I wrote recently about how much I enjoyed Tolkien’s copious and varied use of the word ‘queer’ in The Lord of the Rings.

‘But the forest is queer’, said Merry Brandybuck in Chapter 5. He was talking about The Old Forest, just over the border of The Shire to the East. ‘Everything in it is very much more alive, more aware of what is going on, so to speak’. The forest is different to the ordinary world, a mysterious place.

Whilst Tolkien’s use of the word queer is clearly more about describing strangeness or uncanniness than anything else, it’s difficult to read it as a gay man and not muse on the contemporary meanings as well. For me, there’s common ground between both readings of the word; queer can be both curious and, well, queer. The chapter about the Old Forest is a good example. It is magical, and there are forces both good and bad at work in its ancient tangle of roots and branches. And it is also a place I project all kinds of fantasies onto, fantasies of escape, of finding likeminded spirits, of difference and of feeling more at home than in the mundane world.

Whilst gay men have historically coalesced into communities in the big cities (that may well be changing with the arrival of the internet and social media) there is something in wild spaces that also draws them, and all other creates who might not feel they quite fit into mainstream society. It brings to mind Derek Jarman’s writing in his book Modern Nature, where he recalls summer nights up on Hampstead Health, walking through the woodland and finding men gathered in a timeless tableaux round a fire. As well as the bars and clubs of central London, men also went up to the woods, to meet, to not be alone, to make friends, flirt, have sex, fall in love, have a laugh and a drink together or just to enjoy the trees in the moonlight.

Another example is Luke Tuner’s book Out of the Woods. Throughout the book he explores his relationship to Epping Forest during the turbulent time when he was coming to terms with his sexuality. The forest is neither particularly welcoming nor malign, it is a place that is other, unworldly, a place to get lost in and find oneself, a queer sort of place.

Personally, I never really felt at home on the ‘scene’ as it’s known, where I felt just as much a fish out of water as anywhere else, but I DID feel at home out in the woods, or up in the hills, the wild spaces where the skewed values of human civilisation held no sway. These are places where the things that the ignorant and bigoted might use to separate and divide people have no currency at all – no wonder so many feel a sense of peace when then spend time in a wood.

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I painted this glade which I photographed last summer. I liked that late afternoon light falling across the grasses and lighting up the trees in the distance, beckoning one to go further and explore. Now the weather is turning lovely once more, it’s high time to get out into the woods and experience that otherness again. I love how, when you step over the threshold of a wood or even just a small copse, things feel difference instantaneously. Sounds are muffled, the world outside the trees feels cut off, the air feels changed and your senses sharpened. It’s queer, how different it is, but in a good way.