Days in the wilderness
Our world is so tame. If you don’t put yourself out there, nothing much happens. If you do, there may be real danger, but you will never feel more alive.
Once, for a few precious days and nights, my partner and I hiked and camped high on Dartmoor, far away from campsites. We had nothing other than what we carried on our backs and what the moor provided. We collected water from streams, cooked our lentils and rice on a tiny camping stove and slept on flat ground where we chose. We tied a string between trees to dry our clothes and were visited by wild horses who roam free up there.
Afterwards I wrote, ‘Our third day on the moor dawned bright and sunny with a breeze… The effect had been achieved: there is some magic about the wilderness — some way in which it changes you. After a short time you can return to the busy world and you are different; because of this the world seems different. It happens when you have been at sea, and it also happens in the hills. It’s an issue of perspective. With this slightly new perspective we were happy to return to the villages below.’
Our world is so tame. The demands placed on us are so abstract and so people-based that we forget that we are animals, that we are of a living world and in a living world. In his book Feral, George Monbiot talks about rediscovering this when kayaking through big surf to get home in the gathering dusk, and being joined by dolphins alongside him in the waves.
If you don’t put yourself out there, you never experience these things. An element of real danger heightens the senses.
I still don’t know whether you are allowed to pitch a tent on Dartmoor, so we were probably breaking some law or by-law. Cycling through torrential rain in decent waterproofs is exhilarating. Sleeping under a billion stars is wonder itself. Hiking high in England’s hills in midwinter with snow, ice and early darkness requires all the right gear, good maps, a degree of fitness, and a good knowledge of what you’re doing and what your real limitations are.
Sailing out of sight of land requires a good boat, good preparation and again, a lot of knowledge — navigation, pilotage, weather forecasts, safety procedures, sailing techniques… Most of this knowledge can be gained from the internet and books, as well as from courses, good friends and of course practice, working up towards bigger adventures from smaller ones over the course of years.
This article first appeared in the Jersey Evening Post on 22 August 2019
