Can trees boost our creativity? My daily forest walks have changed how I write | Ilka Tampke

Ideas come more quickly, my thoughts roam freely and I’m reminded I am not the main form of life on the planet I park my car near the trail head and leash up my labrador. Mist coils around the stringy trunks of the manna gums and I breathe in a lungful of cold, peppery air. With notebook in hand, I begin to walk. I learn a lot by walking in the forest every day. It’s like catching up on the daily news but with a focus more ecological than political. I see which trees have fallen, what flowers have burst into bloom, which animals have been busy overnight, what weather is coming in. Most of all, surrounded by growing, breathing things that aren’t human, I learn that I am not the main form of life on the planet but just one note in a vibrant choir of living beings. Importantly, I learn this with my brain but also my heart, lungs, muscles and skin. It’s a well-trodden cliche to ask a writer where their ideas come from. Answers typically include other books, film, music, art, people and simply life itself. The source of a writer’s creativity is often considered something of a mystery, part of the glamour and mystique of the singular (usually male) author, toiling away in the turret of h