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If You Go Down To The Woods Today…
That’s my wife bathing.
“If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it still a joke?” Steve Wright
Living in the country can get weird sometimes. I realized this the other day when I caught my wife going out the door in her dressing gown, carrying a luffa sponge and a towel over her shoulder. She said she was heading over to the park to take a bath. To my knowledge, there isn’t anywhere to bathe in the park — not legally, anyway.
She seemed determined, though, so I asked, “What sort of bath, honey?”
You should know something about my wife. She loves specifics. If she can explain the difference between two types of fleas, she’ll do it.
It seems she read somewhere about “forest bathing,” a Japanese practice of self-relaxation known as shinrin yoku. In the island nation where it originated, there are now over seventy-three forests dedicated to people out there “in the pines” so to speak, feeling better about themselves (which I do with six glasses of wine)
“You’re supposed to sit quietly amongst the trees, observing nature whilst deep breathing,” she said, practically reciting the Wikipedia definition. “It de-stresses you,” she added.
Luffas (or loofahs) are meant to remove dead skin…