On Awe Walks Part Two

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awe, awe walks, beauty, nature, nature walk, spiritual awakening, spiritual enlightenment, Spiritual experience, spirituality

Rupert Graves- Letter to my younger self- The Big Issue Magazine

Just a couple of days after reading about Awe Walks for the first time (see previous post) I bought The Big Issue and in the Letter to my younger self whereby a famous person looks back (always good and often very moving, and which have now been collected into a book) were the words above from Rupert Graves. Definitely an Awe Walk. Here is another of my own Awe Walks, taken again from the little book documenting my ‘spiritual awakening,’ (available super cheap on amazon)

Let’s go for a walk, Part 2 (or, Heaven on Earth)

I had to go to Wales again for work. It was almost two years since my first trip, when I’d been so scared about driving there. This time, it didn’t even cross my mind to be nervous. I arrived in the sunshine and spent an easy afternoon at the hospital, being shown around and doing the work I needed to do. In the therapy office, waiting for my host, I glanced around the room: overflowing notice boards, information leaflets, resource folders, work boots and shelves of books. I scanned the book titles: two were about magic. Was that just the Universe reminding me, yet again, that magic is everywhere?

Because it certainly was. I finished my work and drove to my hotel. A budget chain hotel, it was situated in what at first glance did not look like a pretty area: close to a big roundabout in a concrete landscape of office premises. It was still light, sunny and relatively warm. I got some chocolate and a drink out of the vending machine and went outside to stretch my legs. I thought about asking the woman on the desk if there was anywhere nice to go for a walk but she was busy checking in another guest. I walked out the back of the car park to a scrubby grassy area, there was a path lightly littered with rubbish, a few trees shading the path. I found a more definite path and then all of a sudden there was a river, flowing over and between big, grey rocks with a waterfall. I went down to the water’s edge. It was so isolated, all of a sudden, even though it was just moments from the hotel.

I went back up to the path and now it was a real path, in a real wooded area, the litter had disappeared. All of a sudden, there was a canal, with lovely little boats moored up, paint peeling, covered in algae, hemmed in by what looked like years of waterweed. It reminded me of when I first met John, and he was living on a boat on a canal. Was it a metaphor or not even a metaphor, a real life tableau, an illustrated live experience of This is your life?

Here we have John, waiting, stuck, as I might have thought. A little way along, the boats disappear and here’s me or rather, a location for me: the water’s surface green with plants and sparkling golden in the light, like Ophelia’s grave. I was here. Despairing, suicidal and romantic.

I followed the towpath. Everything became lighter and prettier. The water was like glass, reflecting the huge green trees that lined the bank.
A group of dog walkers came past with not just one but four lovely, bouncy dogs, who all, dogs and people, stopped for a friendly hello.

Through the trees, I glimpsed a huge cemetery, which gave me a momentary pause: evoking a layer of gravitas to my skippy summer-autumn walk; increasing my gratitude and the urgency and importance of appreciation; reminding me that I was alive. Beyond the cemetery, a rolling vista of green, sloping down towards houses in the distance. It was as if every view imaginable had been laid on just for me.

There was a field with sheep in it, another with cows and then a friendly horse looking over the fence at me. Around each curve of the river, something new and more lovely than the last. I wondered when I should turn back or if I should just stop for a rest: a little bench appeared for me to sit down on.

Bridges, each one quainter than the last, made of roughly hewn pale stone, dinky, just big enough to walk under, it was like being a child. They were numbered 52; 53; 54; John’s age? The future? Tracking the course of our life?

You couldn’t make it up.

My senses tingled. My soul soared.

Silver- really silver- birch, almost gold in the late afternoon light as if it had been painted, washed with metallic paint. Who knew you could get silver trees? Real, silver trees? Not in a royal palace or a rock star’s deluxe OTT garden or on some fairytale film set but just out here, on a walk that anyone could go on.

Hobbit fantasy land like tree roots, travelling down over the whole surface of the steep bank so that I could see them all in all their twisted glory: as if the steep bank was there on purpose.

Like life… it just got more and more beautiful, it went on for how long, who knows, when to stop, when did it start?

I could have asked about somewhere to go for a walk. I could have turned left instead of right. I could have found out all about it, read about it in a guidebook, looked it up on the internet. Maybe I alighted on the only pretty stretch or maybe it was this pretty for twenty miles or more.

I hadn’t had a drink, I hadn’t been meditating and I wasn’t tired. I’d just been working and then driven to the hotel. So what tripped me over into this state of grace? Maybe the chocolate in the hotel vending machine was spiked. I’ll never know.

Thank you very much for reading

Please feel free to share your own awe walk experiences!

Self portrait, Pushkar, India 2020

About the author

In 2018 in our forties and fifties my husband and I sold up, gave away most of our possessions, and went travelling for a year, mainly in India, and also to Thailand, Tokyo, Nepal, Cambodia and Vietnam. My personal/spiritual/travel memoir of the year is completed and out with agents. I live on a narrowboat in rural Northamptonshire UK with my husband and two cats.

Follow me on Instagram thisisrachelhill

I just got lost for a while: Koh Rong, Cambodia

Tags

awareness, beauty, being happy, Enlightenment, following the white rabbit, Minimalism, pay attention, remember to remember, signs, synchronicity, Taking the red pill, Travel, writing

I just got lost for a while

Extracts from draft chapter about our time in Koh Rong, Cambodia in January

We were taken to our beach by a long wooden boat with benches down each side, plenty of room but only us on it.  The wooden boat, painted red, the island, and the sea so blue; it was all so totally Instagrammable that I didn’t want to.

Again I felt as if I was supposed to feel something that I didn’t.  Sometimes too much beauty doesn’t resonate, it’s impossible for me to feel.  Like the big temple we went to see near Pondicherry, with not one but several huge facades of colourful mouldings, too much to absorb, so that in the end I stepped away to look at a gold minaret, a white cow statue, and I was able to connect.  Give me an orange cat on a dusty wall, or raindrops glittering on shutters in the dark, those things are more likely to get me there.

Or sometimes it’s because my mood is incongruent, like in Nepal, we’d got up early to go and see the sun rise over the mountains, one of which was Everest, but the day before I had had a totally unexpected row with our travelling companion and stood trying not to cry, the surreal once-in-a life-time view doing nothing to alter my mood.  When Anthony asked me to be in a picture with him I refused.  I felt ugly, a consequence of the low mood, but I was also glad to avoid contributing to another social media lie, a dreamy photo of us with the sun rising over Everest, with the fact that I felt so low not mentioned, of course.

The sea was a little wavy and it was a little scary, in the open water, the waves tipping the boat, but I reminded myself that the man does this all the time.  The journey took about forty minutes.  He dropped the anchor a little way from the shore, hooked a ladder over the side and we stepped down from the boat with our bags, into the water above the knee, past the bow which was beautifully decorated with flowers, and onto a paradise beach.  Again, laughably nice, with well off looking tourists on sunbeds, and little beach front restaurants, ‘Are we in the wrong place?’ we asked ourselves.

We were in a tent, it was luxurious camping though, with a deep thick mattress, one of the best we’d experienced in South East Asia, electricity with two sockets and a fan.

An English woman helped out with online bookings and English speaking queries at our place.  We asked how she’d ended up here, she said she’d come on holiday and fallen in love with the place and come back to live, and had been on the island seven years, she had a Cambodian partner and a little boy.  ‘He understands everything, but he’s a little late in talking, which is normal, as he’s learning two languages at once.’

In a way it was a bit boring, being stuck on a small beach with nothing to do; it was good for me and writing though. I had set myself a rule of work first before anything, sometimes I went on the internet first and felt guilty, but sometimes I did two hours of work only no internet.   As long as you do something, I said to myself.  You need to be in condition, like for work- sleep, stretch, food, and sometimes, if totally stuck, to just do nothing.  Which is this, choice or procrastination?  Only experience tells- or time- does the book get written?

One of the nicest things was that even in a sloppy type up of old notes I saw patterns that matched other sections or the present, and made new notes.  The balance between experience, writing about it, absorbing, reflecting, peace and quiet, and being right in the moment, ‘paying attention.  I used to think I needed quiet time to see patterns, but actually, fully immersed in writing, I saw more.  Being in the zone, connecting with other bloggers, who echoed my own words back to me.  Living right, for me, All I have to do is write.  Moments alone with no writing but not many, writing is so important- party later.

 

Walking to the village in search of culture and authenticity, up a steep hill, two paths there, two paths back.  The harbour area was beautiful, with wooden pier and buildings.  We stopped at the first little shop, with red plastic chairs outside, and sat and drank Sprite.

When I went there alone that was all I did, walked to the shop, sat and had a drink, Sprite, Red Bull, or a soya drink in can, watching the chickens and chicks on the other side of the path by a small rubbish pile.  The chickens ate a big sheet of polystyrene, it got smaller each time I went, the little fragments like rough beads.

On my walk to and fro the village I paid a lot of attention, making a mental note of all the markers; a building with a blue roof, a cafe that was never open, sacks of building materials, a truck that was usually there.  Scrubby plants that led to a sandy path.  Broken planters.  Tiny bright bluish purplish shells in a messy semi circle.  With Anthony we went another way.  Me momentarily confused, looking for the shells.  ‘All roads lead there,’ he said.

Shells on the beach in tiny arrangements like art, and tiny holes with lots of tiny piles of sand, made by crabs.  Like a work of art, each one different, some like comets some like asymmetric snowflakes so delicate and pretty.

We used to float in the sea and talk about enlightenment, then get dry and go and eat dinner.

Anthony’s hypothesis:  Is this all there is?  If you gave up the search, put all focus on this life- like being in the moment, richer, if you like.  Think of it like a game, if that helps you take the gas bill less seriously, but don’t have half your mind on the otherness- the brain in the tank, the Green Mist theory, the after, the what’s next- that’s like the what’s next in life- stops you being in the present, is ill advised.  If there’s nothing, then you’ve wasted that time- just be present.  People realised they were in a mortal life- found that scary and so invented the possibility of otherness as a comfort.  Just live, enjoy, make up/imbue meaning- or not.  Forget about spirituality, it’s a cu-de-sac.  Waking up= enjoying life.  Sadness prevents us seeing beauty.

People say the ‘first step’ is seeing beauty.  What if the ‘first step’ is the only step?

Like R from Switzerland, if you want to reinvent yourself maybe it is much easier to do with no contact with your family.  This is what I’m meant to be doing, what I intended to do, therefore I am successful (not a bum with no job to family).  Like me- No, this is what I always intended, to live on a boat, and WRITE, as I did as a child, as I’ve always done.  I just got lost for a while, that’s all.

In the sea the day after the enlightenment conversation I felt pinpricks, as if something had stung me on the outside of my thigh, then at my wrist, as if a tiny spiky thing like a prickle was caught  in my bracelet.  Then I felt it again, stronger, stinging, on my right breast.  Anthony said, ‘Are you getting stung?’  We couldn’t see anything.  We got out after a little while; whatever it was had caused tiny bumps like little TB markers which disappeared quickly.  That evening we saw a shooting star, orange like a firework, with a tail like a comet, I had never seen one like that.

We met a woman from Italy and went out for dinner.  She had left her job, been travelling for two months, wanted to go home, work, then go out again.  Not all her friends understand.  ‘Everyone just wants things.’  Before she left she gave me a four leaf clover.

Digging a hole on the beach then leaving it is anti social, I realised.  I had fallen in several especially at night in Thailand- one foot not my whole body.  As a child I fell headfirst into a muddy water filled hole straight after my mum’s boyfriend said, ‘Don’t you ever stop talking Rachel?’ And on the beach in Koh Rong, also holes.  ‘Even my chair fell into a hole.’  ‘Perhaps it’s a metaphor,’ Anthony said.  (I always say that)  ‘What, I’m in a hole?!’  ‘No, you’re going down the rabbit hole.’  Oh yes, I like that, a reminder every now and again, my own personal mindfulness bell.  Remember to remember: you followed the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, you took the RED pill.

 

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Picking up the things of beauty:

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beauty, Blogging, Incredible India, Indian hospitality, Love India, meditation, mindfulness, Self realisation, serendipity, spiritual memoir, Travel, Travel memoir, Travel writing

Picking up the things of beauty:  Delhi before Nepal (October 2018) Draft chapter for book

On the train from Pushkar to Delhi, two young men gave us advice about a better Delhi station to get off at, closer to the airport where we were staying.  It was also their stop, and near the taxis they even looked for us to check we were okay.  ‘You are guests in our country,’ they said, when we thanked them.

A French woman we met in Pushkar said she usually brings her daughter each year to India, one year her daughter aged six had got very ill in Delhi, they had to go to multiple doctors and she lost a lot of weight before getting treatment that was effective.  Since then, the woman said she only eats at one particular hotel when she is in Delhi.  Even though guidebooks direct western tourists to Main Bazar (Paharganj), and all the shops there are geared to tourists, tourists seem to often get sick there, and middle class Indians told us they wouldn’t eat there and don’t understand why tourists go there…  So, having got sick both the previous times we’d stayed in Main Bazar, we took a leaf out of the French woman’s book and booked a hotel near the airport, for the one night and one day between Pushkar and Nepal.

Our taxi driver struggled to find our hotel and after driving around and asking directions he dropped us off and rushed away.  It was the wrong hotel.  It was late in the evening, we were tired and fed up, but as we began to walk, people came to help and give us directions; people actually ran after us to offer help.  This happened again and again in India, people went out of their way to help us.  Thank you so much.

We finally found our hotel, it was the slowest check in ever, we were tired and impatient, but managed not to show it.  Our intention always was to spend most of the time in the hotel room and eat hotel room service, this time the Delhi air quality was just ‘unhealthy’ rather than ‘hazardous,’ as it had been last time.

The hotel staff didn’t speak much English, breakfast was included but we struggled to order it when they phoned to ask what we wanted; one meal came first then we ordered the other when they brought the first.  Anthony had an omelette and I had milky coffee like children’s coffee, with four slices of toast which I dipped in, which was actually really nice.  For the other meals the staff came into the room and copied our order with us showing them the item on the menu.  We had finger chips, and veg sandwiches with thin cut cucumber and tiny amounts of shredded lettuce, which were also very nice, and milky tea in a pot.  We got what we got, we were hungry, the food was actually fine, and it didn’t make us sick.

Anthony wasn’t feeling well and stayed in the whole time but I did go out for a little walk.  We were on the fourth floor, I used the stairs for a bit of exercise.  There were unusual wall designs in that hotel in brown tiles and shiny brown wallpaper, on the stairs one side a mosaic design, on the other side giant pebbles, elsewhere there were even giant buttons.  There was a round window to outside, I looked through; the wall opposite had a hole in, like where a fitting had been removed, making a messy circle.  Inside the hole were a pair of pigeons huddled up together.  I thought it looked like one bird’s wing was out of position, but when I came back upstairs, it had gone and the other was still there, sitting all fluffed up.  Beyond the wall, on the roof of another building, I could see a terracotta saucer with a bird at it, someone had put water out.

I was nervous about getting lost, but on my own I was able to look and needed to really look; an OYO sign, a hotel sign at the end of our road.  A tiny shop, a crossroads, side streets; the road was broken and bits of it were flooded a little.  Men’s groomers, two juice stalls, more tiny shops and street stalls.  On the way back I bought water.  Looking back at the crossroads, there was a momo stall, 15 rupees for half, 30 rupees for full.  I could see a room behind the street stall.  To one side was the little shop where I had bought the water, to the other the road.  Above the shop and across the road was a perfect bird’s nest of wires.  Down the road was a sign saying Health and Hygiene Institute.  To the left of the road was a block of faded flats.  A little girl stood on a balcony holding a red balloon or was that my imagination?  Definitely there was washing out.  The little girl on the balcony, the washing, the Health and Hygiene Institute, the bird’s nest wires, the little shop, the momos stall.  I tried to take a picture in my mind.

On my way out I’d made a point of saying Namaste and Good Morning (even though it was the afternoon) to the man on the hotel door.  I got back to the hotel then decided to go on past it a little way.  There came a man and a dog which I thought was on a lead, but then I felt its wet nose in my palm.  It was quite a big dog, with a collar, but not on a lead and not with the man.  The dog started being super friendly and started to hump my leg, I tried to shoo it, but I didn’t want to be too forceful in case I made it angry.  I quickly walked back to the hotel and asked the doorman for help, he opened the door and shooed the dog away.  ‘Friend,’ he said.  ‘Too friendly,’ I said.  I was on my period, the dog’s attention was embarrassing.

The area was made up of faded buildings interspersed with hotels.  From the window by the pigeons, looking sideways and above I could see two flashier buildings.  I could see washing hung out but otherwise it was a really non India view, and the view from our room even more so, ‘Our least India view,’ as my husband said, it could have been a faded area of any city.

I fed bits of the previous day’s train journey samosas to sweet little birds on the windowsill, poking the pieces through the bars.  I thought, Give me a song (in return) then immediately chastised myself for thinking that- but then they did!  Asking for more?  I gave them more, and later pigeons came too.

I wanted, needed, to see the strange giant button design again; sometimes I look at something but I don’t stop long enough to feel I’ve soaked it in or made the most of it and then I regret it.  Am I a pleasure denier?  And then I realised that the same wall covering design was in a corner of our bathroom!

I told Anthony about the t-shirt I saw when I went out for a walk, then later I spent a while sitting on the floor, going through all my papers and notebooks, chucking out and decluttering to get the weight of my bag down, and what did I see, the very same phrase:  ‘Fortune favours the brave’ that I’d noted down from a billboard on a journey at another time weeks or months ago…

Can it be like this in future, just picking up the things of beauty as I go without on purpose seeking any more?  ‘No more temples.’  And just putting in the blog?  So as to keep current; not like now, in Delhi and writing about Kerala, but maybe I should just accept that this is my job.

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony