Forest

Sometimes we need a little motivation to push us in a different way of thinking things over. On the International day of the forests (21.3.), I put some of my thoughts on paper that were spooking around my head for quite a while now.

I grew up at the edge of a forest and spend many of my childhood Sunday’s spending time with my father, and helped him build feeding stations for wild animals. Hunting was his big hobby, which I never really understood myself. But I loved to shoot animals with my camera all the more. Those fleeting moments when you lock your eyes on a small white, fluffy behind of a deer, a sudden pause with a pheasant that suddenly flew of in front of me, foggy mornings, when we searched for mushrooms on the ground, and other moments like these, must have left a deep impression in my very heart.

And so the years went by and I went to live in Ljubljana. I could not imagine myself living in a city full of concrete at all. But Golovec was near and soon I discovered that even here, I could find those rare places, which were only there for me alone. Places in which I can relax from the crazy, wild speed of our lifestyle.

After I graduated from my doctor’s degree, Golovec just wasn’t enough for me anymore, and I wanted more. More contact with the true forest, because there I felt at ease. To just simply look at the fresh greenery of spring, the colorful curtains of autumn and the pure whiteness of snow in the winter, simply that. Clean, fresh air, clean lungs and clean thoughts.

Today I am living in the most forest-grown region in Slovenia, at the edge of the Kočevje Forest. I am just a small step away and I can go where my mobile signal doesn’t reach me. From time to time I see some pictures on the internet that there is “sadly no internet connection in the woods”, but believe me, I found a much better connection than to the internet!

But the true question remains: do I really want all of this? In today’s times, you have to be available 24 hours a day on social networks, answering telephone calls, but to truly hear your own inner self; we just don’t answer to that anymore.

At times when I we are really without a WI-FI signal, we can begin to understand and observe through wild eyes the true beauty of nature. We can see how the colors of the first spring days are so soothing and how we are going to feel relaxed, when we return from our stroll in the forest.

Actually, it is very hard to put into words what the forest truly gives me. It is not just a place, where I can tend to my art form, it is a place where I can meet friends, search for inner peace, learn, discover the most beautiful moments in nature that I ever got to see, and just enjoy pure wildness, for which I am ever so thankful. Very thankful!

I wish that we could see the true value of what is really important in life and that we would cherish it forever!