Last week I felt desolate. So I went for a walk.
I find the countryside to be good company in most moods, whether I’m creatively blocked and lethargic or happy and energetic. But I find nature particularly soothing when I’m plagued by troubling thoughts. It gives me clarity.
In The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, compiled by John Koenig, I found a term that perfectly described my recent state of mind: nodus tollens, the realisation that the story of one’s life no longer makes sense. An image of my own life as a stack of unrealised short stories came hurtling towards me, resolute and sharp-edged.
I tried walking this feeling out by putting one foot in front of the other. But some feelings aren’t easy to subdue, and must be wrestled with. We must willingly go inside the lion’s cave and seek out what we fear. So I had no choice but to continue walking.
On almost every level, I no longer recognise my life. Death and estrangement have removed many once key players. I miss things that aren’t tangible. The life I imagined is not the one I have. The terrain I now traverse is foreign: from city to country, from being part of something to feeling my singularity. If I’m honest, it has left me feeling impoverished.
I walked up the old Roman road without passing a soul, and I tried to make sense of the cloud that mushroomed in my head. It all felt meaningless, my life a cautionary tale of how quickly your world can unravel until it no longer feels like your own.
Walking in the parks of London is different from walking in rural Wales. Even the capital’s largest couldn’t swallow me the way this Welsh valley does. I can almost feel the steps of those who have walked before me on this soil, and that gives me some sort of eternal wisdom. The human race is bound together, I think. In the end, we’re all the protagonists of our own stories. And no matter how swimmingly our lives may turn out, there will always be a time when we lament: “It wasn’t meant to be this way.”
An ancient wood filled with an ocean of buttercups invited me in. I love this time of year, when there’s an abundance of colour and life is in full bloom. And when you’re this close to nature you feel part of it, so by osmosis you too can bloom.
Such woods echo with stories that every visitor hears. I noticed an army of ants on the fallen trunk of a tree. They marched with purpose and togetherness. The sight made my aloneness feel acute: there’s safety in numbers. To feel yourself so completely without the weight of others can be freeing, but this kind of independence also makes me feel fragile.
I spotted a red admiral butterfly and then a cabbage white dancing around the last of the bluebells. They reminded me of Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote: “One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.” Conflict within oneself isn’t always a bad thing. Staring into the abyss can be beneficial: we reflect, we are forced to tell our stories, even if just to ourselves.
On my walk I realised that just because the world feels random and absurd, that does not mean it is void of meaning. Even among the dissonance, the chaos and impermanence, there are absolutes. The bee will always keep company with the hawthorn. Butterflies will always be beautifully fragile. A walk in the forest will always awaken the child in us.
No matter how alien and foreign my life may feel, my relationship with nature is solid ground beneath me. Joy can be found in the smallest of things. It takes courage to change the direction of your life. And more often than not, life won’t make sense. My walk in the forest reminded me that I can live with that.
