I came to a clearing in a forest by a riverbank in Dartmoor national park, far enough from any trail that it seemed unlikely I would encounter anyone while I was there. I gathered some loose branches and stones and arranged them in a circle of about 10 metres in diameter, and then I walked into the circle and did not leave it until the same time the following day.
Great read on our relationship with time. I now have a wilderness solo on my bucket list although I doubt there are many places in over-populated Belgium where you can be really alone for 24 hours.
First he was never for a moment, in all 27 years, bored. He was never lonely. He said that he felt almost the opposite of that. He said he felt utterly and intricately connected to everything else in the world. It was difficult for him to tell where his body ended, and the woods began. He said he felt this utter communion with nature and with the outside world.
In a world where people start thumbing phones in queues, trains and anywhere else they fear being alone with their thoughts, this would probably be torture. I'm not ready to head into the woods for 27 years but I increasingly enjoy being untethered from the grid.
This quote says it all:
In a way, the Chernobyl disaster reveals the true extent of our environmental impact on the planet. Harmful as it was, the nuclear accident was far less destructive to the local ecosystem than we were.
This is very soothing, I could watch it for hours…
