Seeds: Sown

County Wicklow was our weekend getaway when I was growing up. My dad worked for CIE, the national transport agency in Ireland at the time. He worked hard, it was physical and long shift hours. Come Sundays, generally the only day he had off, he wanted to get to Wicklow, to walk through the forests, and my mum and I and to a lesser extent my elder brother, went along. My dad wasn’t a great risk taker, and we generally stuck to the worn pathways through woods owned and run by Coillte, the national forestry agency. Trooperstown, Ballinastoe and Djouce woods were frequented regularly. Powerscourt and Glendalough less frequently. This was before the days of the Wicklow Way or the M11 motorway to whisk you quickly from Dublin to Wicklow. Our trips were in a Fiat 128 with my mam’s sandwiches, a flask and diluted orange for me. It was on these trips the smell of pine forest and forest floor established themselves with me. It was on these trips I heard my first woodpecker, saw hooded crows and spotted the occasional deer. It was here that the seed of my love for the outdoors was planted. I didn’t know nor recognise that at the time. Indeed in my teenage years I turned my back on the outdoors and anything not within my small suburban circle and it only returned to me in earnest when my dad died, he was 66 and I was 23.