Mind whirring, head full. Al Humphreys takes us on a walk in the woods to find the balm for a busy brain.
Two real worlds exist at the same time.
The first is the bright light of my laptop screen. Deadlines and the inbox. It needs doing but it simultaneously drains and irritates me.
With a spare hour until my next call, I step outside. This is the world too easy to forget amidst the busyness of our modern lives.
It is a windy, cold day overhead, the spring branches bursting with green. As I wander among the trees, my mind still churning crossly, I gradually begin to notice the sunlight strobing between the branches and the dancing shadows on the forest floor. I take several very deep breaths and smile.
The simple act of stepping away from the thin, restless stress of digital life and walking through my nearest patch of green quietly rewires my day.
The change in this wood is incredible since I was last here. I am panting now as I walk briskly up a path, and right now I stop, gasp and smile as a buzzard flies low through the woods, just above the ground. I have never seen that before.
And now, in front of me, is an area of bright bluebells that looks ridiculously vivid, as though it were created by AI. But it was not. This is the real world I choose, right here.
This place is a small patch of young woodland in an old quarry near the motorway, with paths for dog walkers and a CCTV camera watching for fly-tippers. An ordinary, everyday scrap of green on the edge of town. But as I leaned against a silver birch beneath the clear blue sky, I am struck by the delight and relief that walking in nature gives me.
I realise that, despite spending my life rabbiting on about the great outdoors, I sometimes stop listening to my own advice about going outside, without even realising, until I become too busy writing about nature to actually spend any time in it. What a buffoon.
The more I have learned about my depleted neighbourhood and broken planet – and that these are one and the same thing – the less I have been able to look the other way. I find it all distressing, depressing and enraging, but going for walk gives perspective to the worries churning around my mind.
I can never underestimate how spectacular it can feel to step outside.
Close that laptop and lace up those shoes.
