Then the small trees that got chopped down today wouldn’t go to waste. They added nutrients to the soil and could even prevent landslides. I pondered these things as I followed Iwao back up the slope.

And yet collectively cared-for green spaces are especially effective at giving rise to supportive networks. A 2017 analysis of urban community gardens in cities as far-flung as Zagreb, Croatia, Flint, Michigan, and Melbourne, Australia, found that green spaces build social capital.

How do we as citizens put things right? By, as Jung wrote, ‘touching nature from the inside’. Walking in the woods, lying on the grass, swimming in the sea, practising gratitude for our food, the air we breathe, the water we bathe in, the animals and stars and sunsets we delight in. Seeking the ‘numinous’ again, the sacred and the awesome in the