Stalker

In the film Stalkerby Andrei Tarkovsky (do search it out if you haven’t yet seen it) the stalker of the title takes clients into the Zone, an area that is ‘off limits’, at the centre of which lies the Room, a place where your dearest wishes come true. In the Forest the Zone is to be found in Lady Park Wood, an area fenced off for scientific research to see what would happen to the forest free of human interference (also that of fallow, roe and muntjac deer, boar and mountain bikers too). This struck me as strange, particularly strange here, in a landscape that has for centuries been so strongly shaped by man. But then again, the desire to enter a zone free from ourselves, free from things we have shaped, somewhere new to explore, that is a very deep desire: it is called wilderness. Neil, I really…