The colours of breathing

In the wild, wild woods there are treasures to be found. I pause to sit with my back against a cool, smooth beech bole, listening to the emptiness all around me. A fistful of leaves drifts down into my lap. Barry Lopez's beautiful metaphor for the breathing of a landscape comes to mind; the forest breathes. We know that. But I feel that it too has a slow, seasonal breathing. Lost in thought I shuffle through piles of crisp beech leaves until I come to a carpet of sweet chestnut and begin to gather handfuls of the cool, serrated leaves, looking for the most perfect ones to use for what I do not know; compelled to touch and gather in an inescapable child-like wonder at the forms and colours on the forest floor; this sycamore leaf was unlike anything I'd ever seen before.