Walks with dad

Monday, 22nd of November 2021

Hello lovely read.cash people. Hope all is well. Here in Poland it was a gloomy day, but my dad and I decided to go for a forest walk nonetheless, even longer one than usual.

Childhood memories

When I was a little girl I spent most of my 2 months summer holidays at my grandparents place which is the greenest parts of Poland. See that darkest green part on the left called 'Lubuskie'? That's the province where most of my family lives.

Image source

All summers I would be in the forests, foraging for mushrooms, raspberries, blueberries and other fruits which names I don't even know in English. There are also many lake in the middle of those forests, so if not foraging, we were swimming and playing in those lakes. These were my happy times and I think I took forests for granted.

The province where my parents moved when I was a child is called Slaskie. It's in the middle of the southern part of Poland, slightly darker green than the surrounding provinces. This area is very close to the mountains, where we would often go for school trips. I remember some of the trips where the snow was so high, I would sink to my waist when I step on it.

Longing for the sea and beaches

Growing up surrounded by the forests and mountains I was always longing for the sea. Sea in Poland is up North, so we would have to travel across the whole Poland to get there. I only went there once as a child and in winter. So the longing stayed and when I moved to England, not exactly by choice, but I live very close to the sea (or rather ocean). At first we were going to the beach at every opportunity. Every sunny weekend that we weren't working we would get in the car and waste hours in traffic just to be by the sea.

I think it ended when I bought my house with a garden. I had my own piece of nature in my back yard and rather than being stuck in the traffic for hours of my weekend I was getting busy planting new flowers in my garden. Years went by before I realised that I have a beautiful forest only 10-15 mins walk from my house. My first time there I was so so happy. I felt like home again. After all that longing for the sea and beach I realised that forest is what I love the most.

My dad also found himself a piece of forest nearby and has been walking almost daily since the start of pandemic last year. I knew about this good habit of his and when I arrived to their place last Friday 12th of November, I announced I am going join join him on his daily walks. Dad was of course very happy to hear this and with an exception of Saturday we walk every day.

When I was younger I didn't have a good relationship with my dad. He was drinking most of the time and got my family into a lot of trouble. There were a few years when I didn't talk to him at all. In the last few years he stopped drinking and he's taking a good care of my mum, so my relationship with him is slowly going back to what it should be. Each visit in Poland we get closer and these daily walks sure help with it.

During our walks we pass many cut trees and he talks about his youth when he was working in the forestry. I told him about recent massacre in my nearby forest in England. Many trees were cut and a huge mess left afterwards, including many destroyed paths. He talks about how they cut the trees in Poland in all the stages with details.

After each cutting session is finished, everything is collected, then cleaned and in the next year the area is planted with new baby trees. We call the areas ‘schools’ in Polish. Right after the young trees are planted the whole area is fenced off with wired net to stop wild animals from coming in and eating young seedlings.

Later on, when young trees are big enough to sustain themselves and animals don’t pose any danger to their growth, these fences are removed.

They leave the trees to grow for a while and then thin them by removing some and planting them elsewhere or selling to the garden centres. In this way the forests are continuously regenerating. Older trees are cut and younger planted in their place.

These days the winters in Poland are not as cold and snowy as I remember them from my childhood. Views like this on the picture above are still a common sight in Polish forests though. It’s a feeding place for animals, which forestry fills up during the colder months of the year, when food is not easily available for them.

Something for the smaller animals too, although a little empty today! This one was founded by a fisherman association of our town. We see a lot of them during our walks, all greeting my dad like a an old buddy, even though he doesn’t do fishing, but he’s here every day.

So here it is, a little insight into my daily healthy routine while I’m in Poland. My only hope is that I will continue this lovely practice during my next stop in Netherlands as well as when I’m back in England. I already feel fitter and dropped 2kg!

Our start and end of the walk is just by the open air swimming pool I attended when I was a child. It doesn’t look like it did back in a day. They modernised it and added some fun slides too. I might visit it one day when I come here in the summer.

As I mentioned earlier, the weather was rather gloomy today, so my dad’s car is the only one on the car park as we walk back.

Let me finish this article with a magical tree capture I took today. I thought the roots were really mesmerising. Just like me going back to my roots.

Until next time 💙