I used to think that doing things that scared me would make the fear vanish, like popping a soap bubble. But leaning back off a rope at the top of a craggy limestone cliff to abseil down didn’t cure me of my fear of heights. Nor did jumping out of an aeroplane. Twice. What it taught me was that I could do things in spite of my fear. I could put up with it, like a tiresome walking companion.

So here I am, in a clearing amid the sweet-scented bracken of a Dartmoor valley, pitching my one-woman tent beneath the kindly branches of a modest oak.

Wisps of steam rise from the pot on the stove. There’d still been sun on the hilltops but down here it’s cooler and darker, dusk already waiting in the wings. The bracken is coppering in places. Fallen fronds lie around, like rusting fish skeletons. I find a stick bearing a whorl that looks like an eye peering out of the bark and stand it between the oak’s mossy slippers to watch over me. I am completely alone.

This is an introductory extract of the full essay, which appears in full in issue 16 of Hinterland, available to buy here.

Hinterland, issue 16, 2025