You have one job. Go Outside.
I wondered why everything felt so much better when I was outdoors. Yes, the air is fresh and fills your lungs in a way that city air can’t, and yes, there is something about cold air on your cheeks and the fast heartbeat that comes with an uphill climb that makes you feel that little bit more alive, but there’s something else.
I think it is this: for us naturally anxious souls, who live in the future more than the present, the big beautiful outdoors offers the blunt knowing that the world is bigger than you. It’s bigger than your yesterday and it will be bigger than your tomorrow. And if you lost everything, as your worried mind sometimes tells you, mama nature will still be here, and she will still hold you up.
Your priorities change when you’re on the side of a hill, even a small one like Conic Hill. Your head clears into one step in front of the other, and breathing enough air into your lovely lungs. Your fellow walkers are friends-in-waiting. Where else do all strangers say hello to each other so openly? Who knows how wealthy these muddy wanderers are. Does it matter?
Let yourself be human, in the most basic ways. Walk until you need to rest, rub your hands together when they’re cold, kiss your lover when the mood strikes, leap off rocks because you know it looks silly.
I had thought, recently, that we lose the word ‘play’ as we grow older. No one sends us on playdates, no one gives us craft materials and tells us to while away the hours; we have to give permission to ourselves to do that, and let our minds clear out the cobwebs so that they remember what play looks and feels like. On the way up the hill, Boy and I walked and chatted, as we always do. On the way down, we were still us, but looser, and more prone to suddenly skipping and running.
This perspective and sense of fun is not entirely gone from city life and office jobs, but it is much harder to find. A thousand trees have nothing to prove, and somehow their presence alone is inspiring. We can be that, too. It starts, very simply, by being part of it all again, by being outside.