Spanderswoud, with Rik Lina
21 July 2026
On 21 July, Rik Lina and I went back into the Spanderswoud for what the Japanese call shinrin-yoku, forest bathing: slowing down, breathing it in, letting the trees do their work on us before we did ours on them. Then we played, working with fallen branches, the shapes lichen draws on old bark, and a few lengths of cord. Nothing taken from elsewhere; everything already lying there.
The forest's name gave us our direction. Spanderswoud comes from spaander, meaning wood chip, a root that survives in hakhout (literally 'chopwood', the coppiced timber once cut here for fuel and fencing). We spent the afternoon offering our own small response to that heritage, shaping and bending what the woods had already laid down.