On Loving a Wounded World

Hello from the east coast of Scotland, where the skylarks are singing and the air smells of sea and salt.

I’m trying something a little different today and recording this essay for you on loving a wounded world.

So make yourself a cuppa, settle in somewhere comfortable, and come north with me for a little while…

My old campervan has many admirable qualities, but sadly speed is not one of them. She struggled heroically up the long winding roads like an asthmatic donkey. Second gear became aspirational. Lorries appeared behind me with the menace of sharks scenting blood in the water while I crawled upwards at approximately the speed of a continental drift.

The road rounded another bend and suddenly the hills rose up before me in great sweeping folds. The bracken was still that dirty copper-brown of early summer before it fully unfurls itself into a lush green. Heather stained the hillsides a deep mud-red, like old mulled wine spilled into the earth.

And the sky — Oh That Sky. Vast bruised clouds dark with rain, while shafts of silver light break through in sudden luminous ribbons. The sky moving constantly across the hills in that restless dance between spring rain and sunshine, leaving the moorland darkened almost purple beneath shadow one moment, and blazing gold the next.

I tapped the steering wheel affectionately and said, “That’s my girl,” as the van wheezed its triumphant way over the brow of the hill and into a lay-by overlooking the moors.

And there it was, this wonderful rush certain landscapes give me. The strange euphoric feeling of being both utterly tiny and somehow expanded at the same time. As though the vastness of the land briefly knocks the edges off all your worries and reminds you that you are part of something far bigger and older than yourself.

It’s one of my favourite feelings in the whole wide world.

I had decided, on instinct, to take the scenic route from Barnard Castle to the Scottish Borders through the North Pennines and Northumberland National Park rather than the faster road north.

I am so glad I did.

There is research now about awe. Scientists, delightfully late to what poets and shepherds have known forever, have found that feelings of awe and wonder improve wellbeing, reduce stress, quieten the endless chatter of the self, and help us feel more connected to the world around us. Studies suggest that moments of awe in nature can increase wellbeing and reduce anxiety and depression.

It makes sense, really.

Because standing beneath a huge sky or looking across a moor does something to human arrogance. The ego, so noisy and demanding in daily life, briefly sits down and shuts up.

For a few moments on those roads, the noise was gone. I was just a girl travelling north with the windows rolled down despite the cold, with Peewits calling from somewhere on the moors. Sunlight moving through the hills in great shifting sheets. I felt awe, certainly and wonder too. But also something else that is harder to name.

Relief, perhaps. Relief at remembering the world is still capable of being wonderful.