…it’s not enough that we learn a location, a way of being that’s in balance with nature. We must also learn a direction, a way of moving toward wildness. The mythology of our civilization is onto something when it says “we can’t go back.” We (individually and collectively) find it psychologically much easier to drift deeper into comfort and control and predictability, than to open ourselves to rawness and otherness and flux. How often does a child who wears shoes become an adult who goes barefoot? Have you ever seen a “property” owner remove a lock from a door? How many people, as they get older, have fewer possessions and care less whether those possessions get scratched? We try to go “back to nature” by moving to the woods and installing buildings and utilities, but how many people move to the city and take them out?
We have to learn, if not these changes, then thousands of changes like them, and the relentless focus and expansive awareness to drive them. If we don’t, as long as we favor domesticating motion, we’ll get a ratcheting effect that will seduce us from the healthiest society straight through self-absorption into hell. (Ran Prieur, ‘The Animal in the Dark Tower‘)
In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped. (Tao Te Ching, v.48)
(Advance warning: there will be a lot of photos in this post.)
Last November I moved to a rented room on the edge of a village much closer to where I work. The bike journey went down from 40-45mins each way to more like 15mins, saving me time and effort, allowing me to set my alarm a little later in the morning and to get back a little earlier in the afternoon, arriving a little less exhausted/cold/wet/sweaty than I did before. Other aspects of life here give me a bit more of a headache, eg: distance from shops, scarcity of public transport, dependence on lifts when carrying stuff that’s too heavy for a bike, eg: guitar amp, but for the most part I’ve improved the quality of my day-to-day life, not least because I’m basically out in the countryside now: minimal traffic noise (some passenger jets), no street light outside my window, the occasional tractor, garden machinery, dogs and all the birds coming and going… It’s pretty nice all things considered.
Anyway, the reason for this post was to share another small way I’ve improved my life over the last couple of months. I was prompted by advice to stay off my bike for an extended period in order to give a chronic inflammation I’ve been getting in the perineum/prostate area a proper chance to heal. So instead of cycling up a busy-ish country road to work I’ve been walking a series of footpaths, tracks and backroads along a different route. My commute now takes around 45mins in the morning and more like an hour in the afternoon, the extra time taken up by bits of foraging, interactions with farm animals & wildlife, general dawdling and the fact that I’m usually barefoot (I figured this was a bad idea in the mornings in case I got stuck by a thorn or splinter which I couldn’t easily get out). But I don’t view it as a loss over all, although it did take a surprising amount of self-persuasion to get started:
“Don’t think about it as dead time, extended from your compulsory working hours, but as an intrinsically pleasant activity to fill your time. Something you’re doing through an active choice, not because you’ve been reluctantly forced into it. You claim to love being out in the wilder places, yet spend nearly all of your time in intensively managed gardens and allotments or sitting indoors in human-only spaces, more often than not on your own. You claim to enjoy walking at your own pace and in directions of your choosing, but most of your walking is done in lockstep behind a mower staring at straight lines on the ground and going back and forth, back and forth… You know hardly anything of the land here – start to make a commitment. See the changes through the seasons. See what the wildlife is up to. Slow things down and take time to look at things a little deeper rather than whizzing past, thinking ‘that looks nice but I’ve got somewhere to get to and don’t want to run late’. Gather food & medicine along your way. Spend less time reading media describing faraway places which you’ll never see and more time reading (and participating in!) the news of your actual locality.” etc etc.
So here’s a photo record from a day back in July with comments (references to Patrick Whitefield go to his excellent book How To Read the Landscape, which I highly recommend, especially to UK-based readers). Click to embiggen and scroll through:
End of the road, start of the woods
Morning sunlight lights up the tunnel sides (only in high summer)
Into a recent clear-cut
Had a look into the tubes and they seem to be a mix of broadleaf native trees. Outcompeted by elm (?) seedlings, brambles and foxgloves at this point…
Into denser mixed wood. The clay soils hold water at the surface all the time except after prolonged drought
Top of the path. Lots of mint and brambles. Have seen rabbits and foxes when rounding the corner
Overgrown side-path. Too brambly to walk in shorts or barefoot, so tend to take the main path instead
Coming out of the wood. Always expect to surprise some wild creatures when I pop up through here but it’s only ever been cows and I think one pheasant
Tree shadows occupy half the field. These days the shadow has spread to the horizon. I think it’s a planted grass pasture as they appear to be mainly one species (don’t ask which one, I’m crap with grasses) and just a few docks and clovers dotted about. Took shoes off for this in the mornings when the dew was very wet. Don’t bother since they cut it all for hay
View over to the faraway chalk hills. Lots of plane trails
Hit the road Jack. Time to put the shoes back on. I sometimes run this stretch if I’m late for some reason
Nice big oaks lining the road. Further on interspersed with Scots Pine which don’t seem so healthy
First horse field
Concrete trackway past a client’s house
Beautifully strimmed ditch and mowed verges…
More horses. The light brown one always seems to have an erection, oddly enough. Strange S-shped path they’ve made. Patrick Whitefield says they separate grazing areas from pooing areas, hence very short grass in the foreground and tall thistles, docks, nettles etc in the background
Well maintained home & gardenof an elderly couple. I speak to the lady sometimes if she’s out. Her dogs come barking out at me, charging past and then back to announce my arrival. Sometimes I can sneak past without them noticing though, whih is very satisfying!
More horse pasture
Very… friendly horses, sometimes getting a little too close for comfort. One large male keeps trying to manoevre in front of me but I’ve managed to avoid getting kicked in the head so far
Another thistly area. Got some nice lingering splinters from here so tend to keep shoes or sandals on for this area
“So, you gonna give us any food or not then mate?”
Arrival
And coming back the other direction after a hard day’s work…
Recently cut haymeadow in front, sprayed or harrowed field in the back. They’re lazy about keeping the farm hedges trimmed around here, which is probably good in some ways, bad in others
Gate from other side of the meadow, wood well chewed by horses over the years. They have two foals in here now with their mothers. The dying oak in the middle has had its bark stripped from the ground to around 2 metres high. I’m assuming the horses did it but don’t know if it was biting or scratching/rubbing or something else. Another tree has lighter coloured bark in a similar position on the trunk which make me think it’s headed for the same fate
Trying to splay my toes out as wide as possible. I noticed a difference in broadness and musculature after only a few weeks. Toes still quite badly squished by shoes though, especially the outer pinkies which get badly rubbed in my current walking shoes. Barefoot walking is good for so many reasons. It took a while to toughen the soles up a bit so now I’m only troubled by thistles, brambles and the occasional sharp stone. I feel more grounded and have better balance now as a consequence, though still can’t shake the habit of looking down to the ground rather than at my surroundings
More bushy hedges and uncut verges. The result of a petty neighbourly dispute
The busiest road I have to cross
Another shadow pic
Chamomile, pineapple weed, scented mayweed? One of those… These grow in a rectangular patch just by the entrance back into the first hay pasture. Mystery solved when young cows were moved in to graze the ‘aftermath’ after the hay was cut. This is where their feed troughs are laid out. Whitefield says it’s usual to get these plants by gates in fields frequented by livestock because the soil compaction and puddling of water caused by trampling provides the most favourable growing conditions
Don’t know why the path snakes like this but I quite like it. In the couple of weeks after the hay was cut it was the only area that was still green, presumably because the grass had been kept low and in a vegetative state by trampling whereas the long grasses everywhere else had gone to seed and browned off at the base. Browze line on the trees at the woodland edge, presumably the work of cows, perhaps complemented by deer
Another view to the hills. Must be nice in that house…
Back in the woods with some heavy-handed forestry in evidence to the right, smashing through all the hazels, birches and others, presumably for some purpose known only to them
Ground well churned up by machinery
Nicer pathway. This is the one I take instead of the brambly one
Leaving my mark… I have a saying that “Your feet are as clean as the last thing they stepped in” but this clay mud sticks and lingers all the way home
Something for the trackers to get excited about
Woodland thistles, buttercups, ragwort, fleabane, more mint. Loads of nice tall angelica plants cropped up along this section of the path about a month after this photo was taken (August, I think)
Scots pines and others getting ‘drawn up’ by growing up to the light in each others company. That’s a thistle in the front doing the same, with my walking stick rested up against it to show just how high it’s gone
Bracken likes this spot, also lots of elm (?) seedlings coming up
I’m assuming these pines were planted
Back to the clear cut area
Foxgloves finishing their flowering. A few St. John’s Worts dotted about
Soil is sandier here
I think this is where the elm seedlings (? – I will make a correct identification one of these days!) are coming from. When the wind gets into these they make a wonderful rustling – like waves on a beach or distant applause. I’m guessing the lack of lower branches means they were surrounded by other tall trees not so long ago. Hopefully they won’t suffer too much from their sudden exposure. Don’t know why the foresters would have chosen to leave them behind
My slightly bent hawthorn walking stick. The crook was chosen for pulling down fruit- or nut-laden branches
Happy oaks and hazels in late afternoon sun. Unfortunately the squirrels took most of the hazelnuts; we’ll see about the acorns, but it’s shaping up to be a good year so I’d be surprised if they made much of a dent in that harvest
Lots of nettles around this sign for some reason
…and back into the badlands
Keeping my landlord sweet. Wet footprints dry up and evaporate on wooden floors; muddy footprints, not so well…
It’s started getting dark in the mornings now, so I don’t know how much longer I’m going to keep doing this. Probably for a while still because I’m getting rewarded by sightings of deer now that I’m travelling through their preferred time of day (it’s surprisingly easy to creep up on them, especially when bare feet are keeping the noise levels down – just freeze when they look up at you and wait until they persuade themselves they’re just being paranoid and go back to their browsing. My best so far was around 15m before they barked at me and bounded off into the trees. Magic…) The inflammation hasn’t gone away yet, sadly, so I’ll have to look to other possible remedies for that, but the whole experience has been so enriching thus far I don’t really mind. Would be nice to do the walk on a few frosty mornings in winter, with the light spearing through leafless trees… if there is any light by that point!
What other opportunities do we have to slow things down, go back in time, slip into deeper, infinitely more satisfying modes of being and how can we rearrange our lives to make the space for these things? Closing words from Martin Shaw, who has made inspiring attempts to sink deep into the land he describes as having ‘claimed’ him in Dartmoor:
