The joy of writing about being outside is that I generally don’t have to think too hard about what I want to write. My subject matter is there, all around me, whatever I find to focus on or what sets me thinking in a given moment. Of course, some days are more difficult than others: like most people, I imagine, I sometimes find it hard to be inspired by a constant grey or a biting cold; most of the point of being outside is to live it and enjoy it as much as possible. Blue skies and a gentle warmth are an easy means of setting the mind racing once again.
So it has proved over the past few days: a rare sweep of deep blue across the sky for most of the week, temperatures reaching their highest since last summer, and with them, new sets of ideas of where to explore outside, and what to explore on paper.
Where to begin on the back of days like these? Perhaps best with the subtleties of my southern English landscape – how an hour’s drive in any direction can shift what I see and how I experience the world around, even in the absence of extremes: no mountains, no deserts, no broad, sweeping rivers or endless forests.
To the west: drives across sweeping downs, where the land feels open, more exposed, bigger and bolder. I love the sense of being on top of a landscape rather than being lost within it. I’m reminded of trips in the big sky country of the American midwest, or can imagine myself as part of a desert caravan, cars and bikes taking the place of camels winding their paths across the horizon. Above all, those open spaces give me a proper notion of scale, of how much more there is out there that I want to explore.
To the east: wide vistas replaced by a landscape of Hobbit-like hills and swales, where the beauty lies in what’s hidden away and only becomes apparent when you’re right next to it. Gates act as portals from one space to the next. On one walk, they lead in succession from a wheat field, to an orchard, to an avenue of conifers, and finally one of those grand, but tired, country houses which England seems to have more than it knows what to do with. On this week’s outing, it’s more the flowers that come to the fore: carpets of bluebells accompanied by delicate celandine, fritillaries that remind us of upside-down tulips, even stinging nettles with their own white bloom.
And then closer to home, the intricate patterns of endless fields enclosed by woodland and hedgerows, as if the spaces behind are jealously guarded and we’re only occasionally allowed proper glimpses.
Perhaps the rarity of those glimpses make them all the more special: I remember the euphoria of a cycle ride last summer, an hour of enclosure by hedges and then no more than 10 seconds of open fields and broad horizons… but just those 10 seconds were worth the blindness before, an adrenaline rush to carry me home over steep hills and a sprint finish at the front of an imaginary peloton.
Or in a different way, I appreciate how the hedges and woods give us a sense of protection and of being lost in our own worlds. Another bike ride: this time with my son, down country lanes that at the same time lead both nowhere and everywhere, where being enclosed gives us the safety to enjoy nothing but where we are, what we are doing and who we are with.
The one constant across them all this week: nature’s colours and patterns. Those deep blue skies, crisscrossed by webs woven by aeroplanes flying in all directions; the bright yellow of fields of rapeseed; the fluorescent greens of fresh grass – one patch, an oasis in an otherwise desert of ruddy brown earth and scrub, particularly standing out.
And how to end a piece like this, when you don’t really want the days like these to end? Perhaps with a reminder to myself of how important it is to capture these moments – not necessarily always through writing or photos, but more just through not rushing, not succumbing to artificial or imagined deadlines to be somewhere or do something else.
Tomorrow, I’ll have all day to sit at my desk, working. Much better then to have those extra few minutes to take in what I enjoy – those colours and landscapes and the memories created within them – to carry with me through the day.