I’ve been here for two nights. I had to think. It seems like a lifetime. In the best of possible ways. I’m here to write. I am writing. I’m here for a week in this cabin, this cabin I don’t know the name of, near Voru, in the forest. Then I go to Tartu.

What can I say? I’m sitting on the porch writing this, with birch trees and meadow to my left and a long pond to my right. I did swim in the pond on the first evening, but the next morning I got up very early, it was hardly light, and sat out here to write, and the sucking and slurping from the pond made me fairly certain there is a monster in the deep. And I read that nearby Rouge has the deepest lake in Estonia. This could be the deepest pond.

Yesterday I deliberately kept my internet switched off. There is no WiFi here, but the phone network is 4g, so it is easy to connect to that. Being completely alone and disconnected was wonderful. I wrote and walked and wrote some more. I made tasty meals for myself, and had a sauna. I watched the birds. There’s one I call the you bird, because its call is youoo you, over and over. Very beautiful and elusive. I’ve not caught a glimpse of him, though he is sometimes very close. And a goldeneye (I think) on my pond. And cranes. Now that’s a wow bird, with huge size and its call and its fabulous ruffle of tail feathers. They were in the meadow as I ate my breakfast yesterday. I was fairly certain I heard a wolf too, very early, but I think it may have been the German Shepherd dog that guards the house down the road, and tracked me as I walked past later, barking all the time. I did see a large fox today – or was that a small wolf?

I’ve just been to check the fire that is heating my sauna. It’s going well, after a false start. I’ve piled up the logs. I went to town today to post a letter, and I had to have internet to open my emails to find the address. I had a strange time in town. Not because of anyone else, but because I was very, well, shy, I suppose. I do know one or two words of Estonian, but I couldn’t seem to get them out. My writing this morning was intensely personal and somehow I left myself unprotected from the rough and tumble of ordinary life. Anyway, I survived. I posted my letter, and bought bread and jam and chocolate and chamomile tea, and made it back. I have a note in large letters in the car – Look Left. Every other car seems to come at me suddenly from the left. It works well.

When I got back to the cabin – so wonderful to be back at the cabin – there was a letter! How amazing is that! There’s no letterbox, and it fell from the top of the door with a bit of lilac the postman had put to wedge it in place, to make sure I didn’t miss it. If you’re reading this, I’m sure you are, Thank you! Such a lovely surprise.

There is an incredible intensity about this experience. The Biodanza Festival opened me to incredible possibilities. It has also left me vulnerable to the world, and I must be careful about that. Oh, I have a game I play here. I’m counting the birch trees. I think Winnie the Pooh invented the game, or Christopher Robin. Yesterday there were two hundred and twenty two. Today there are more: two hundred and twenty nine. Odd, eh!

Being in this place, with an almost absolute connection to the natural world, is quite stunning. Estonia, you really are something special.