Walking with a Friend
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Anthony on Mynydd Du by K. Manwaring 2018
Going for a stroll with a friend – an amicable amble, as it were – is one of life’s great pleasures. With a good friend the logistics of the day (if it is a long hike) do not become an effort: there is an organic, spontaneous feel to things. Even if a general itinerary has been agreed upon (a rough loop around a valley, a hope to reach a certain interesting landmark) in-the-moment diversions may be taken, arborescent pathways, roads-less-taken, echoing the digressional quality of the conversation, which has a free-ranging spirit. Anything may be discussed –the profane to the profound, the intimate to the trivial, heretical thoughts and transgressive reflections. Nothing is beyond the pale of conversation’s wilderness garden. Nothing is judged weedish and inappropriate. There is no harsh judgement, cultural approbation, twitter-storm, or trigger-happy ‘outraged’ waiting to descend upon you if you say something that is not in line with the popularity morality (or perceived performance thereof). You can enjoy a hashtag free dialogue for once, nuanced by non-verbal communication – embodied and ensouled in the actuality of the moment, not in some virtual sphere of imagined connection. Beyond the reductive dualism of the binary there is a prismatic spectrum. Bumbling along in our ‘meat-suits’ (as those who spend too long on line call them), at home in our bodies in the true eco-system of things, we ‘arrive in time’ (as Laurie Lee put it). Immersed in the world of the senses, colours, shapes, textures, smells, sounds explode around you. You struggle up a slippery, muddy path – little more than stream bed – to emerge breathless above the tree-line, onto hoar-frosted heathland, blinding in its brilliance beneath the sharp winter sun in the naked sky. Talking clouds in the frozen air, you pause for a cuppa at a stile. Enjoy the Ice Age view and the burn in the limbs. Share tunnocks and jelly-beans. Ideas and feelings. Stand and stare in an animal state of beingness, like a wild horse on a hillside. And this is enough. With a good friend there are comfortable lacuna in the colloquy, companionable silences. These interstices, when you may walk ‘apart together’ are just as important as the moments of intersection. Critically, they allow us to expand our awareness beyond the anthropocentric, the human bubble, to our surroundings. In silent communion with a landscape, in time, we experience ‘heath-mind’ or ‘wood-mind’, ‘stream-mind’ or ‘rock-mind’. In an encounter with another form of life – a bird on a gate-post, a cow in a field, a butterfly on the breeze, a seal in the surf – our consciousness may flip for a moment. In a flash of fith-fath we may find ourselves experiencing the world from a non-human paradigm. As we walk along, alone, by ourselves, together, we may feel something start to stir, the presentiment of an idea, preparing to be born, given sufficient time and space. We may not be able to articulate it yet, but we know it is there. We incubate it deep inside, beneath layers of woolly hats, waterproofs, thermals, thick socks. Our winter plumage. The Spring in us, waiting in the wings. Too much talk, too much company, can cast these fledgling thoughts out of the nest too soon. Inspiration needs space to grow. A good friend knows this, notices when you need a moment by yourself. In the same way that they don’t just talk about them self but allow you to respond, and show genuine curiousity and emotional engagement about your own life, so they know when you don’t wish to respond, when you would prefer to be peaceful for a while. Walking with a friend there is a leaning-out as well as a leaning-in. This mutuality, and ease of decision that goes with it, are the destressors of the day alongside the physical and mental health benefits of being outdoors, having a bit of exercise and getting away from it all. The Japanese notion of ‘forest therapy’ (“shinrin yoku,” literally “forest bathing”) walks hand-in-hand with ‘friend therapy’. A friend allows you to be yourself. With a good friend you can drop down into the deep well of your own being – without trying to be anything or prove anything, you are more fully yourself. They invite us to shake hands with our soul. We are reminded of who we truly are, of slumbering potentials and forgotten promises to ourselves. The voices and wishes we thought we’d honour – which once rang out but have been drowned by the clamour of the world, until, in a forest clearing, or by a glittering brook, we hear them again. And they were always there, patiently waiting for us.
Copyright © Kevan Manwaring 2018
With thanks to Anthony Nanson
