Wild Places

We've just completed our first planned 2015 "weekend off" from working in the outdoors. The event that kept us from our usual haunts of the Lake District; Yorkshire Dales & North Pennines was an 800 mile road trip. It was tiring but the joy of: a meal with parents; catching up with friends; an eighteenth birthday; a six day old grand daughter and the chance to visit an un-well friend all made for a special time.

As the miles and the towns of Merseyside; the Midlands and the South East of England passed us by it struck me just how much concrete and tarmac cover the surface of our country and how many "shed -like" buildings we rely on to satisfy our need to consume: coffee; fast food; DIY; cars; clothes; the list goes on. The tension in a seething mass of "car bound" humanity that rendered sections of the M25 an enormous car park frustrated by its inability to reach its destination on time all re-affirmed a long held view of just how much we have a deep inner need to connect with the "wild places" of our created environment. What a contrast to when we journey on foot; by canoe; or descend through the vertical realm of the underworld on ropes where the honest labour of our bodies and mindful interpretation of environment replace the drone of a diesel engine and the impersonal promptings of satellite navigation systems. I do believe that this connection which is yearned for and sought by many but equally masked, buried and foreign to others is a matter of the soul and its innate desire to connect with its origin:

I look up to the mountains—
    does my help come from there?
 My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth    

 

Psalm 121: 1 & 2