taking from the forest by collecting its elements, e.g. fallen leaves, broken branches, I could capture the process through walking, writing, and documenting with image and sound. Thirdly, though not exhaustively, the trip allowed me to see with my own eyes, the symbiosis of the forest where this was working, and where human intervention had jeopardised natural processes. It helped solidify my thinking in terms of the relationships found between the materiality, organisation/presentation, oral histories and collecting involved with archival activity in the domestic space.

On the 19th January 2023, I travelled to Dartmoor in search of its temperate rainforests. The drive from London was a familiarly monotonous tour of motorways until we reached Somerset, its ‘Welcome To’ signposts jerking the memory of my maternal grandfather whose ancestors dated back to the infamously outlawed Doone family. Whether or not the Doone family existed outside the realm of legend is of little importance to my investigation of Dartmoor’s rainforests. However, my memory served up this morsel of family history on our approach to Devon, and the Dartmoor National Park. It cloaked my four day stay in a shroud of unknowns longing to be known, and made me think of the agency oral histories hold over a family; the power place and landscape possess in the inheritance of stories. But our trip was intended to be focussed entirely on these temperate rainforests I’d recently learned of: I'd borrowed and brought equipment to record the forests through sound and image, it was dreamt up as a data collection trip. I hadn’t expected my own past to be conjured and spill into the process, making things messy.

Just as the sun - which had blinded my driver’s vision as we headed further and further west - set and as its light extinguished, the roads quickly shifted to narrow country lanes, treacherous with ice. Reliant on my phone for navigation, I wondered how we would have arrived safely before such technology. My generation is the last to remember the prolific use of booklet maps which opened and extended as if from Mary Poppins’ carry case, to consume the front of the car entirely. These monster maps functioned only if you had a passenger to guide you, and in my recollection rarely equated to the successful journey from a to b. I was glad to have my trusty device lighting our way over the moors, as we ascended and at my right, sheer drops of darkness emerged. Higher and higher. Over two cattle grids, and a small row of terraced cottages appeared, and the sign for Kestor Inn, a beacon at the pinnacle of the hill. Greeted warmly, we were shown to our room.

After being fed and watered on pie and ale, we sat by the inglenook and discussed the logistics of our field trip. We would set off for Fingle Woods early tomorrow. Off to bed, stomachs full and eyes weary, I set all our equipment to charge. BBC’s Winter File played on the strangely branded television hanging from the wall of our room. They showed bat-eating spiders and a set of badgers, one of whom was blind in one eye. Sleep came soon after that.

The journey to Fingle Woods was an adventure in itself due to the ice and labyrinthine lanes, many turned to rivers gushing with water. When we finally arrived, having driven at an average speed of 10mph to avoid sliding into an abyss, we were relieved to be out of the car and making the next part of our journey on foot. We found ourselves immediately surrounded by towering conifers introduced during and after the Second World War to boost the local economy and rising demand for timber. Work is now being done to restore the subtle ecology of ancient woodland, combating the suffocation of forest floor fauna these giant imposters have inflicted, after dominating the sky and light for close to a century. Of course the Douglas firs and pines never asked to be planted here, and nothing could detract from their own distinct beauty, coupled with the feeling of sheer insignificance they posed upon my singular being. As we approached Fingle Bridge, a pretty yet impressive stone archway constructed in the 17th Century, something - smaller still - caught and held my attention. Bold as brass, copper chest puffed, a round robin red-breast twitched, inching closer towards my feet in their stomping boots. Where moments ago I had felt minute, I now sensed my scale, clobbering in contrast to this delicate creature.

Wise to the track that tourists tread hundreds of thousands of times a year, and the paths that walkers make with their dog companions, the robin flitted on and off the bridge to attract my attention. What do robins like to eat, I wondered, other than the worms and insects found amongst the litter of the forest floor? This one surely had a penchant for human offerings, perhaps crumbs from a stale biscuit left over from the backseat picnic consumed on the drive down here. I have always romanticised my interactions with the animal kingdom, so I convinced myself our Fingle Bridge robin was announcing itself to us as our guide, and sure enough they led and followed us throughout our journey alongside the rushing River Teign. Logic tells me that of course, this was not the same robin, but several out in force on a bright, clear day. But this time I will allow my imagination to run with the rapids of the river, bubbling up with mischief and opportunity. Our intrepid friend, flashed their amber-red plumage to show us the treasures of this ancient wood - branches fingered forth, enrobed in emerald moss; feathered ferns strewn with jewel drops each containing a microcosm; twinkling pools amassed from crystal waters gushing out of faceted rock. And everywhere so green. Even while snow capped the moors and trees undressed from summer, winter’s blanket remains green here and full of life and magic.

Whereas I might have once selected a leaf for its colour or shape, or stashed slick, shiny conkers in my pocket, I’m wary of taking anything from the forest now. I’m aware of the imbalance and want no part of it, even if my singular hoarding of treasure were insignificant. Instead, like artist Hamish Fulton, I catalogue my experience via walking, taking photographs and recording video and sound. The only alteration or disturbance comes from my footsteps and occasionally my fingers, which reach to stroke a particularly dense expanse of moss. Perhaps I can begin thinking of the collecting for an archive in such terms. A delicate process which is respectful and not based on greed. An action which nourishes the other elements, it’s where those other layers eventually come to rest and repurpose themselves in a function not dissimilar to the decay of the forest floor, where tiny fungi work at decomposing whole trees. To stay in the forest is to reproduce its character through documentation, instead of trying to bring it home, stowing away its beauty like a jewel thief. So from the woods expanding out from Fingle Bridge, I don’t steal. I listen. I watch. I breathe it in to take it with me.

I met a woman in Fingle Wood. She was draped in that same emerald coat that cloaked the rest of the forest. Hunched like Marina Warner’s beggar woman, an enchantress in disguise, shape shifting her way down a bank littered with mulch and strewn with witches hair lichen, lace linked ferns sprouting from her undergarments, leaves latticed. Not far off, a stump, pronged with mushrooms that sliced the slab with decay. The river rushing: throbbing vein, its blue blood gushing. There was life and death in this forest. In every forest, a balance untinged by sadness. As our walk oscillated, slowing at an incline, or to clamber over the rocky terrain at the other side of the river. Here, last year’s ankle fracture was tested, or rather my confidence was. As I clung to the wrought iron handrail which precariously penetrated the rock face, I felt overcome by a desperation to reach the end of our path and be back by the inglenook and its consoling warmth. The terror turned euphoric as I glimpsed down on that rushing river pulsing, just visible through the density of overlapping tree tendrils. I was coming to understand. This is what the robin had meant me to see.

1. Blackmore, Richard Doddridge, Lorna Doone (UK: Wordsworth, 1993)

2. Higgins, Richard, Thoreau and the Language of Trees, 1st edn (University of California Press, 2017) <https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctv1wxqmq> [accessed 22 February 2023]

3. Ancient Woodland Restoration at Fingle Woods | Woodland Trust, dir. by The Woodland Trust, 2018 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsndCo7WpAY> [accessed 7 March 2023]

4. ‘Michael Auping, A Nomad among Builders//1987’, in Nature, by Jeffrey Kastner (Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2012)

5. Simard, Suzanne, Finding the Mother Tree: Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest (UK: Allen Lane, 2021)

6. Warner, Marina, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (Vintage Digital, 2015)

7. All photography, video and audio of Dartmoor National Park by Amanni Hassan Hollands, 2023