You could cut the darkness with a knife, feel it’s heaviness. Once the land rover had driven out of sight there was no light. This was the night my ancestors knew; when the last embers had died and the lard lamp guttered. There was no moon and no starlight penetrated the forest canopy.

I knew I was only yards from the track we had just driven along, but my sense of direction had deserted me, though I had not turned or moved a step. I reached in my pocket for my phone, though I knew it was not there. A warm coat and a bottle of water the only concessions to basic needs. Minutes ago, what lay ahead seemed so easy; use my other senses, feel my tread, listen to the sounds of nature and walk in a straight line the way I had been sent… keep going until the first glimpse of dawn or the village lights, whichever came first.

But if I set off in the wrong direction I would not find anywhere or anyone and they would not find me.

I should have timed how long it took to reach this spot from the edge of the track, but I had no means of telling the time, I had not even a sense of how many minutes I had stood on this spot. Should I start walking, then after an indeterminate interval stop if I did not feel the soft autumn carpet change to the gravel track?

Was my heart really beating so loudly I could hear it? I reached out my hands and felt solid tree trunk. Perhaps I should curl up in its roots and wait till sunrise, but then they would find me if they returned. I needed to find the village we had passed. A bleakness descended on me that I had never known before, a loneliness that was complete. I had no god to call on and I could not reach out to the seething mass of humanity that I so often wanted to get away from. My soul was stripped bare and I was found wanting, I was not capable of existing as an individual.

Foolishly I started running in sheer panic and found myself flung to the ground by The Green Man. Spitting leaves out of my mouth a glimmer of sense returned; it was not the spirit of the woods, merely a tree root that had tripped me. Relief was replaced by pain then despair at my own foolishness; why had I been talked into joining a boot camp that promised to clear my brain and cure my addiction to screen time?