Guest column: William Henry Searle
The healing power of walking.
THROUGHOUT THE YEARS, I have always recognized within me a deep-rooted love and need for the outdoors. I could craft a never-ending map across the British Isles of walks that have not only played a pivotal part in shaping my life, but almost certainly have saved it too. Here are but a few, and why I owe so much to them.
Six months after losing our daughter, Elowen, just two days before her due date, I drove out to the Dorset coast with the aim of walking to Chapman’s Pool, a small cove to the west of Worth Matravers on the Isle of Purbeck. The pain of the past few months had left me empty, and the only shred of refuge I seemed to be able to find was out in nature. That day, I stood at the cliff’s edge, with my two Welsh collies, Daisy and Dilly, and listened to the sound of the waves and watched the rain fall upon the horizon. Marvelling at how it retained a dim yet vibrant light, even when the sun was drowned by cloud. The familiarity of sitting there alone amongst the elements slowly brought a sense of comfort I thought impossible. Had I not walked along Chapman’s Pool that day, I may not have ever known hope again.
At Bwlch Y Saethau – the saddle that connects the peaks of Y Liwedd and Snowdon, you will find a small cairn of six stones made by myself and my wife, Amy. A tiny monument to necessary change. We had moved to Snowdonia to undertake a nine month long refurbishment of the old YHA Plas Curig hostel, but the overwhelming workload was taking its toll on our relationship. We began to lose sight of why we had moved in the first place: our shared adoration of the landscape. We fought for every shred of quality time together we could, the majority of which we spent walking familiar trails. The day we walked up to Bwlch Y Saethau reified our growing conviction that change needed to happen. Stone by stone, promise by promise, we assembled that cairn to symbolize a need to rake our lives back into our own hands. The strength we mustered to finally sell our business and change the direction of our lives was drawn, I believe, in no small measure from the generosity of the mountains.
Last year, the months leading up to the birth of our son, Eli, were wracked with extreme worry. Our previous loss had destroyed our confidence, our innocence, and the dream of holding our living baby in our arms seemed destined for demise. Every morning I woke to ask Amy if he was kicking, we had scan after scan, but no one could reassure us that our little boy would definitely be okay. Fortunately, I finally found an anchor in an oak tree, which I walked out to almost every day from our house in the New Forest. Whenever I sat beneath my oak, Eli’s oak, my breath returned to me, my heart beat at a manageable rate. I gazed at it as a child might at his parents, safely embraced. That oak tree and its constancy kept me sane until our son was delivered to us safe and sound.
It is testimony to the deeply rhythmic power of walking that so many of my walks have had a direct influence on the trajectory of my life. The peace found during a walk in my cherished places, or places newly found, carries on long after the walk has ended. It becomes a part of me, fuel for recovery, and faith in the restorative energies of walking not through, but into my surroundings. A day in which I haven’t walked, in contact with the elements, is a day in which I have shut the doors on life.