“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread” wrote the American author and environmentalist Edward Abbey.
It was Charlie’s idea to try and find wilderness. I don’t say this to point an accusing finger, only to give credit where credit is due. The idea was born as a small mention, a last line in an email — could we find wilderness close to home? If indeed wilderness was a necessity, can we find it from our backdoor? On a golden afternoon last May we closed the door behind us and set off to find it.
The wilderness we went looking for needed no machetes or crampons, no porters or Sherpa’s. This was not some 6 month journey requiring complicated logistics and a team of people. This was just the three of us: Steve, Charlie and myself, the boots on our feet and a small pack on our back. Our location was a couple of hours walk away, and this little adventure was inspired by a man named Julian Hayward.
In 1988 Julian wrote and published ‘Dartmoor 365’. In the book, the entire 365 square miles of the Dartmoor National Park is divvied up into neat 1 square mile portions. The idea being that, for the Munro, Wainwright and Peak baggers, lovers of walking and checklists, here was a way of covering the entire national park over a single year — one square a day. Each of the 365 squares has a unique name and number, and within each square the author describes features and tales of interest. Square T5, The Dewerstone. Square H9, Cut Hill. From remains of buildings to wildlife, tales of heroes to botany, each square has something of note. All except square G7. This square has nothing. It is a void, a lack. Its name? Wilderness. It was here the three of us were headed and here we were to spend a night on the open moor.
Low afternoon light was on our backs as we headed onto the moor. The path was dry, the going level. Walking in a small group is a joy while the afternoon sun is up and sky is blue. Lazy and comfortable, free and easy. These days are not for head down, pushing against time and the elements, but for head up and talking as you go. Charlie had the map and led the way, Steve and I wandered alongside nattering as we went.
Of the handful of times I have visited Dartmoor, I leave with an intense need to return as soon as I can. My childhood playground was the Lancashire hills of the Rossendale Valley, and Dartmoor makes me remember that place. Dartmoor feels wide and old and deep. The vast moorland extends in waves from your vision, pinched and lifted in places by ancient granite Tors. There are heavily wooded rivers and valleys, gentle flowing leats cut into the moor, prickly gorse and bog cotton in scattered patches. It is not to my eyes a dramatic landscape, it is a quiet and gentle giant.
With the last few hours of light we arrived at our place, our square of Wilderness. It did indeed seem featureless, but huge. A wide flat area of ground surrounded by undulating moorland in every distant direction. The lack of physical features and the huge scale made it feel strange. The strongest feature of the place was the vacuum-like silence. We all stopped talking for a few breaths to see if we could hear anything, the air through my nose was all I could. I have never experienced silence as solid.
Charlie and I started to pitch our tents, and Steve announced his accommodation for the night would be a bivvy bag facing the stars. I quietly regretted bringing a tent and admired Steve for the bivvy. Next time. I’d have to come again if only to do that. We ate boil in the bag food and talked in the middle of the silence until the sun fell below the horizon when I wandered to my tent and fell soundly asleep.
My alarm went off at 6:30 am the next morning and I lay on my side with the sleeping bag up to my nose, door-flap pinned back, watching for the sun to rise. The air was cold and dry and sharp, the silence was still there. No animal noises, no wind, no sound. The deep indigo morning sky began to change, a glow of burnt orange and gold wicking upwards. As the sun began to crest, a breath of air washed into my face. I just felt like laughing, really laughing. The author Sarah Maitland writes about her profound experiences with silence. “A fourth sensation very commonly reported by people who have enjoyed the silence they chose (not everyone does) is that they have experiences of great joy, which feel as though they came from ‘outside’ themselves; ……….This feeling of being connected to the universe, and particularly to natural phenomena within it, was central to the sensibility of the Romantic Movement, and appears over and over again in the poetry of the period, nearly always linked to places or experiences of silence in the natural world.”
With the sun came sound at last; distant birds and the gentle breeze. I lay there until the full shape of the sun was showing above the horizon, then clambered out of the tent and peeked round to see Charlie stirring also and Steve rising from the ground like a mummy from its casket. There were grins all round.
The whole experience had left me feeling empty. calm. restored in a way. I didn’t know I needed the experience it before we set off, but with hindsight I now realised I had. I also realised I had to come back again as soon as I could. The square of wilderness we’d gone to find may have been described as featureless, but my experience in that place was far from it. We had found wilderness close to home. We walked off the moor with our long shadows leading the way.
As much as a wilderness is a physical place we need “as vital to our lives as water and good bread”, it’s also a mental one. A place of space, a place of quiet, a place of reflection, interestingly also elements that are part of meditation and mindfulness practices. In his 1976 classic book ‘ The Myth of Freedom’, the Tibetan Buddhist Chögyam Trungpa wrote “Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss or tranquillity, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self-deceptions”.
I look back to Julian Hayward’s description of his square G7 Wilderness. “A square of empty Wilderness? Look again: there is so much to see”.
There is so much to see. There is. But the view is inwards, not outwards.
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