A walk. A lost connection. And as I embark on a study of nature immersion and design, I am reminded of how removed I may be and that the first steps need to be a retracing of a path. I begin to walk. I speak of my design practice as one that embarks on connection with nature, in advocacy for children, yet I am feeling the loss of connection with others, and have strayed from my inner child in the responsibilities of the everyday. I went on a walk and I came upon a tree. She was beautiful. An arbutus with her bark smooth and hard, and the warmth of orange against the greens and browns of the forest. At first I stood in front of her, taking in how she had fallen once, her trunk parallel with the earth and soil beneath her. From this trunk, saplings now grew, children that rose to the sky in small towers of bud, leaf and branch. I sat beside her. And taking in the words of Louise St. Pierre in her writings from Design and Nature: A Partnership, in the guidance of an elder before her, I spoke to the tree. At first shy and awkward, as if I was sitting beside someone waiting for the first word to be spoken. Who will break the silence? And then I realized that the conversation had already begun. That though our pulses may differ, the space had been made to communicate together. She had already starting listening to my thoughts and we spoke back and forth. I began to notice things about her. That there were marks upon her trunk, pockets where branches had begun and left long ago. That another arbutus has risen and dropped behind her and their leaves had met and now rustled in the wind. That her red bark fell off like ribbons. I lay down beside her. And took this moment to appreciate how in this time and space, I can be laying down safe beside a tree in a woods, in a country I know, living and breathing in this world. I began to notice other sounds around me. A crackling of a twig in the distance made my eyes sharp for a moment. Birds above and a plane hidden in the clouds all contributed to the sounds of the forest. She heard them too. I knelt before her. Thanking her for the time we spent together. The connection shared. My knees damp against the moss. I knelt there until I began to feel the vibrations of the earth below me, charging my ankles, my shins and passing up and through my body. As I rose to leave, I noticed that a branch on one of her young saplings had been snapped and left dangling, its green heartwood hanging on by a strip of bark. She told me I could take it and so I did, spending a moment of contemplation in this task. I walked in the forest today. At first empty handed and alone, I left the forest with a branch of arbutus in my hand and a new connection. I sit here now looking at the branch in a glass jar full of water. I am a foster parent that does not know how to raise a tree. I begin to research: how to grow an arbutus tree from a branch and have learned that the arbutus are dying on these islands and that they are notoriously difficult to raise from seed or sapling. I need guidance, and start by emailing the Botanical Garden at UBC in the Faculty of Science. More connection. And so it continues; this ‘action’, this ‘practice’, whatever word that may be attached to a person exploring something that makes their heart and mind latch onto the possibilities of something bigger than themselves. To be continued. -AD