Our Oaken Bones

I lie on the rock to let my limbs dry after my immersion in the river. My bones warm. I have no towel but the moss is grateful for the additional moisture that I bring as the water runs off me and into its spongy web of roots and branches. I look up through the canopy and time freezes as the oak leaves drift gently backwards and forwards, dappling the light as it falls onto my body. I am home. Reeling from the pain of devastating miscarriages and suffering from PTSD of horrors witnessed in Afghanistan, Merlin and his wife Lizzie decide to leave the bustle of London and return to Merlin's childhood home, a Cornish farm called Cabilla. There, they are met with two unexpected challenges: a farm struggling to make ends meet and the discovery that the woods surrounding the farm has been ravaged by overgrazing and is in fact one of the UK's last remaining fragments of temperate rainforest. As they fall more in love with the rainforest that Merlin had adventured in as a child, so begins a fight to save not only themselves and their farm, but also one of the world's most endangered habitats. Our Oaken Bones is an honest and intimate true story about renewal, the astonishing healing power of nature, and our duty to heal it in return.