Walking on paths less travelled in Caithness can help us reconnect with nature
Northern Drift by Monique Sliedrecht
I’ve been reading a book by Kate Humble called Thinking on My Feet which is all about walking. She writes about the benefits of walking and how it can clear the head and even open the mind to new ideas.
I have found this to be true, and often experience a new burst of energy and inspiration for my studio work after a good long walk in the fresh air, where I open myself up to fresh sights, sounds, smells and colours in the landscape.
Centuries ago, the original road to John O’Groats came right by Freswick Castle, along the shore and over the headland (hence the impressive stone bridge over the burn). It is still marked out by the occasional stone or wooden stile.
I have imagined many a horse and cart travelling along that furrowed dirt track. Since the start of the Industrial Age, a new road was created (now called the A99) and the old way faded into the landscape, a path now less travelled.
I’ve walked along that coastal path to John O’ Groats before. It is half a day’s commitment, and important to have the right footwear for the moorland – such a different experience to hopping in the car and arriving at your destination in five minutes! The delight of the walk over clifftop and moor, with a potential mug of hot chocolate waiting at the end of the road, is very satisfying.
In his book, The World Ending Fire, the author Wendell Berry writes about 18th-century Americans building a new road as a replacement for an ancient, meandering native Indian path. He distinguishes between paths and roads, suggesting that a path follows the contours of the land, taking into account the so-called ‘obstacles’ and sees them as part of the experience of enjoying all that nature has to offer – a sudden field of bluebells, or a rabbit scurrying to its den.
A path, says Berry, is the perfect way to travel across country at human speed. It is an experience that grounds you in the landscape. A road, he implies, reduces the landscape to mere efficiency and haste, allowing us to travel from A to B, but missing the same connection and richness of being in nature.
People have commented that it is sometimes a little disorientating walking in the countryside of Caithness, through all the wild open spaces, without a destination. I can understand this, and have felt the same way myself sometimes. I need a reason to go out, a place to go to.
However, in light of what Wendell Berry says, perhaps nature has the potential to be our destination, drawing us further into mystery and depth of the intricate rhythms and beauty of the created world around us.
Henry David Thoreau wrote: "What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright."
The American poet, Robert Frost, expressed this in a famous and memorable way:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
(From The Road Not Taken)
- Monique Sliedrecht is an artist, blogger and podcaster. The last episode of the first series of her podcast, Tales From the North, is out now. If you’re needing a little company on your walks, why not tune in? You can find it on all the main podcast platforms, or at www.moniquesliedrecht.com