Why we all need a walk on the wild side
THE SACRED COMBE by Simon Barnes (Bloomsbury £10.99)
YOU might think of it as Eden or Narnia, the golden memory of a childhood picnic or a turquoise-lapped beach fantasy. But we all have a secret, sacred place buried deep in our minds where we can go to feel that enchanted sense of peace and parity with nature. If we’re lucky, some of us will get to go there in real life.
Sports writer Simon Barnes found his own ‘sacred combe’ the moment he realised that somebody was eating his house. It was his first night in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, and through the pitch black he heard a series of contented swishing, ripping and munching noises as a sociable group of 12 elephants snacked lightly on the thatched roof of his mud hut.
They took him by surprise, as their vast ‘bedroom-slippered’ feet made no sound. Wondering whether he should attempt mystical communion or run for his life, Barnes realised that: ‘Being about a foot apart from a group of animals that could tear both me and my hut apart was curiously soothing. There was a thrill of wonder in this — wasn’t I an adventurous devil to be in such a place and in such company?
‘But that was only the superficial emotion. Behind it was a great, soul-deep happiness: a profound sense of having arrived.’
The author of 2004’s bestselling How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher is a quirky and perceptive nature writer with an enthusiastic knack for conveying the character of a creature, comparing the ducks and dives of some birds to those of footballers, and the calls of others to outbursts of swearing. His new book finds him as comfortable in the company of Africa’s exotic fauna as with the little brown birds on his lawn back home in Norfolk. He becomes a passionate advocate of the walking safari. ‘If you want that killer photograph, you’re better off in a vehicle,’ he admits. ‘But if you want that killer experience, then it’s a walk every time.’
On foot, you get an intensity of sound and scent you’ll never feel in a Jeep. You inhale dung and follow the prints, admiring the ‘twin sugared almonds’ of an impala’s cloven hoof and the ‘veined dinner plates’ of elephants’ feet.
The difference between seeing a lion from a car and one on foot is the gulf between a pat on the back and thump in the gut.
Barnes believes that now we’ve wiped out all the big predators in Britain, we have a ‘nostalgia for peril’. He reminds us: ‘We’ve always been prey.’ And reconnecting with our status as ‘perambulating protein’ can reconnect us with what it means to be alive. He describes one friend’s series of particularly hairy encounters with crocodiles, which left him giggling like a schoolgirl.
Barnes makes you yearn for Africa. He believes his time there rewired his neural pathways. ‘I trained my brain to prioritise information about non-human life,’ he says. He found his eyes tracking a city pigeon as though it were an eagle.
But he also believes we can rewire ourselves without leaving England. Yes, our ancient woodland has its fair share of crisp packets and shopping trolleys, but also firecrests, blackcaps and grasshopper warblers.
‘The sacred combe is not an exclusive concept,’ concludes Barnes. ‘It’s as profoundly and recklessly democratic as sex or lunch or oxygen, and every bit as necessary.’