Learning to see

What I've learned about writing (and life) from simply walking

Hi there, I’m coming to your inbox a little later than I usually would. It works better, I think, to publish on a Monday, but we’ll see how it goes.

A week ago, my other half (really should think of a decent public name for him - one he’ll accept…) decided to give me some writing prompts. I thought why the heck not. Then he gave me the prompts and I regretted my decision.

I’m only half joking. He gave me some brilliant prompts actually. Some more challenging than others, but it feels good, to write to someone else’s expectations, to test myself and learn. So here I am, leaning in.

Prompt: a description of our walks.

K x

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At the bottom of the sloping horse field, we finally found the river. Wide and fast, it breathed its deep timbre in the gathering dusk as we made our way through the trees, inhaling the tang of the wild garlic at our feet. A tree, high above us on the slope, was fallen, branches reaching towards the river.

We reached open space right on the river banks, kept from the water by a thicket of thorns and brambles. The sky had drifted into indigo and in the silence between conversation, I heard the owl. It called and echoed in the forest on the opposite bank, amongst the shadows. It might have moved, swooping between branches in the dark, sounding sometimes like two owls, like three. Maybe there were. I stood for a moment, lost completely in the music of the dusk. There was no wind to rustle the trees, no traffic nearby, and no other people wandering this path at this late hour.

For a breath, it felt like I had no skin, like there was no boundary between me and the owl, river, forest, shadows.

Then I turned and followed my family into the night.

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The Usk Valley Walk is a 48-mile walk through the glacier-carved Vale of Usk, weaving about through farmland and forest, up and down the different sides of the valley, and wandering past history reaching back to Roman times.

We’ve broken it up into doable segments, varying from 3 to 8 miles. The purpose isn’t to do it in a hurry. It is simply to walk places we’ve never walked before, to see places we’ve only ever seen from one road or another, or not at all.

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It had been the longest continual walk I had done for a long while. We had started by the river, the grass frosted, the brambles glittering in the winter sun. The ground had frozen, gathered in heaps and pits where a few days ago it had been thick, churned mud. We stepped and stumbled, grateful for the even paths beyond.

It was our first Usk Valley Walk. And it was a glorious walk. We walked through ruins of old cottages, under giant trees, past skeletons of cow parsley far taller than me. The river flowed lazy and quiet, and then quicker and louder as it narrowed further up. We crossed a bridge and arched away towards flooded fields surrounding grand estate homes. Robins twittered and sparrows danced. The river was a memory.

A few more bends, more miles, and there it was again, cutting through the soft land, carving out steep banks from sheep fields. In a gap between the trees, I saw a splash and stopped. Was it really what I thought?

Then the head popped back up and I saw a wild otter for the first time in my life. He swam a little, dived a little, dancing in the river to music only he heard. I stood and breathed and fell in love in the space between the miles, the steps.

Then I turned and continued on the path to the next field.

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Each walk we’ve completed has given me something new to see, to feel. Something precious. Something that can never be taken away from me.

With each walk, I am changed.

Some might argue it’s just a walk. Not every walk can be life-changing. I agree - and disagree. It depends on how you define life.

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The path looped away from the canal, calm and quiet under the shelter of trees. Some vindictive route planner, we suspected, had felt a long canal walk was far too easy for those of us walking the whole of the Usk Valley.

And so we climbed, through trees, through fields, past houses and on.

The sides of the valley are steep, carved millennia ago by ice and rock. Occasionally, the path will turn and walk diagonally across the hill, deceptive and more difficult than a straight upward climb. That is where we found ourselves that day.

Spring was a refrain of a familiar song, barely heard through the walls in the next house. The ground was waterlogged, pouring fresh, cold, clear water from it wherever it could. We walked past ruins of barns, others with new roofs, through sheep fields that could more rightly be called quagmires. The sheep trailed us, gathering in our wake.

As the path curved down, heading back towards the canal, I found it. A still pool sheltered next to a bank, water trickling right out of the mossy greenery and down into the small depths. It was covered in a blanket of small, green plants and sheltered by brambles and bracken. A flat rock was perched just above. A place for me to sit in the sun, to lean over the waters, to gaze into the shadows.

I peered over into the cold water and breathed, forgetting the sound of the water running, forgetting the songs of birds in the trees.

Then I turned to catch up, heading towards the river.

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It is in those moments that my life changes. It is small, imperceptible, infinitesimal, but it is change. In the space between steps, between breaths, I take a moment to stop and to see. I lose my form and become unaware that I am a body.

I forget that I am me.

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This land of rainbows delivered. It happened after the climb, banking yet again across hills, through fields, sometimes empty, sometimes watched as we slipped and slid, occasionally going backwards more than forwards. Water seeped from the hills, pouring out of banks, dashing over rocky culverts, puddling up against small dams of leaves and twigs and debris, freed only by a boot to fall over the ledge and continue down between the trees.

The rain started as a sprinkle. I looked over the valley to my right and saw it there, a perfect, bright rainbow. It arched from a tree down by the canal over the copse and touched back down to the ground. It shimmered, a burst of colour, right on the edge of the sunshine. It was a vibrant contrast to the russet browns and greens of the surrounding hills. It appeared like a frozen breath in the mist, shifting imperceptibly as I paused to watch. We breathed together, the world and I.

Then the sun brightened, the jewel colours vanished into the mist, and I turned to continue my climb.

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It would be far too easy to crunch through the miles of the Usk Valley Walk. To put one foot in front of the other, head down and just walk. I’ve learned a lot just from doing this - what I need to pack for longer walks, to expect mystery Beacons rain when my phone says bright sunshine, to get up and walk even when we don’t feel like it.

What I’ve learned on the way is how to pause. How to marvel at the spaces between, how to look and really see. How to simply exist and be, without form, without purpose. Perhaps it is my writer’s mind, learning that the end, the lessons, to practice isn’t the point - the point is the thing itself. Writing. Seeing. Living.

Who knew writing and walking could teach together the things I needed to learn most?

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Thank you for reading. I’d love to know what you thought and whether you’ve had similar experiences. Let’s chat…

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