Rebecca Teulon-Rose
This blog post explores nature and walking as a neurodivergent writer, as a series of micro-essays collated from field-notes written in the Highlands and Islands.
Awakening
Over four inches of rain had fallen in the past 48 hours. Caught in a heavy deluge yesterday, I had succumbed to the wetness and embraced listening as a physical action. Each drop stotted upon landing, allowing the dampness to further invade my personal space. The cacophony of water permeated my being until I thrummed with the rain’s rhythm.
***
Waking to a soft, sensual smirr, I knew this was the opportunity to ease my restlessness. Despite the sinister black skies promising a future downpour, I left the house and made my way purposefully to the edge of the village. The burn flowed high, caressing the belly of the bridge and spitting into my face.
I arrived at the forestry plantation and began to climb the steep track, following inky-brown rivulets bursting from the ground. Rounding the corner, a ravine flowed with ferocity over boulders covered in patches of moss like acne over a sleeping troll’s face. These desire lines of water became an orchestra of sounds, softening the higher I climbed. Following deer tracks, I crossed that margin where it feels like I have stepped over a hidden boundary into another world; a slight shift in perspective and everything changes. When I look back and cannot find my starting point, as if it was never real in the first place. The land has folded and twisted like origami, revealing itself not as a solid, static mass but a living, changing being, letting me breathe with her. This is the shifting that happens when I am in the hills – as the altitude changes, so does my attitude; an untamed, unnamed part of me shakes free, and I encounter it – an awakening, a remembering;
minds quieten
as we walk,
memories sharpen
as we walk,
stillness settles
as we walk,
time deepens
as we walk,
souls awaken
as we walk.
Thin Places
Twilight beckons with a crepuscular hand; I leave the dishwashing and slip outside – down the road, until the village street lamps are behind me and the light reaches the sky extensively, intensely. Gloaming.
I walk trance-like to the loch, feeling the day slip to dusk. The sky is light and colour combined – shimmering, glimmering indigo, slate, and sapphire. Trees rim the horizon, with not a murmur of movement. Their vertical arrowheads hold themselves still, as if petrified by the beauty. The moon rises with the dark, exuding ferocious elegance. Wild, wilful, wondrous. Stars appear behind, slowly, cautiously, peeking through lost locks of cirrus clouds.
The onset of darkness is intimate, a gradual caress of the senses, and a contrast to the cold now snatching me from my daze. With only a thin fleece for company over my indoor clothes, I feel the midwinter air surging through my core like electric shocks. The energy in this freezing night is palpable – my teeth chatter as loud as my heart, my mind fizzes, and my soul sparks. My entire being is a blazing inferno, frozen in this moment – balancing the line between thin places. Life feels permeable, full of possibility – and, truly, incredibly alive.
Reflections
I am in a land unfathomably beautiful. My emotions are exquisite, heightened to a sense I have not known before. Yet I hold my pen, feel my paper, glance at my words, and know it will never be enough. How can I make these letters, words and sentences more visceral, more tangible? These trees, mountains, moors and sea are already magnificent – they do not need muddling with my metaphors. Nothing human can translate this; it only transforms it to something less of itself.
Walking opens pathways to inner places, a solace to retreat to. I try to capture what I see; transcribing from heart and head to paper leaves space for more wonder and lets me make sense of an often confusing and chaotic world. But sometimes, I am trespassing, stepping near a threshold where my words do not belong. Sometimes it is enough for me to wander in the world and be humble in accepting that not every moment needs to be captured. It can live as an essence in my emotions and enhance other experiences. For as long as the world holds this beauty, for as long as I can breathe and absorb this beauty, it is enough.
Returning
Walking purges me of identity. It feels like a stripping back, a peeling of old skin, of bark, for new cambium to grow. Masking becomes part of who I am, so it becomes harder and harder to separate my mask from myself. This is the same for writing as it is socially, and I find myself stuttering, editing between mind and page, until the rawness and spontaneity of emotions are lost to the eraser of the brain.
It takes practice to release old habits into the fire and use the ashes as soil for new resolutions to germinate. To let feelings flow freely and trust each word as it comes, without doubt or analysis. Dissolving from one consciousness to another into what is real and what is not, a merging and moulding with the environment. With each step forward, the mind takes a step backward – then the words invite themselves to be written.
This is the altered state I enter when I let my mind and body wander, trusting the senses and the self. I follow the sky, and all it holds: horizon, cloud, rain; sun, and wind. Until day turns the page into night and I trace the starry map of constellations to the edge – where elements and emotions combine. Sometimes there is a nook, a shelter of hooded pines settled snugly by a loch. This place holds me; it is home.
Perhaps, to feel our most content
our most true, authentic self,
we must let our mind
as well as our body
roam, unencumbered,
and free; a homecoming
what returns –
with walking.