Three Years in the Woods

🌱 twelve monthly forest zines 🌱

In 2020, I started walking in my local woods every day. Before this, I'd lived on a farm where my dog (Finn) spent his days roaming, so we rarely went for walks together. Now, unexpectedly in lockdown, we found ourselves visiting the same small woodland, nestled between a road and a housing estate, at least once every day as the year progressed and the seasons changed. 

I was freshly home in the UK after several years spent in Australia, during which time I'd realised I hardly knew the names of any of the trees and plants of my homeland. As plants bloomed in the woods and disappeared again, I started teaching myself their names. I was preparing my first book for publication, and I started planning a new book, set in the forest. (Still working on it.)

In 2021 I started a nature diary, more of a list than anything else - what was growing, what the animals were doing, which trees' leaves started falling first.

In 2022 I decided to spend 1-2 nights each month camping in the woods so that I could experience being in the forest overnight and through the seasons.

In 2023 I took a year-long course in foraging and herbal medicine, learning about the traditional uses for the plants where I live.

I had never made zines before this, and I am no artist, but I wanted to make a record of my camping trips and some of the things I've learned over the past three years. These higgledy-piggledy compilations are the result.

Each zine contains (approximately):

• Monthly nature diary
• Nature Observations from a Notes App i.e. strange little notes I saved in my phone, some intended for the book I'm working on, others... who knows
• Diary of my monthly camping trip
• Some foraging notes for the season.

If you would like to you can pay (approximately) £5 for them and print them at home, but I want them to be freely available, so you can skip straight to the download if you prefer.

Note: these are single A4-page zines which can be folded into booklets using this method. However, my folding methods were pretty rogue and every one seems to be different. As long as you follow the initial folding and cutting guidelines, you'll be fine if you just make sure the front cover and back cover are in the right places.