Manex featured in Positive News:
“Alone in the Wild”
by Jini Readdy
Jini Reddy travels deep into the French Pyrenees on a solo wilderness quest that promises respite from the emotional and physical distractions of modern life. Can she get by with only her thoughts and nature’s whisper for company?
I’m high atop Hartza Mendi (Bear Mountain), a sacred peak in the French Pyrenees, surrounded by waist-high ferns. Beyond them lies dense forest and a setting sun; intense ribbons of orange cloaking an undulating chain of more sacred peaks with quixotic names. I shiver in anticipation of the long night ahead.
Most people come to these lands to walk, for there is a poetic beauty to the Basque country: here are cascading mountains, sinuous waterfalls, emerald moss-cloaked forests and ancient cromlechs (stone structures).
For me there will be fewer footsteps and more repose, for I’m on a solo wilderness quest. A compulsion to hear nature’s voice, to connect with a living but non-human ‘otherness’ and to still an intangible but deeply-rooted need for belonging that, no matter how hard I try, can’t be answered amidst the distractions of modern life has led me here.
“The call to ‘rewild’ ourselves is growing, and rapidly”
My shelter is a small tent. I’ve six bottles of water and, as this is also a fast, two apples and some nuts to keep hunger at bay. I’ve relinquished my phone and watch. ‘Radical trust’ is a phrase that keeps playing on my mind. Can I rest in the unknown, be still and have faith that I will be safe?
The promise of transformation under a vast sky is compelling. It’s a Native American idea, a rite of passage: you immerse yourself in nature and return filled with insight, a sense of wonder re-ignited.
Whether it be from a desire to commune with the Earth or to withdraw from the modern world and our enslavement to its distractions, the call to ‘rewild’ ourselves (to borrow a phrase from George Monbiot) is growing, and rapidly. This is reflected in the many ventures that have sprung up to celebrate and foster personalised relationships with nature both in the UK and abroad. You might say that nature’s time has come. Again.
This is a welcome revival – and not just for reasons of ecological awareness. Traditionally, Britain’s most prolific thinkers, poets and artists, among them the likes of Charles Darwin, William Wordsworth, Emily Bronte, John Constable and Christina Rossetti have drawn inspiration from our hinterlands, seascapes, woodlands, valleys and meadows. Today, the benefits of reflective time spent in wild environments is indisputable. Scientific studies show a boost in creativity and higher levels of insight among those who spend extended time far from the built environment. I don’t need proof: my own experiences tell me this is so.
Read the rest of Jini’s Wisdom Quest experience here.