Inch by inch by inch
This is the year I turn 40. And it began with space and wild.
A micro-adventure north, amongst Highland peaks and lochs. Proportions gorgeous and epic. Layers and layers ongoing. Oranges, browns, mauves and greys. Gently shifting light, and rain like needles sometimes. Food for the mind, the heart and the soul. Thinking forwards, reflecting back. Hills, wind and weather by day and once darkness claimed the mountain vistas, cosy by a roaring fire.
On the exposed slopes of Beinn Eighe, the gradient steep — clambering slowly. Step by step, inch by inch — upwards, onwards. Turning often to revel in the landscape, stooping to peer at lichens and stones. Each small, small step building on the last until finally — the wild and windswept summit. Delighted and freezing as the needly rain struck our hot cheeks.
Cosy by the fire later on, the conversation turns to the small steps that make up any journey. To what it is to be patient sometimes, content with going gently. At this interstitial time of year — half an eye on the year that’s been, and half on all that lies ahead — it’s so easy to fixate on ‘progress’. “Has there been enough progress?” I write in my journal. Swiftly followed by “What is progress anyway? Why the rush?” Straight lines and upward trajectories seem to be our default mental model. We judge so much in terms of speed, advancement and accumulation. Especially ourselves.
My fellow Highland adventurer Ella talks instead about the value of preoccupation over time. That conviction comes from returning to something again and again. Finding it won’t go away. This is how we grow and nurture certainty. This is how we get surer about what we’re sure about. It is still inching forward, but via tiny circles — or even spirals perhaps. What if we valued this time-taking, these inches and circles — as much as we do pace, distance travelled and the thrill of the finish? Instead of chastising ourselves for not bounding, striding, forging ahead — what if — as on Beinn Eighe — we felt stronger in claiming and embracing our experiences along the way?
I am reminded of this a few weeks later at the movies, watching Free Solo, the story of climber Alex Honnold’s solo ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
A free climber, his goal is to scale 3200ft of vertical granite like Spiderman, alone and rope-free. It’s a nerve-wracking, intense, beautifully told tale of obsession and endeavour. But leaving the cinema, my head is full of inches once again. This human has such intimate acquaintance with this huge wall of sheer rock. Over years and years, he has taken time to get to know every crevice, every crack, every contour of his route. He has become so certain of his goal. And he has built intimate knowledge of his body too — his capacities, impulses, strengths and weaknesses. The headline may be reaching the summit, but he’s long been inching towards it. And on the day, scaling that towering rock face, he does it inch, by inch, by inch. Every cling, every reach, every extension of his fingertips, he strives for his audacious goal.
My goals may be far less physically audacious, but it feels nourishing and encouraging to stay with the inches. To celebrate the everyday, the little steps, the encounters and efforts that make up our lives and endeavours. I find it uplifting to think of the way forward like this — as more of a great forest to explore, than a path to a destination we are desperate to reach:
‘For how many years did I wander slowly
through the forest. What wonder and
glory I would have missed had I ever been
in a hurry!’
— from Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way — Mary Oliver
As my 40th birthday comes around, I am enjoying reflecting on my own ‘leaves and blossoms along the way’ — all the people, places, adventures and experiences that have woven the fabric of my life so far — an extraordinary tapestry of interaction. All of it making my perspective a little richer — extending, encouraging and challenging my thinking and doing. All of it helping me become surer of what I’m sure about.
In this, I count too the books, articles and poems I read, the art I see, the radio programmes and podcasts I hear. With them all, I am inching, circling, growing into my ever-changing shoes. A few that stand out recently include The Peace of Wild Things, The Body Keeps the Score, The Great Derangement*, the Ocean of Air and Museum of the Moon experiences, and, as I continue delving into the Māori language and world view, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa’s Taringa podcast.
And of course the humans. So many humans. Conversations with people like Anna Murray of Patternity, Anna Birney of Forum for the Future’s School of System Change and artist Laura Melissa Williams at a recent Nature Enquiry Weekend stretched my mind and my soul. The Point People continue to be a wonderfully hopeful, thoughtful collective and my nature-based work is richer thanks to my interactions with folk like Dr Jen McKeown of the Orange Bothy Project, Andy Hardie of Venture Mòr, Hamish Mackay Lewis, Jasmine Nunns of Kembali in Hong Kong, and Sam Rye in Australia.
So as I transition into this new decade, I feel freshly and keenly conscious of this multitude of inches. This incredible eco-system of experience that has nourished, nurtured and created me. In appreciation, I have launched a small birthday fundraiser for the World Land Trust — whose work is focused on protecting threatened eco-systems around the world for future generations. If these thoughts of inches strike a chord, do consider making a contribution.
To end, a poem I often circle back to. A celebration of wild days and serendipitous adventure. Always inches to be treasured.
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
Post Script — Seamus Heaney
*I am a big fan of finding books via your local library or independent bookshop. If neither is an option, in the UK, I warmly recommend Hive as a means of supporting the latter with your online purchases.
