Member-only story
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, which didn’t seem to match the intent of shinrin yoku.
“And the luffa, honey?” I asked. “Isn’t that taking the bathing part a bit too far?” Luffas (or loofahs) are meant to remove dead skin, which didn’t seem to match the intent of shinrin yoku.
“This old thing?” she said, which is true. Neither of us has used the luffa in years. It’s hung in our shower looking more like a dried out piece of birch bark — which isn’t far from what a luffa is, by the way.
“I need it to swat ticks,” she said. “They carry disease.”
Stay with me on this one. My wife always has a good reason for everything, even if her reasoning does leave most people scratching their heads. She thinks they all have ticks.
“I didn’t want to take the flyswatter,” she said, “because — well, I couldn’t find it, for one thing — and I’d look ridiculous…