Looking Up, Looking Out
Just do the things. DO THEM. The words I wrote and underlined in a quiet mountain hut the week after my father died. He breathed his last breath as I sat unknowingly beside him, in a small armchair in a small room, in a small town in New Zealand. Feeling suddenly enclosed, I opened the door to the autumn air. As the room cooled, and the light faded, all I could think about was mountains. A few days later, I was walking a ridge in the shadow of the mighty Southern Alps. The vastness, the majesty, the big brooding skies the balm I needed to soothe and calm the tumult of my racing mind. It felt nourishing to be amongst those peaks. The languid exhaustion of well-used muscles. The pique of the weather on my cheeks. Deep, deep breaths beneath a silent canopy of stars. Space, time and peace.
Returning to the city, I realised that as well as loving those mountain days for what they contained I also loved them for what they stood for. I had said yes to a gut feeling, an instinctive response. I heard a powerful call for a change of gear, a change of place and — for once — answered without hesitation. They brought to mind too elle luna’s lovely framing of what it means to step out of the ‘should’ and into the ‘must’. ‘Must’ for me has always meant getting out and about, being curious about what’s around the next bend, exploring the edges of what I know. Exposing myself to different vistas, people, things, ideas. Experiencing, sensing, feeling, noticing, connecting. Exploring new perspectives, asking questions, making meaning, joining dots. Helping others to do the same. And wherever I am, looking up. Always looking up.
I write this a few months later, perched on a rocky outcrop on the Canadian seaboard. I am taking my own advice and ‘doing the things’. Stepping away from my ‘ordinary’ and following my nose for a while. Making time to explore and enquire — physically, emotionally and intellectually — what it means to interrupt my everyday ‘being’ and purposefully plunge into different surroundings, different webs of interaction. I am exposing myself to different models and processes for connecting with nature and the wider world, actively seeking out people who share this interest, and delving into the research and writing that supports it. I’ve been exploring quietly, privately for a while, but those New Zealand mountain days fuelled in me a sense of urgency to dig in more consciously, more rigorously. To share more of what I’ve experienced and learned so far.
I do this for myself — to deepen and improve my own outdoors-based coaching and facilitation work. But I also do this for everybody — to help and enable more people to access what’s there, everywhere, all around that can soothe, comfort, invigorate and inspire. And as cheesy as it sounds, I do this for our extraordinary, beautiful, astonishing planet. It feels like we humans are at — even past — crisis point in terms of our relationship with the natural world. That needs to change. We need to be so much more literate, so much more aware, when it comes to engaging intelligently with the world in all its stunning complexity.
“When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don’t know ourselves.Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper.”— Escape, D.H. Lawrence
I love this poem for its powerful, visceral call to action, but I think it speaks to quieter things too. Whether spending time in the forest, mountains, sea or urban jungle, getting out there with purpose helps us see differently. It draws us into the systems we are part of, to notice their constantly moving parts. We see more clearly that nothing exists in a vacuum. We come to understand, in the words of Scottish naturalist John Muir, that ‘When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe’.
So beginning today I am going to write more, share more. Interviews, stories, little essays — and from time to time perhaps a poem or two. Drawing on my growing archive and raft of experience coaching, facilitating and process designing with The Point People, Spark+Mettle, Journeys for Change, Street Wisdom and others I am going to probe more deeply into the whys and wherefores of what happens when we switch it up, change our circumstances, get outdoors, spend time in nature, put ourselves in the way of the unknown. When we actively choose to step away from the ordinary hum and the drum of what we’re doing and immerse ourselves in ‘otherness’ for a while. Whether a walk in the park or a week in the mountains. What changes? What difference does it make? How does it inform our thinking and our doing? How can we best tune into and scaffold such experiences? I am looking forward to the discoveries ahead.
I am also looking forward to making connections and growing a community of people who share this interest. If you’re reading this and are curious, please say hello. I welcome all suggestions, questions and contributions. Plans are also brewing for a couple of retreats and learning journeys for like-minds in NZ, Canada and the UK in 2018. It’d be good to have some friends along for the ride.
