I arrived in Wales when I was eight years old. Me and my family had spent the previous six months or so living in a block flats just outside of Portsmouth city centre. It was busy, loud, and rather unattractive, to say the least. We would make regular visits to the seaside, to marvel at HMS Victory and HMS Warrior in port and escape the monotony and chaos of city centre living whenever possible but, from memory, there weren’t too many trees in sight.
My mum had her roots in the countryside, and I’m sure that, had her childhood dreams come true, she would have been happily married, raising me and my siblings around trees, rivers and rolling hills. Her life had followed a different path, however, and in the middle of 1999, she finally managed to escape her second turbulent and abusive relationship, fleeing Loughborough for good after her partner, who had ‘rescued’ her from the first; my biological father, had beaten her so badly on multiple occasions, that she was left fearing for her life on a daily basis.
With partner number three now standing beside her, we had our bags and belongings packed up almost overnight, waved goodbye to the few friends that we had chance to, and set out on an adventure to the south coast of England. We arrived late one evening. It was dark and dreary. I still vividly remember the bright lights of the city appearing at a great distance in the front windscreen as we made haste along the M1. My new life had begun.
I remember feeling a great deal of fear, as well as confusion but, in all honesty, I was, more than anything, feeling incredibly relieved because I was glad to be escaping what had been six years of hell and torment, and life in the middle of a city would have offered much more in the way of peace than my home life had for many years. We had already moved once before; from the south of England, where I was born, to Loughborough, so I knew that I was adaptable enough to settle and make new friends.
City-centre life, however, was short-lived. At the turn of the new millennium, just as me and my family were beginning to settle, my mums ex-partner had somehow caught wind of our location, and, like a predator upon its’ wounded prey, was planning to strike again. History has a way of repeating itself and, once again, we packed up our belongings, this time literally overnight, and set off on yet another whirlwind adventure. We landed in a small market town called Welshpool in the beautiful mid Wales countryside, where my mums’ then-partner had some distant family connections.
Little did I know at the time that Wales would be my home for the next twenty-three years of my life. After eleven or so years of utter chaos and unpredictability, I managed to find some peace here in the Severn Valley, surrounded by the trees, rivers, and rolling hills.
The lakes, mountains, and, especially, ancient woodlands in Wales have provided something of a sanctuary for me over the past five years in particular, and, whilst held in the safe embrace of the silver birch and oak trees, I have been working hard to heal my wounded spirit from a childhood that left many scars, both emotionally and psychologically.
As I encroached upon manhood, I was rather lost and confused about who I was, as well as struggling to understand my own role as a man, having had irresponsible and neglectful role models for much of my youth. Midway through my identity crisis, I stumbled into some of the country’s woodland and found a long-lost love of trees. It was through frequent visits to some of this woodland that I began to create characters out of the trees. It is an innate tendency of human psychology to interpret nonhuman things with human characteristics, and is known as ‘anthropomorphism’. The trees became characters in my own world, and offered a sense of calmness, stability, protection, and consistency; all of which were unknown to me throughout my childhood years.
The trees in Wales’ beautiful and enchanting ancient woodland, have played the roles of father, best friend and therapist for me in recent times. Exposure to countless traumatic events throughout my childhood, mainly before my family found solace here in these quiet and charming hills, left me with a rather fragmented sense of self. To give you some context; my biological father was an alcoholic, my first stepfather suffered with some severe mental health conditions and abused drugs, and my second stepfather turned out to be a criminal. All of them were emotionally immature, had frequent bouts of aggressive and violent behaviour towards my mother, as well as myself and my siblings, and were ill-equipped to deal with fatherhood. I was frequently shamed for being ‘too soft’ and ‘too sensitive’ by these men, and so I class it as something of a miracle that these photographs and words exist today.
Mother Nature, as I have found, offers no judgement, criticism, or shame, unlike the men that raised me. She is all-loving and all-accepting. Outdoors, there is room for all, but those who approach life with a softness and sensitivity, are bound to receive more of her good tidings, as I have been for half a decade now.
The trees here in Wales have played a vital role in my personal development, and I began to notice many changes within myself after being around them; I have been notably becoming much calmer, more patient, and present; something that I struggled with whilst growing up. Nature was providing and holding space for me to heal, and I was then able to provide space and be more present in conversations whilst back in society.
Wales is a land that is rich in stories of folklore and legend, and, in recent times, I have enjoyed getting lost in many of them as I reconnect to the inner child that spent most of his time with his head inside of books, lost in imagination and fantasy. It seems as though my life has gone full circle, and I have now ventured out into the landscape to create my own stories for the world to enjoy. The life that I have had here in Wales thus far, is a world away from where I started out, and the photographs that I create serve to represent the feelings of inner peace and tranquillity that I experience whilst outdoors in nature.