Wilderness.

For me there is no wilderness. There are only places where a lot of people don’t go. Trail walking for the BLM was perhaps the wildest thing we’ve done but there were hunters and hikers and fire rings and trees down that had to be GPSed. We live near Dartmoor in the UK, wild, sometimes dangerous always beautiful whatever the weather.

In the ‘wilderness’ we walk, walking is my religion, my saviour, my grace, my link with the ancient people, with my ancient self. Walking I live, walking I am alive, I am whole. Walking I feel, walking I savour the scents, the breezes, the sounds of nature, of the potential, of the new, of the now lost. Walking I escape the humdrum, the mundane. Only walking can I ‘turn up stuff’, find a flint tool on Dartmoor or an engraving on a rock in the Rio Grande. Only walking can I hear the coyote in Ute Valley or find a halo of barbed wire.

Walking clears my mind, reduces my needs to basics, walking strips away. When I walk I enter the wilderness which in turn enters me. Walking I am at one, walking I am me, not the me you see.

That for me is wilderness.

I’m a grateful son, a lucky husband and a proud father (he took the picture).
Walk in beauty!!