Your birthright

Part of that is down to the timeless quality of landscape. ‘It connects us to our histories – the people we used to be, as well as our ancestry,’ explains Hearn. Sitting under an old tree can be tremendously powerful. It evokes memories of climbing trees as a child, a sense of long-lost freedom and a feeling of continuity with the past. If you live in the same region as your family of origin, might your great-grandmother have sat under the same tree?

The reference to our ancestors is one that resonates for me in other ways too. I may have lived most of my life in the city, but people are always surprised by my ability to predict the weather. That comes directly from growing up with a mother whose roots were in rural Scotland. Every day, I would hear her observations about the patterns of clouds and birds, and what they signified. ‘Boring, snoring,’ I would think. But, by some miracle, it’s buried within, and now I’m harvesting that wisdom for myself.

Although it’s possible to receive the benefits of nature even in urban spaces or the occasional woodland ramble, some people feel driven to experience the true call of the wild. Tamsin Calidas, photographer and author of