There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the sea and music in its roar: I love not man less, but nature more
— Lord Byron
The icy landscape of winter, giving off mist as the snow thawed and froze gradually, took a turn to days of warm sunshine. I began to think that it would not be a bad idea to begin living here in my cottage in a remote village, surrounded by deep valleys and snow-capped peaks that radiantly begin to glow as the first rays of the sun appear in my bedroom window.
I take quiet walks on cloudy days or when the days warm up through thick weeds in the wild and empty valleys and dark forests that enfold me. I lead a pastoral life, eating vegetables and homegrown apples and apricots or sometimes baking a bread, leaving my experiments to the whims of the unpredictable yeast and the intensity of the fire that will dictate the quality of my baking. The hot oven incarcerates me in full attention on a cold winter day when it is not possible to stir out.
Though I have now left behind the institutions of higher learning, history, classical philosophy, political theory and fine arts are my only refuge. My essential loyalty to taking all serious and light reading as a commitment to leisure has been a gratifying experience in times when leisure seems so rare.
Sitting on the stump of a fallen tree on one of our excursions into the wilderness and surrounded by a cluster of pines, I began to deliberate on how humans think they are outside nature, perpetually driven towards an intellectual life to keep up with the ways of the world. I realised that the environment in which I received my upbringing drove me towards the life of the mind, to arts and literature, to the study of ancient drama and the joy of classical music. Not for a moment did my parents show concern for what benefit a poem or a painting would have in enabling me to find my way in life.
But my father made sure to tell me of how as a professor he would constantly inform his students that when they come to his class they need to be prepared to purge themselves of their prejudices and inflexible postulations, thereby discarding the Cartesian position of a blinkered or an insulated life cut off from the outside world.
I loved the school I was sent to, its wooded surroundings, the green playing fields and the open-ended discussions in the class overriding the prescribed texts or curriculum; we freely answered and tossed issues, questioning each other or the teacher who appreciated the standpoints that we adamantly took as if they were deeply profound. We were often avidly stirred on in discussions meandering in and out and times reaching no ending. But sometimes a light shown on some revelation which left us euphoric till the next day class. There was no air of intellectual condescension, no discomfort at asking a silly questions, no way we could mortify ourselves. The very openness of the debate was as innocent and stimulating as the softly flowing brook nearby and the generous blue expanse above.
A sudden gust of cool breeze jerks me back to my surroundings and the joy of hidden pleasures in all their varied memories and spasms of cheerful nostalgia for those carefree days full of passion and longing. Spring is almost here and I must hurry with my everyday occupation of planting, weeding, and gathering what little I succeed in growing. It is a deep camaraderie with nature, creative and provocative, and yet compelling.
shelleywalia@gmail.com
