A Lesson from the Forest
A pine branch and the case for paying attention
words & photo by brad peirce
I am lucky to live next to the Falmouth Nature Preserve, which I can access at the end of my street. I often go there to walk my dog and exercise and escape my inbox, Zoom meetings, phone calls, PowerPoints, and everything else that comes with working from home.
One particular day, as I followed my favorite route through the forest—a patchwork of trails creating a three-mile loop—my mind was on overdrive, busy with an endless checklist of to-dos: project deliverables, emails I needed to send, a book I’m writing, a transformational leadership program I’m designing, and a backlog of family responsibilities and house projects. There just didn’t seem to be enough time in the day.
At one point, while lost in thought, I reached for my phone and began emailing myself a list of priorities. As I walked and typed, I suddenly felt a painful jab on the top of my head and my baseball hat being pulled off. After an irritated yelp and scrambling to recover my lid, I noticed a pine bough hanging across the path. I’ve walked these trails a thousand times and never had to dodge a branch, so I kept walking and continued my email.
Less than a minute later, another branch poked me. And then another. By this point, I stopped. Not only was this becoming painful, but also frustrating and slightly spooky—as if the trees were reaching out and saying, “Pay attention!”
So I did.
The forest is my place to get away from it all, my respite from everyday busyness. I heard the message loud and clear. I put my phone away, took a few deep breaths, and allowed myself to return to the moment, back to my body, back to the woods I had grown to love. It wasn’t long before I felt the energy bottled up in my head drain back into my body. I began noticing the birds again, the gurgle of the stream, and the way sunlight and shadows danced on the forest floor. My senses were free again, and I was returning to a place that felt more at ease, more in flow, more alive.
I smiled at the thought of an animate life force in the trees handing me this important message and thanked the forest for the lesson.
What is driving our restless busyness and desire for more, better, bigger, faster? And what are the costs on our lives and those we love?
What if we could develop our capacity for joy, ease, flow, clarity, and presence more intentionally throughout our day?
As a mental fitness coach, I regularly work with people who feel trapped in patterns and habits that no longer serve them—leaders, parents, professionals, and changemakers navigating complexity and transition but who are unable to get out of their own way. Often, the challenge isn’t a lack of intelligence, capability, or effort. It’s that their minds have become conditioned toward constant doing, striving, worrying, judging, and anticipating.
Mental fitness helps people recognize these patterns and develop the capacity to respond differently. It strengthens their ability to quiet mental noise, access greater self-awareness, and return to a place of presence, clarity, curiosity, and choice.
Perhaps that is why publications like this matter more than ever. In a digital world that relentlessly competes for our attention, magazines offer a different experience: an invitation to slow down, engage our senses, reflect, imagine, and remember that we are part of this animate world, not separate from it.
Sometimes all it takes is a walk in the woods or a magazine in our hands to remember we are not simply minds with bodies, but embodied beings participating in a rich and living world.
For more information on the mental fitness program, visit bradpeirce.com/mental-fitness