Most days I go for a walk somewhere. I have a few well-trodden ways that I complete almost automatically, without giving a huge amount of thought to where my steps may lead. The culprit may be my podcast-listening habit, where I become lost in the narrative.

Today I took another familiar walk down past the local Steiner School and into the Blue Mountains National Park. There are a number of firetrails and locked gates and ordinarily I will stop at one or another and turn back. Today I digressed, taking a less-trodden path past the remains of the Transit of Venus walk and on towards Edith Falls. I stopped by a rusty old gate that sat on the cusp of a long descent.

Most times my mind is chattering or thinking or processing some detail or other but today it stopped, even if for just a moment. I took out my ear buds and was astonished by the sound of the wind rushing through the trees, the bright framing of a cloud as the sun ducked behind it, the sense of movement and stillness and movement pulsing around me. And this feeling swept through me, holding me as if a captive for minutes, keeping me by that gate. I realise that my observing self had briefly taken charge. I was completely attentive to the moment.

It is really something close to a religious experience. Coming from the natural world, we are connected in deep ways that modern living tends to disconnect. That disconnection, amongst other things, is surely a cause for the deep seated anxieties, depression and mental instabilities that plague our age. The same disconnection compells people to seek escape or authenticity in drugs, consumption and destructive lifestyles.

I was much attached to the Romantic poets as a youth and today Wordworth came to mind. Specifically, The Preludes. It is easy to live life vicariously, as I tend to do, but more deep and compelling, when seeking the experience, first hand.

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought!
That giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
Of Childhood didst Thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human Soul,
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

and

Ye Presences of Nature, in the sky
And on the earth! Ye Visions of the hills!
And Souls of lonely places! can I think
A vulgar hope was yours when Ye employ'd
Such ministry, when Ye through many a year
Haunting me thus among my boyish sports,
On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills,
Impress'd upon all forms the characters
Of danger or desire, and thus did make
The surface of the universal earth
With triumph, and delight, and hope, and fear,
Work like a sea?