Jennifer (JP) Perrine

In October 2021, I participated in a workshop for people of color that taught us how to lead outdoor experiences that integrate skills drawn from the practice of forest bathing. For a month, the “Forest as Nourishment” course prompted me to wake up early on Saturday mornings and spend the day in an ancient forest, listening to the rain and the river, noticing the changing leaves, observing all the mushrooms and moss and spiders and ferns living in and on the trees.

If you haven’t had the good fortune to experience forest bathing firsthand, the practice is often facilitated by a guide who offers invitations to help connect participants to their senses and surroundings. Many of these have delightful names that clearly describe the intent of the invitation: The Joy of Tiny Things. Embrace the Wind. Mud Squish. The one that inspired me to combine writing with forest bathing, though, is Achieve Nothing. In Your Guide to Forest Bathing, M. Amos Clifford describes the invitation this way: “Allow yourself no goals, nothing to do, nothing to reach. Don’t even try to achieve not-achieving. Don’t try to not do; just not do. Notice what you are noticing.”

When I practice Achieve Nothing, I often end up horizontal, staring up at the rivers of sky created by crown shyness, wonderfully content. I usually have no desire to capture the moment in writing, to jot down the thoughts drifting through me, to get back to the Big Important Poem that felt so urgent only hours ago. I feel aimless in the best possible way, and whenever I do come back to writing, I tend to be more at ease with whatever I create, no matter how messy, unpolished, drafty, or incomplete it inevitably is. After many years of writing toward achievements of various sorts—degrees and publications and jobs and grants and a nebulous desire to be found worthy—writing with no goal and nothing to reach toward has helped me rediscover the joy of being receptive to whatever shows up on the page, even if what shows up is nothing.