21/10/2026
Our friends from No-mad Expedition are traveling and crossed the border of Italy! In the incredible area of the Dolomites nature is surrounding them and we received another great story, in the photos you see the horses wearing bitless bridle F.R.A. sierra, halter F.R.A. roma and barebackpad F.R.A. macon ... thank you guys... here comes your story: "THE FOREST IS MY HOME
I love nature. And this isn’t some empty cliché people casually throw around because it sounds good. I’ve been living in nature for the past thirteen years, after spending years moving through megacities, from Istanbul, Berlin and Amsterdam to Addis Ababa.
My parents instilled that love of nature in me. Although we spent half our lives in Zagreb and the other half in Zaprešić, almost every weekend was reserved for excursions, hiking and trips to the rivers around Karlovac. For quite some time, we also worked as caretakers of a mountain hut at Veliki Alan, in the Northern Velebit mountains.
Later, I tried to pass that same love on to the many kids who came through our swimming club in Orahovica. Several times a year, we organised camping trips lasting a few days, deep in the forests of Papuk Nature Park. Everyone came along, from the youngest to the oldest, and what happened there was fascinating.
On the first day, hardly anyone knew what to do with themselves. The kids stuck to their usual groups, stared at their phones, complained and kept asking when we were going home. They missed the internet, video games and all the things they seemed to have forgotten how to live without.
Then the batteries would start running out.
One by one, the screens went dark, and an entirely different world began to open up before them. They started connecting, talking and figuring out what to do. They pulled out their knives and axes, made bows, arrows and spears, built shelters, lit fires and cooked sausages and bacon. They invented their own games and adventures, without apps, instructions or adults constantly telling them what to do.
The kids who, on the first day, could barely look at one another without reaching for their phones would, just a few days later, become a team that had built something together, weathered the rain, got filthy from head to toe and laughed at the stupidest things.
And then the final day would arrive.
Suddenly, nobody wanted to go home. There would be sadness, tears and pleas to stay for a few more days. The forest was no longer a place without internet. It had become a place where they had their own games, secret hideouts and shared memories.
I always wondered what had really happened during those few days. Had I taught them something, or had I simply given them the chance to rediscover something they already knew but had somehow forgotten along the way?
Maybe children don’t always need another activity, another app or another carefully organised programme designed to prepare them for the future. Maybe, sometimes, they simply need space, time and freedom to explore, make mistakes, argue, make up and discover what they can do with their own hands.
After thirteen years of living in nature, I’ve become increasingly convinced that modern humans haven’t just drifted away from the forest. We’ve also drifted away from ourselves, from one another and from the simple things that make life meaningful.
We communicate more, yet talk to each other less. We have unlimited access to information, yet increasingly little time to think about it. We can speak to anyone in the world within seconds, while finding it harder and harder to form genuine connections with the people sitting right beside us.
I don’t believe technology itself is evil. I use it, too. It allows me to create, work, travel and stay connected to people who are far away. The problem begins when the tool we’ve created starts dictating how we live. When we can no longer tolerate a few minutes of silence, and when our first instinct is to reach for a screen whenever we feel bored.
But boredom matters. Silence matters. Time in which seemingly nothing happens matters, too.
I don’t have to film everything, post it online or turn it into content. I can sit beside a river for hours, watch the mist rising above a meadow or listen to the wind moving through the treetops. Some things are valuable precisely because they happened only to me, without an audience or the need for anyone else to validate them.
I don’t want to romanticise life in nature. It isn’t always easy or pleasant. It comes with physical labour, uncertainty, cold, heat, breakdowns and situations in which things refuse to go the way I imagined. The forest isn’t a holiday resort that guarantees comfort.
But that is precisely why I find a kind of freedom in this life that I struggled to find elsewhere. A freedom that doesn’t come from being able to have everything I want, but from realising that I need far less to live a good life than society has spent years telling me.
I don’t need constant noise to feel alive. I don’t have to keep buying, upgrading and replacing things to feel that I’m making progress. Sometimes, all I need is a roof over my head, a fire, something to eat and a few good people around me.
Looking at the world around me, I increasingly feel that we’re witnessing a profound social shift. I might even call it a kind of divide.
On one side, I see a world increasingly embracing technology as the centre of human existence. Cities will grow, automation will take over more and more jobs, artificial intelligence will become an integral part of everyday life, and technology will move ever closer to the human body. The line between human and machine will become increasingly blurred. What seems like science fiction to me today may be perfectly ordinary tomorrow.
On the other side, I see people who will try to slow down. Not necessarily because they hate technology or want to escape civilisation, but because they will feel the need to preserve something that cannot easily be measured, automated or digitised. They will try to live closer to the land, grow their own food, depend less on systems they don’t understand and take back control of at least some parts of their daily lives.
I don’t think these two worlds will be entirely separate, nor do I believe one will necessarily be better than the other. Still, I believe the difference between them will have less and less to do with where people live and more and more to do with how they understand their own existence.
Will we use technology as a tool that helps us live, or will we begin shaping our lives around its demands?
Will we prepare children for the future solely by teaching them to compete in an increasingly digital world, or will we also teach them how to light a fire, plant a tree, build a shelter and work together when all the screens go dark?
To me, these aren’t merely philosophical questions. They determine how I choose to live, what I consider valuable and what kind of world I will leave behind for those who come after me.
The future I’m talking about isn’t some distant fantasy. It’s right around the corner. Technology is advancing at an incredible pace, and we’re only beginning to understand what that means for our relationships, our attention, our independence and our sense of identity. At the same time, the natural world we depend on is increasingly exposed to the pressures we ourselves create.
That’s why I don’t necessarily see returning to nature as a return to the past. To me, it’s an attempt to preserve something essential for the future.
I don’t have to reject the modern world to preserve knowledge about the land, water, plants, animals and community. I simply have to stop believing that everything old is useless, everything new is necessarily better and every problem can be solved with yet another piece of technology.
When I say the forest is my home, I don’t mean only the place where I live. To me, home is a place where I feel connected to the world around me, where I recognise the rhythm of the seasons and understand that I am not separate from everything that surrounds me.
Perhaps that is what I most wanted to pass on to the children who came camping with us in Papuk. Not just how to light a fire or make a bow, but how to connect with others without intermediaries, how to create without instructions and how to discover that the best things in life often require almost nothing beyond time, attention and presence.
Because the forest doesn’t need me to exist. It was here long before me and, if we let it, it will be here long after me.
I am the one who needs it.
The forest isn’t a place I go to escape the world. It’s the place where I finally understood which world I belong to. Nikola."
