Zakiya Mckenzie

Writing in the forest is affirming. It owes me nothing and didn’t ask me to say these things

Dulwich in London is where I came into this world. This I do not recall but have made up memories in my head from the pictures I have seen.

There are only three tree-climbers in Forestry England. They scale the tallest of trees, grooming and look after them. The tree-climbers know all the trees at Westonbirt Arbouretum personally. Fascinating!

In the Dean, to have had your first amourous experience in the forest was to get your ‘fern ticket’

Rain is not sadness

She checked to see what time it was. Looking up at the sun, she smiled because the rainclouds that had splashed the morning seemed to have moved on.

A cobalt sky blanketed the morning and pockets of hazy sunshine beamed through morphing openings in the canopy high.

“Mining has been around since time out of mind,” I am told my Deputy Gaveller Dan Howell.